Sarah McClure's February Blog Post Routman chapter 8: Teach Comprehension

I loved this chapter.  So often we get lost in the lists and details of strategy, strategy, strategy, but neglect to explain the reason for the strategies in authentic reading.  Students learn all of these strategies but don’t understand why and how to use them.  . “Students don’t automatically comprehend just because they can read the words.” (Routman pg. 121) Reading should be a constant internal conversation between the reader and the text they are reading.  Even in the early years of elementary education it is important to connect reading with comprehension as opposed to just learning sight words.  In fourth grade, as Routman suggests, we teach comprehension through texts the students are reading independently.  We also teach comprehension in conjunction with novel studies.  It is important to not just teach strategies, but to help students understand that proficient readers use them while reading not just to get an answer right on an upcoming assessment, but to better understand and interact with what they are reading.  I agree that it is important to model strategies with students and to share ways that I use strategies in my own free time reading.  I use rereading as a strategy all of the time.  Sharing this with students gives credibility to the strategy.  An integral part of all reading instruction must be ample time to apply the learned strategies in a meaningful way.