Comprehension

Sometimes I get discouraged about some of the trends in public education. Those of you who know me well know how deeply I care about my students and how passionate I am about teaching. Don't get me started talking about school unless you are prepared to get an earful! :) And one of my biggest frustrations is our high stakes testing and all of the ramifications from this high stakes testing...for me, but especially for my students. Thanks in part to this testing, our district has adopted a basal reading program. And it has both strengths and weaknesses. But the part that I am most frustrated by is the way it teaches reading comprehension...I think it covers way too many skills and strategies and goes way too fast...never giving students the chance to master any of the strategies and make them their own before rushing on to another skill and strategy. It goes against everything that I think is most important. If I were to choose one thing that I think is most important for me to teach these children, it is to understand what they are reading. If they can read well and truly comprehend what they are reading (by using strategies such as drawing conclusions/making inferences, determining what is important, connecting the text to their own life, understanding the text structure, asking questions about what they are reading, evaluating whether what they are reading is factual or not and so on...) then they can go on and learn about almost anything in this amazing world. Not only is reading fun, but it is one of the most important ways to continue to learn and gain new knowledge. So imagine my dismay that the program I have to use does not do a stellar job at teaching these skills, at least not in my opinion (which is based on the research I've read as well as my 13 years of teaching experience). While I can't completely disregard the program, after several discussions with my administrators and our literacy coach, I have reached a compromise. I will continue to teach the skills and strategies that the basal recommends, but I will focus on 5 to really help the kids become solid in. I will do this in a variety of ways, through think alouds as I read, modeling, small group instruction but also by incorporating comprehension practice on these 5 strategies during their independent practice time/centers each day. So on Monday of every week, they will find the main idea and details of a text we read. On Tuesday, they will record what they know about the text structure. On Wednesday, they will write down questions they have about the text. And so on. I'm introducing one at a time and practicing it until they become confident in that strategy and then adding another to their repertoire. And I may make some changes as the year progresses, but if they leave my class as confident readers who understand and can respond to what they read, I will feel I have been successful.