Comprehension

I see comprehension taught in my classroom in several different forms. First it is taught through QAR methods. Often, students are read a story by my CT as a whole class and as the story is being read they are asked questions and are expected to respond to them. These questions vary from asking them to describe character emotions, their own emotions, plot lines, themes, take away messages, predictions, etc. Comprehension is also taught during writers workshop. It is more of an assessment of their comprehension, usually of a book that they read earlier that day. Students have been asked to write an ulternative ending to a book, write like a character in the book, or write about an experience they had that was similar to the experience of the character(s) in the book. This seems to be an effective way for my CT to see if students understood the plot of the story, the way characters were feeling, and often the theme or message of the story. These are the two main ways that I see comprehension taught in my classroom and they prove to be pretty successful because I would characterize most of my readers as strong comprehenders. Although we have many struggling readers in my classroom who are still decoding words at a sluggish pace, they seem to still comprehend the overall meanings of books. However, I think that they are in general stronger at listening comprehension. Most students respond very well to the QAR style when my CT reads aloud and their writing seems to reflect understanding. I find that the struggling readers are especially benefitting from this style because they are able to hear the book aloud read fluently, which is what they struggle with as readers. Without their own reading fluency I notice that they sometimes struggle to understand what they just read, even in simple directions. However, some of the more advanced readers have an equal amount of comprehension when they read themselves, especially students who read with punctuation and inflection in their voices. They seem to understand the books they read and have an easy time talking about them with friends or with my CT.

Although I feel my students are rather strong comprehenders, many times during QAR or recitation style comprehension methods during language arts, students tend to fit one of Applegate's profiles. This profile is left fielders. Students often have responses that are rather unpredictable and seem to come out of nowhere. I think part of this is because students at this young age readily express whatever thought comes to their minds. Often these thoughts do not correspond to the text we are discussing and seem random and unpredictable. However, often times I feel that students are trying to make text to self connections but say them in the form of stories. Students often fail to explain why their story connects to the text making it difficult to see the relationship they are making. In addition, I feel that many students could be categorized as fuzzy thinkers much of the time. They often make vague and imprecise comments, especially with regards to character descriptions. My CT will ask students how they think a specific character was feeling when something happened and they will respond with the words sad or happy. Although I think students are still comprehending the emotions that the character might have, they are still often using very vague language that does not provide much support or confidence in their statements. Therefore I think it would be beneficial for my CT to include more map work and modeling in order to increase their levels of comprehension.