Chapter 3 by Ellin Oliver Keene
In your syllabus packet (in the selected reading section), please read chapter two and reflect on the following key questions:
1. What is your operating definition of comprehension?
2. What strategies/activities do you use in your classroom to help students think more deeply about what they read?
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8 comments:
This chapter really required me to think about my definition of comprehension. Now that I think about it, I use the word "comprehension" quite often,yet, I'm not 100% sure what my operating definition would be for it. I really try to get my students to synthesize all of the information that they are gathering as they read. I have been working on developing discussion groups in my class. My kids always do a great job when the discussion is teacher led, however, I would like to help them become more independent.
Keene suggests that we look at the way we learn and comprehend as individuals. I like to talk things through. I also put things in my own words. I try to give the kids in my class the opportunity to express ideas about their reading both in discussions and in their Reading Response Journals. I found it interesting when Keene wrote about her college paper that had accurate information, but it not have any original thinking. That is one of the hardest things to help students achieve. I think too often kids are told to fill in the blanks with the correct answer. Kids find it very challenging to express their ideas about a book.
This past year I had a young girl in my class that wrote wonderful journal entries, and this article reminded me about one of her entries. Emma has gone to the art museum in Chicago many times. This year she read Chasing Vermeer which is mystery about a Vermeer painting. In the process of describing the artwork in the story, she decided to compare the paintings at the musuem that are worth millions of dollars and the artwork on the cereal box that she looked at in the morning. She had an incredibly indepth journal entry about "What is art?". When I read that journal entry, I knew she totally understood the story and the author.
My goal is to get more kids thinking like that. It develops over time, and the kids get much better at it as the year goes on. I found it helpful to have my kids use "Thinkmarks" as they read. We use them to make connections, ask questions, and all of the other strategies that we talk about.
I guess I would define comprehending as understanding. I think understanding requires an emotional involvement of some type. I think we learn better when we are passionate about something. That is why I like to give my students some choices in what they read. I would like to do more inquiry based learning in science and social studies. As Therese has mentioned, time is a huge factor. Teachers are expected to get more and more in each day. I think we need to constantly make connections between the subject areas, and we need to help kids become passionate about learning.
My operating definition of comprehension is to construct meaning in order to enhance understanding, connect it to previous knowledge, and to be able to use it to help with past and future information.
The strategies or activities that I use in my classroom to help students think more deeply about what they have read is to give the students a focus or a specific reading strategy to help them to comprehend what they have just read. These strategies can be separated into six areas: a Word Finder, an Evolutionist, an Illustrator, a Journalist, a Connector, and an Organizer. The Word Finder looks for new, interesting, or word or phrases that are important to the story and gives the meaning in relation to the story. The Evolutionist looks at how a main character changes or goes about solving a problem. The Illustrator visualizes what is happening in the story and draws a picture or symbol that represents an important part or main idea of that section. The Journalist writes a story from their point of view about what has happened in the section that was read. The Connector makes connections from text to self, text to text, and text to world. The Organizer sequences the important events in the section and states the main idea.
These activities help me to teach and reinforce many strategies that are needed to construct meaning for my students.
My operating definition of comprehinsion is the ability to verbally retell or rewrite what a person has read using operating definitions. Therefore, according to Ellin Keene, I view conprehension as her first of three elements that lead to comprehension: the retelling. Vocabulary development comes with the ability to retell and restate.
In my resource classroom, I think the most useful comprehension strategy that I use is preteaching. Teaching prior to class without pressure of answering questions gives students, I believe, an "authentic" purpose to reading. I do not grade my students and I do not have literal or inferential questions for them as we read, repicture, retell... prior to the core teacher teaching the lesson. I think that anytime I can help students increase comprehension, I help them build confidence. Therefore, preteaching builds the student up for answering the core teacher's questions in assignment form or discussion in their regular education classroom.
In conclusion, I believe I "generate", as referred to by Ellin Keene, more than answer questions. In diong this, I attempt to promote students to authentically read for optimum comprehension.
Ellen Oliver Keene has caused me to rethink my definition of comprehension. Originally my working definition of comprehension would be: the construction of meaning/ understanding through the process of connecting new information with prior knowledge.
Now I envision comprehension being more of a subjective interpretation of information based on how an individual's prior knowledge can influence the level of understanding.
