Comprehension and Think-Alouds

Last week I did the readings for this week, so this week I'm doing the readings for last week.

Main point:
1. Why comprehension is important and how it happens.


How do teachers support readers?
-They teach decoding skills
-Help students build fluency
-Build and Activate Prior Knowledge
-Teach new vocabulary
-Motivate Students
-Engage students in personal responses to text

I enjoyed reading about how to make reading and writing connections visible. When I'm doing school work I always enjoy doing my writing assignments more than reading assignments. A technique for me when I'm reading something I need to know but am not particularly interested in I will take notes of the main points to comprehend it a little easier.

In chapter 7, we learned that comprehension is thinking about and responding to what you are reading. Comprehension typically gets focused on less in the classroom.



Discussion questions:
*What is a good way to teach new vocabulary?
*Do you have any tips to make comprehending readings easier?
*How to focus on comprehension in the classroom?

Comprehension and Think-Alouds

Main point: Methods that help teachers teach children how to comprehend

The problem with comprehending could be that students get all words correctly but get no reading.

What are some comprehension strategies?
-Predicting, questioning, and wondering about what will be learned and what will happen.
-Visualizing or imaging what the experience would look, feel, sound, taste, and smell like
-Drawing conclusions and making inferences based on what is read

Teachers want students to use these strategies not only in the class room, but always when they are reading.

What are Think-Alouds?
Think alouds are a way of modeling or making public the thinking that goes on inside of your head, while you are reading. While teaching this to students show students you are making connections by using sentences that start like...
This reminds me of...
I remember something like this happened to me when...
This is like in our school when...

The picture to the left shows the strategies of think alouds. 

Discussion Questions:
What strategies would you use to help your students comprehend something they didn't have any interest in?

Word Study

Main topic: Showing the difference of good and bad ways of teaching children how learn vocabulary.

Do-

• Teach your children these important prefixes: -un, -re, -in, -dis
• Create a Sticky-Note New Word Day
• Read lots of books, read aloud
• Teach morphemes, context, and how to use the dictionary to learn more words
• Teach them to monitor their vocabulary knowledge, so when they have a question about a word they know to go look it up

Don't-

• Bore students with endless amounts of definition
• Let kids think the when they see the letters -un, -re, -in, -dis that it is automatically going to mean something because there are lots of exceptions (uncle)

The picture on the right is an activity called different shades of emotions which is to show students that their are different words than just sad, tired, mad, happy, and etc.

The picture to the left shows an activity where a word is read and the first to identify gets to add a card to their pile and whoever has the most cards at the end wins for the day. This allows children to learn and be encouraged by other classmates.

Discussion Question-
On page 109 in our book it says that vocabulary experts tend to disagree on whether Latin and Greek roots should be taught.  I learned these when I was a junior in high school and found them very helpful. Do you think they should be taught and if so at what age would they be most beneficial?

Wide Reading

Wide Reading:
Wide reading is reading of texts, books, poems, and articles that helps expose students to many words including rare words- not high in frequency but high in important meaning.
"Drowning children in reading"
Read everything, instead of narrow like just reading things that are by one author or one genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lKI8Ti1xxI

Fluency

Main point: 
1. Fluency allows reading to be read quickly and easily comprehended.

The book gave us a good example(below) about how fluency emphasis and gives purpose and direction to what we read. 

ifallsentenceslookedlikethisyouwouldntbeabletotellthemoodofwhateverisbeingsaidandwouldnotinterprutthemeaniningverywellandontopofthatspellcheckwouldnotwork

The statement above is missing some key components right? Like what?

-Capitalization

-Punctuation

-Spaces

Who would of thought that the symbols: ., ,, ?, !, and ' could be so important.

Anyways fluency is important, it allows readers to read most words quickly and accurately, with the appropriate expression.

In order to become a good reader you need to develop fluency.
Fluency includes three components: accuracy, speed, and prosody. Fluency is considered a major goal of reading instruction.
In my opinion, since I don't remember much of the learning to read process, I think fluency in reading could be compared to learning a new language. I never enjoyed my language classes because I felt like I didn't know what I was doing and I did not spend enough time practicing to work out the kinks.

The activity to the right shows students 5 main points of fluency:

1. Applying different reading rates to different texts.

2. Using punctuation

3. Reading with emotion

4. Adding emphasis on words to enhance their meaning

5. Checking to make sure they read the sentence correctly

How does fluency develop?
- When children PRACTICE reading and writing
- Even if the activities are easy fluency is developed

Discussion Questions:
1. What do you think is a good activity to practice fluency?
2. Do you remember when you became a fluent reader?