Week Six 2/23/09 M.Clover

Whenever I think about my own reading comprehension process, I try to remember exactly what I did when I was learning how to read. However, because that was SO long ago and my memories are beginning to evade me, I'm not sure that I can recall exactly how I go about reading and comprehending something. I swear there are times when I could read a whole article or chapter of the book and have NOTHING to show for it. This leads me to believe that I'm not a very "accomplished" comprehend-er. Meaning that I do not sit down and think about what I'm reading EVERY time I read something. I have to really have a vested interest in order to read it.

I think that knowing this about myself will definitely help me teach reading comprehension to my students in the future because I understand that not everything they read is going to be interesting to them. I know there are multiple techniques, which Tompkins talks about in order to get students interested in their own reading comprehension, but the idea I like the most is to acknowledge the fact that your students have different interests and that they may only want to attempt to comprehend readings that they feel are important to them. What I'm trying to say is that I think in order for students to be successful comprehend-ers they must be interested in the readings. Or that they must know the "purpose" of their readings.

I also am a very large fan of the idea of participating in discussions ( of course that is if students behavior will allow it). After all of the readings and work we've done for TE classes, I think the importance of whole class/small group discussions have really stuck out like a sore thumb. In reading comprehension there is no difference. I know that in TE 348 when we had to read many different childrens books, I found, through classroom discussion, that there were many more view points of the story and that each person had interpreted the story in a different way than myself. It was not only really helpful to know that this happens but really neat to hear other people opinions and see what they had and hadn't noticed. When it comes to discussions in the classroom, I think that book talks or book discussions are one of the most important.