Sunday, November 1, 2015
Comprehension
The biggest concept in chapter 6 is comprehension. Concepts of print/about books start out the chapter, explaining different examples such as being able to identify the different parts of a book, knowing that the book is for reading, knowing where to start reading, knowing which direction to turn the page, and knowing what a title, author, and illustrator all do. (p 200). We've seen a few different examples of teaching concepts of print in the videos we've watched in class. Assessing our AppleTree student on their knowledge of concept of print was one of the first things we did in the field. After Phonological Awareness, concepts of print are important for your students to learn, because it's everything physical about a book.
There are different materials that you can use as a teacher to be effective in teaching COP. Big Books are one of the most well known, because they're effective and so easily accessible. Holdaway thought that Big Books help children get involved by using big pictures and large text. The large print helps teacher teach concepts because students can watch pointing on larger text, and it's easier to follow along as a child.
As previously stated, comprehension is the most important part of reading. If you don't understand what you're reading, then what good is it? Comprehension is defined as the 'active process in which the reader or listener interprets and constructs meaning about what he or she reads or listens to based on prior knowledge about the topic, thereby making connections between the old and the new. (203) So basically, reading and understanding and making connections sums up comprehension under a general umbrella. Comprehension is advanced by interaction with others while reading. This makes sense to me, because if a student doesn't understand what's happening, he or she can look at their neighbor and listen to their answer and make connections. Being aware of how your own learning is taking place is called metacognition. (204).
I think that as a teacher, teaching comprehension is difficult because not every child learns the same. That's the main point of emergent literacy, as we've discussed all semester. As teachers, we have to cater to the learning needs of our students while still following a lesson plan and schedule for the class as a whole. Teaching in small groups has been proven to be the most effective, something we have also talked about in class. If you try to teach the class as a whole, there are too many students to try and teach the concept to in their own unique individual way, but one on one time would take entirely too long, so we teach in small groups as to maximize time and efficiency.
I feel like this chapter was mostly review of what we've talked about in class, but it was still very helpful in explaining what we have to do as teachers to be affective and meaningful.
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Ally,
ReplyDeleteI feel that concepts of print are important foundational to student comprehension. As you referenced on page 200 of the Morrow text book, there are several objectives that children with good concepts of books meet. These include the following: knowing that a book is for reading; identifying the front, back top, and bottom of a book; turning the pages of the book in the right direction; knowing the difference between print and pictures; knowing that pictures on a page are related to what the print says; knowing where to begin reading on any page; knowing what a title is; knowing what an author is; and knowing what an illustrator is. Each of these concepts is incredibly important to helping student comprehend what they are about to read because each of the aforementioned objectives is the foundation of the book and knowing how to progress through the book.
You mention reading big books as one strategy to help aid students with understanding print concepts. Another strategy for helping students learn this information is to actually have the students create their own big book. In order to assess student learning, this practice would require the students to understand their print concepts quite well. This activity would allow students to have interaction with recalling what they see on the cover of a book, such as the title and author and illustrator's names. If the project is done as a collective class project, each student could have their own page that they illustrate and author, and this would require understanding the differences between text and images, but also about the direction of print and where the top and bottom of the pages are. This project would be great to model print concepts for students, but also allow them to interact in a way that is more than just seeing. They can immerse themselves in Bloom's highest level of critical thinking: creating. We have learned in class that students who can generate or create an answer or representation of their knowledge are the ones who truly understand and have mastered the information.
Since, Ally, you touched on the definition of comprehension, I wanted to elaborate a bit on ways to enhance and improve comprehension. On pages 205 in the sixth chapter of the Morrow textbook, Literacy Development in the Early Years: Helping Children Read and Write, there is a list of what third graders should be able to demonstrate with their comprehension. This list includes comparing one text to another text they have read or heard. One way to develop this comprehension skill is to first share two stories with the students and have then create a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the similarities and differences. One task that students do well when they are good at comprehension is that they can summarize what they have read. If students can first connect two texts and then summarize the similarities and differences, they have a good grasp on the information.
When it comes to the difficulty of teaching comprehension, I would agree that this is likely something that is quite difficult to teach. As teachers we can teach students comprehension skills, but it is difficult to teach them HOW to comprehend. Giving students the foundational knowledge of print concepts and then including formal teaching strategies are the best ways to help aid students learn how to comprehend and think about their own metacognition. A few formal strategies for teachers to use when teaching comprehension include explanation (teacher explains the strategy), modeling (the teacher shows how to use the strategy), guided practice (teacher gives students an opportunity to use the strategy), independent application (teacher allows practice without guidance), and reflection students think about how to use the strategy in other situations and thinks about how the strategy worked for them).