Chamberlain_Reading Lesson Overview

The Stahl article discusses not only comprehension strategies that are beneficial for students, but also that often times, these strategies are not practiced with beginning readers.  Although I do have fourth graders, who in most cases are no longer “beginning readers”, I know they will still benefit from practice with comprehension strategies, because I find that they often view reading to be some sort of race.  Rather than read to be the first finished, I want to help them practice reading to develop meaning, and it is my hope that I am able to see them use them the strategies I teach in the classroom on their own. 

The first comprehension strategy I plan to focus on is predicting.  The students I have chosen for this lesson are both “good” readers, but because reading generally comes easy to them, they rarely take the time to stop and actually think about what they are reading. In the end, they will have read whole pieces of text fluently and correctly, but are unable to say what it was that happened in what they read.  Instead of simply “charging through” the text, I want them to practice pausing and asking themselves, What will happen next? Why? In what ways could this story go?  Tompkins labels predicting as one of the strategies used for comprehension, and I think that practicing this strategy would be beneficial for these students to help them practice reflecting on what they read and how certain information relates to others parts of a story or text.

The second strategy I plan to focus on is using context clues.  Many of my students struggle with this, but these students in particular tend to sacrifice comprehension in order to simply get through a text.  I rarely see my fourth graders to check on a meaning of a word while they are reading, and these particular students have never been one of them.  In fact, I chose these students because I feel they would be able to benefit and learn the most through extra practice with vocabulary and word-learning strategies.  One strategy that will help them with comprehension and is applicable not only now, but in the future as well, is using context clues to help decipher the meaning of a particular word.  Whether they are looking at grammar, root words, definitions, examples, or contrasting examples as clues, these are all things that are very important to one’s understanding of particular words, and as a result, their comprehension of a certain sentence or the text as a whole.  After having practice with the context clues strategy, these focus students will have the tools to puzzle through many unknown words that they encounter on a daily basis.

One student I would like to work with is Max.  Max is a very bright student, but has a rough time fitting in socially with the other students and sometimes struggles to express himself to others.  When working on assignments, Max takes his time and concentrates hard on everything he says and writes.  He is very wise for his age, and is very aware of his surroundings.  Max is a good reader and pays attention to detail in a text.  I think it would be very interesting to have him be a part of my predicting lesson.  Since he is so attentive to what he reads, I think he is definitely ready to go to the next step and get into the practice of applying what he reads to extend his knowledge and expand his skill set.

A second student I would like to work with is Ethan. Although Ethan is a fairly good reader, he does not have a very wide vocabulary.  So even though he is able to read nearly any word that he comes across, there are quite a few in his daily reading that he does not know.  Because Ethan is also one of those students who like to get through their work as fast as they can, he rarely takes the time to look up a word, and instead simply pretends as though the word just does not exist.  It is because of this that Ethan’s comprehension takes a great hit.  I think my context clues lesson would be really beneficial for Ethan so that he can learn strategies for figuring out the meaning of words he doesn’t know while reading.  By practicing using context clues in his daily reading, it is my hope that Ethan begins to develop his vocabulary, and in turn, his comprehension.