Jennifer Campbell, Routman: Chapter 8 Teach Comprehension, Blog Post 4

I almost skipped over this chapter because I thought that actually teaching comprehension doesn’t really apply to 4K, but at the same time I didn’t really know why.  Then I read “You can’t start teaching comprehension in grade 3.  You start teaching it the day kids enter preschool or kindergarten.”  I felt like I wasn’t the only one who just assumed you taught it later on.  Then after I read about some of the strategies like sequencing, constructing summaries, making connections (to other texts we’ve read, the world, our lives, from known information), and making inferences that’s what we’re already doing. They’re learning to comprehend oral language as well as the pictures in books. I know when I’m reading a text I’ll often stop and ask questions about things they may have noticed, the setting, characters, and connections to other known things but it didn’t occur to me that I could actually be teaching comprehension skills they can use in the future.  If they start early enough then it will become second nature to them. 

            One strategy I would like to incorporate is allowing them to preview a book before I read it to the class.  Routman calls it “survey the text before they begin to read”, but I could have the book out a few days prior in our library center for them to preview the pictures on their own before I read it to the class.  Another way I could use this is in a small group with several copies of the text and have students create graphic organizers or create an anchor chart as a group. 

           I normally "teach" as I am reading book or after we have read the book through sequencing activities, charts, or acting out the story.  It would be interesting to see how these new strategies boost their comprehension of a text.