Veronica's Week 8 Post

Comprehension is a thinking process that involves a series of behaviors that occur over time (Tompkins, 223). For students, the comprehension process begins as they preread or preview the text to activate their prior knowledge and continues to develop as they read the text, respond to reading logs during book club as well as explore new ideas or feelings from the text. Students may also apply their readings from Book Club and make “connections to their own background knowledge-including knowledge of the world, cultural knowledge, and knowledge of the generic structure” (Gibbons, 81).

Comprehension is taught in Book Club through the 8 comprehension strategies that teachers use to guide their students’ reading. The 8 comprehension strategies are: Predicting, Connecting, Visualizing, Questioning, Identifying the Big Ideas, Summarizing, Monitoring and Evaluating (Tompkins, Figure 7-2, 229). As I read chapter 7 in Literacy for the 21st Century: A Balanced Approach, I felt that many of the Reading Log squares in our course packet directly correlated to the comprehension strategies stated in this textbook. For example, Questioning; “activates background knowledge and students make predictions before reading, to engage with the text and clarify confusions during reading and to evaluate and reflect on the text and the characters’ experiences after reading”, can be used as a “Questions For My Group” Reading Log, “Sometimes there are things in the story that I wonder about. I can write questions to ask my group so they can help me to understand the story better. Sometimes I might write questions to ask my group members how they feel about the story or a certain part of the story” (course pack, 94)

As I finished this chapter, I enjoyed reading that teachers can create an expectation of comprehension when students are involved in authentic reading and writing activities every day, my field placement students write in their journals every day on various topics. I read them poetry book of my own and they enjoyed this very much, this can be seen as “have students read and write in a variety of genres”, though they may need additional practice in creating their poems. Another strategy, teachers can create an expectation of comprehension is by “providing students access to well-stocked classroom libraries”. I can not wait for summer to come so I can start buying tons of books at garage sales, though book orders or borrow them from the public library.

Jami's Comment:
I was JUST thinking the same exact thing today. I too can not wait for summer so I am able to go to garage sales and buy children's books. For some reason children's books really excite me, and I find at times I would rather spend my money on children's books than anything else. Last summer I went to garage sales and got some really good deals on tons of books. I just heard last week, that children's books are growing the most in regards to book sales and book stores are constantly expanding their children's sections because the books are in such high demand. I was very excited to hear this, because it tells me that children are becoming more and more involved in reading and parents and teachers both are beginning to incorporate books into children's everyday lives! Anyways, I also found the information about the book clubs interesting-but that is probably because that is what we are currently working on in class. But I do think that they are a great way for children to reflect on the chapters that they have read and I think it will keep children engaged in the reading. If they were told to read a book-and in 2 weeks they would have to write a report on it, I can almost garentee that half (if not more) of the children would read the book at the last minute and do a poor job on their reports-not really getting anything from it. Book clubs make it so children have to keep up with the book and are able to talk with their peers about what they are reading. It is even fun for us to read a couple chapters and then discuss it, especially if there was something in the book that made youreally happy or really angry; such as chapter 5 in Roll of Thunder. In field I have noticed that the children read with my CT but don't do much of a "book club" style of reading/writing. Now, I am only in a second grade classroom so they would have to read a book that is on their level and have writing prompts that are also on their level.