As
I read in an earlier chapter, “You only have so much time.” We as teachers need
to use our time to optimize student learning. For students to grow in
comprehension, they must have ample time to practice. Rereading is a very
important strategy for students to use to become stronger in comprehension.
Routman mentions that this strategy is rarely taught as a primary strategy.
When students make connections, they are making connections to the text, to
themselves, or to the world. Routman also explains that fluency is significant
in the reading process but is not reading without comprehension. Reading
familiar texts can help students become stronger readers and can help them to
make gains in comprehension. I agree with Routman, having time to practice
these strategies will help much more than a lengthy lesson or too many
strategies. They just need the time to read and explore with books.
I agree with you Kristin - children need time to read and interact with text in order to improve comprehension.
ReplyDeleteHi Kristin,
ReplyDeleteI appreciated the point Routman made in this chapter that we need to be careful about teaching reading strategies in isolation because many of the strategies proficient readers use are applied together in order to comprehend text. The ones you mentioned in your post are a perfect example - fluency without comprehension is useless but modeling fluency and then pausing to check for understanding and then employing re-reading when comprehension is lost is a great example of what readers do when they are monitoring their own comprehension.