Comprehension Strategies

I found Cooper and Routman to be very similar, one article just details more specifically the comprehension strategies and the strategies are slightly different. One of the key elements of both Routman and Cooper is the importance of modeling. As an adult reader this becomes very challenging for me, because as the authors mentioned we do most of our comprehension work unconsciously, so making yourself aware of how you use a particular strategy is difficult. For instance I am teaching my small group literacy lesson on Thursday and at the request of my MT I am introducing the strategy of questioning. I want to be able to effectively model for them how I would do this but I don't know if I actually do- yikes! I guess I probably do on some level think I wonder how this person is feeling or what was the name of that character. But I am teaching the three levels of questioning with a non-fiction text...needless to say I'm not feeling very confident.

I am also seeing now how students can learn a strategy but not be able to really apply it to their reading. We have been working on inferences in the class I am in and many students understand that they rely on information from the text and their own background knowledge to infer something about the text. However, some students are unable to make genuine inferences, instead using something that is already evident in the text, or making very shallow, or confusing inferences. In trying to probe their thinking I am wondering what they are not getting about the concept. They are practicing inferences with both their independent books and the read aloud but still some are coming up short. I am wondering if other skills need to come before making inferences? Do the strategies need to be taught in a certain order or does it matter?

Shared Writing

Routman's optimal learning model demonstrates how important it is for your students to see you as a writer. To model the writing process shows your students that you write for a purpose and I think it would be so valuable to see teacher's "think out loud."( I wish we had done shared writing in some of my college courses :) It makes total sense to me that you would demonstrate first and show what is expected of students in their writing and then eventually hand the pen over to the students and allow them to try it without the pressure of making it perfect on the first try. Often when I struggle with writing something it is because I do not know how to start, or what the finished product might look like, or even how to organize my writing. Routman's optimal learning model gradually leads students to independent writing. I think the one of the key elements in this process is making sure students feel comfortable and safe in the classroom in order to participate in shared writing. I am teaching my first lesson this week around writing poetry and I am nervous that because the students don't know me they will be reluctant to share-reading Routman has made me consider modeling the process of how I would begin the poem before I have them write their own.