In class, we discuss how author's don't just write books to entertain, but they also want the reader to learn something. We then become the detectives trying to uncover the unknown.
In our small reading groups I often model using open ended questions to help the children look for clues in their reading to help them understand the story. After reading children practice writing questions about the story. We then share those questions with the group.
Whenever I can, I praise children when they make connections and have "aha" momments. It's a highlight of the day for both of us. :)
Comprehension is understanding the content the author intended to deliver by means of visualizing, inferring, and connecting the information to our lives.
Strategies/Activities:
--Sticky Notes: Having the students use sticky notes in a book they are reading to identify various areas in reading—questioning, a juicy word or phrase that creates a powerful image, a connection, etc.
--Journaling: writing about their reading. This can be trickier for the kids who struggle in areas of reading and writing. Sometimes, a picture can be drawn as the teacher reads a book to help them visualize what is read, then words can be easier in coming to them. Other times, when given concrete instructions is given (i.e. write one of each connection), the child can organize thoughts better.
--Rereading: The teacher reads a story more than one time encouraging the students to listen for a certain element desired.
--Cards: 10-12 table-top cards folded in half with before, during, and after questions. Each card serves a different purpose—setting, characters, plot, nonfiction, author’s purpose or perspective, mood or tone. Read with a partner and use the card to guide their reading.
--Discussion: Discuss, discuss, discuss! Talk about what is being read. Make it informal as to ease the pressure of writing and right or wrong answers. Sit in the “livingroom” of the class area to create the atmosphere of book club.
1. To me,quite simply, comprehension is the construction of meaning. This meaning results from the integration of the reader and the text. In the case of reading, the reader's background knowledge combines with the text features to create meaning.
2. We continually use many of the concepts from Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey to help our students think more deeply about what they read. When reading books independently, our kids keep a summary sheet to help them monitor their comprehension and also to help them determine the most important information in the text. With shared reading, we are constantly asking kids to connect the text to their own lives and the world around them. Sometimes this happens just in discussions, but we often have the kids write these responses in what we call their strategy notes. Asking the kids to create questions (which they compose in their strategy notes) based on the text also helps them think more deeply about what they are reading. We especially like to do this as a form of character analysis to get the kids thinking about why the characters act or feel the way they do. We also ask the kids to often make inferences about character and events. This is my favorite strategy to teach because inferences truly require that the kids think rather than just recall information from the text. I think inferencing has become a favorite strategy for my kids because they realize that it is more challenging and a bit more rewarding in terms of displaying their thinking.
With all these strategies, we constantly model them with our kids so they have a good understanding of how to use them.
My definition of comprehension is the reader’s ability to understand the text, relate it to themselves and their world around them and be able to apply and connect it to other areas in their academics.
A strategy that I use in my at-risk groups is journaling. I like to use creative and open-ended prompts to encourage them to elaborate on what they have read and to use past and present experiences to enhance their written answers/ stories. This is a huge struggle for the kids I work with. They like to stick with present and factual information or simply regurgitate the prompt I have given them. They have a hard time applying their outside knowledge and experiences and synthesizing them with new experiences to form new ideas or opinions. When they are struggling during an activity I use verbal redirection or prompting to help them think deeper about the subject and to try and think outside of the box on their writing activities.
My operating definition of comprehension in my English classes is very similar to the one given by Ellin Oliver Keene in chapter three of our selected readings. Take new knowledge and combine it with “existing knowledge, opinions, beliefs, and emotions to create a synthesis.” To put it into my own words, though, I would say that comprehension is the individual path that one takes to associate new information or experiences with previously understood information or experiences and then applying it to life and using it in the future. It seems that what I have been learning with all of our selected readings is that true reading comprehension happens when a reader uses several reading strategies to successfully gain an understanding of what has been read.
An activity that my students enjoy doing that also requires them to think more deeply about what they read is making illustrations. For example when we read Edgar Allen Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher,” I asked my student to either illustrate the most suspenseful moment of the story or the most visually unforgettable image described in the story. The students usually all draw different things from the story, which shows their individual comprehension of the story.
Another activity that I have my students do is a partner journal. Before they read, they write to each other and respond to the writings about their prior knowledge; next, they write to each other during the reading to ask questions, make comments, and inferences about the reading; and finally after reading they write to each other about the ideas they thought were most important in the reading. When students see how other students comprehend a piece of literature it assists their own comprehension of the same material.
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