Comprehension

I really enjoyed the readings for this week, especially the online articles. The articles talked a lot about different ways students think about texts they are presented with, and how we, as teachers, can aid in their learning and comprehension processes through instruction and discussion strategies.  Applegate, Quin, and Applegate's article "Profiles in Comprehension," addresses the styles of comprehension students in our classrooms partake in. The article divided students up into eight comprehension categories; literalists, fuzzy thinkers, left fielders, quiz contestants, politicians, dodgers, authors, and minimalists. Although I have not yet had the opportunity to analyze student comprehension for every student in my classroom, categorizing the way students think, and understanding the faults in that thinking is EXTREMELY helpful for teachers. The article pointed out the characteristics of these thinkers and interventions that can help them. 

I have a few students who I think probably could be identified as "Fuzzy Thinkers", and understanding what kinds of interventions could be useful was extremely helpful. 

I also found the "Kindergarteners can do it too! Comprehension strategies for Early Readers," extremely helpful. Noelle, Allison, and I all work in Kindergarten classrooms, and often because students lack word processing skills and writing skills, it is difficult to assess comprehension for these students. I loved the way this teacher used hand signals to indicate different types of responses to the text, as well as how she used charts / board write-ups to organize student thinking. Originally, I had really wanted to do a poem for my language arts lesson, but I was unsure how to go about directing a discussion on the poem I wished to share. This article gave a really great example of how to use poetry effectively in the classroom, and made me eager to use these strategies in the future for poetry/comprehension instruction. 

What do you think? Noelle Reardon

What do you think? Lupita: I really don’t understand why Mrs. Potter think Lupita is lacking academically. If Mrs. Potter’s reason for her lack of knowledge is due to Lupita being quiet in class and rarely interacting with other students I think that’s absurd. You can’t expect a child to adjust and do things she is not use to just because she changes environment. As we read in one of the readings how it is sometimes helpful to give students opportunities to show their knowledge in a variety of ways. Maybe Mrs. Potter could give the students an assignment where they have to make something or draw a picture. Lupita demonstrated her knowledge of figure out how a puzzle fits together and was able to help other students. Maybe it would be helpful for her to have more hands on activities. One way doesn’t work for every student and I think that is something we should keep in mind as future teachers. It’s hard for me to say exactly what she should do because the article gives very little information. Jonathan: From the reading we discussed in class how it is beneficial for students to have directions on the board. It is helpful for students to know what to expect next. I think this would be helpful for Jonathan and for other students as well. When the students are confused they can refer back to the board. I think she should do a reading assessment with Jonathan that evaluates his knowledge in phonetics, phonemes, comprehension, etc.. The sooner Mrs. Potter finds out why Jonathan is struggling the sooner she can help him. Eddie: I think Eddie would learn best with hands on activities or activities that involve movement. In the article it mentions how he will ask to go to the bathroom often, has trouble sitting, and doesn’t get his work done. If he can do activities that keeps his body moving the more likely he will stay on task. He probably challenging for him to finish assignments because he is forced to sit in a seat and not move. I think she could asses Eddie’s knowledge by having him draw pictures, make a project, or even act out plays would be beneficial. He is missing out on important information when he is constantly leaving the class or is zoning out. I think it would also be helpful for Eddie if Mrs. Potter to make lessons relevant to his life or give real life examples. As we talked about in a numerous readings that when a topic is relevant to a students life the students are much more likely to be interested and remember the material.

Tompkins

After observing my students writing, I have come to the conclusion they are all at various levels. Some students are at the letter name- alphabetic principle. That is, students are learning that phonemes represent words, but the spellings are abbreviated. For exmaple: "iswdrnbw" could mean "I saw the rainbow". Then, there are other students who are in stage 3, within-word pattern spelling. That is, the majority of the techniques are correctly in place, but some patterns of spelling are off. In order to design a center activity to help improve their spelling, it is important to cater to both student groups and their specific needs. I feel the best way to do this is by creating a center that has children use their weekly study words to create a short story. For example, if the week's words were "the" "and" "that" and "him" students could create a story using those words. This ensures the students are working on their spelling and word recognition skills without explicitly correcting them. Furthermore, it allows them to use their own imagination and inventive spelling. Nonetheless, as each week goes on, the students will learn more and more words and be able to incorporate those into their story in hopes of creating a full on sentence with proper spelling.