Comprehension First

Inquiry into Big Ideas Using Important Questions

Claudia E Cornett

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351813778
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Education
• Categoría: Education General

This book is about designing instruction that makes comprehension the priority in reading and in content area study. The comprehension model described responds to calls from literacy experts and professional organizations for inquiry-based instruction that prepares readers to be active meaning makers who are adept at both critical and creative thinking. Comprehension First introduces a before, during, after Comprehension Problem Solving (CPS) process that helps readers ask key questions so they arrive at a substantial comprehension product-"big ideas" based on themes and conclusions drawn from literary works and expository texts. The book further describes how to orchestrate research-based best practices to build lessons and units around big ideas and important questions. In this age of multiple literacies, all of us must learn to be more nimble users of Literacy 2.0 communication tools. Mastering problem solving is at the core of this challenge. Comprehension First embraces this challenge by inviting present and future teachers to examine WHY and HOW these tools can be used more purposefully to achieve the pre-eminent literacy goal of deep comprehension.

1
Comprehension Definitions, Issues, and Directions

preview

This chapter introduces the concept of “comprehension first” and explores why inquiry-based comprehension instruction needs to be a high priority in the classroom. I begin to build, and help you build, a new view of comprehension that is more consistent with 21st-century demands. The chapter includes

■definitions of comprehension, big ideas, inquiry, and other key concepts that relate to literacy.

■an introduction to the information teachers need to evaluate comprehension instructional options.

■a profile of common comprehension problems and common literacy needs of all learners.

■an overview of the five factors that influence comprehension success.

important questions

Use these questions to guide your thinking during reading.

1. What does “comprehension first” mean? Why is this concept vital?

2. How does a teacher’s definition of comprehension affect how he or she teaches?

3. How would the adoption of a definition of literacy that considers real-world demands (including workplace expectations and technology) change comprehension instruction?

4. What is the status of student reading/comprehension achievement in the United States? What does the current status suggest about instruction?

5. What are common characteristics of students with comprehension difficulties?

6. What conditions are recommended to meet children’s basic literacy needs?

7. What five factors influence comprehension, and how are they important to boosting achievement?

8. What role can Comprehension Problem Solving (CPS) play in putting comprehension first?

Introduction

The goal is lifetime, not school time readers.

JIM TRELEASE

A book’s title should say a lot. In fact, an effective way to start a discussion about a book is to ask, “What does the title mean?” A good title captures the book’s big idea on several levels. For example, the title of Charlotte’s Web doesn’t simply refer to the literal web the spider spins. At a deeper level, the web has to do with qualities that, when woven together, create true friendship—qualities such as listening, compassion, and self-sacrifice. Charlotte’s web is also her tool for snaring food—an instrument of survival for Charlotte, but also a deadly trap for other creatures. Readers are forced to consider how life is connected to death in the great web of existence. This is a very big idea.

The title of the book you are holding is also intended to operate on several levels. “Comprehension First” summarizes the biggest idea in teaching reading today (RAND Reading Study Group, 2002, p. xi). No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation put reading on the front burner, but the research report that informed this law emphasized that its components are not equal. Four of the NCLB components (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and vocabulary) are means to reach the fifth: comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000). Literacy experts widely acknowledge comprehension to be the goal of reading, with other components serving as sub-skills. Comprehension is what reading is all about. Indeed, comprehension is the “sine qua non of reading” (Beck & McKeown, 1998).

The title Comprehension First is also a play on “Reading First,” the name of the program through which schools received funds to implement the reading portion of NCLB. Unfortunately, many Reading First schools missed essential details or misread key research conclusions regarding the subordination of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and fluency to comprehension (Walker, H., 2009). As a result, many programs taught sub-skills as curricular ends. Six billion dollars later, students in Reading First schools comprehend no better than students in schools that did not receive funds (Institute for Educational Sciences, 2008).

Moving comprehension to the front of the instructional line for all American students is long overdue (Walker, B., 2009). To do that, clear, understandable definitions for key literacy concepts are needed.

classroom snapshot

OPERATING DEFINITIONS

What a person knows and believes influences how she or he acts. It follows that any teacher’s definition of comprehension determines the nature of his or her instructional practices. Consider the following short classroom snapshots. Think about how each teacher implicitly defines comprehension.

Teacher A is working with a small group. She instructs the students to read a short picture book independently. After they all seem to be finished, Teacher A begins with questions, such as, “Who were the characters?” and “What happened first, second, third, and so on, in the story?” Teacher A informally assesses, using a clipboard to record “correct” and “incorrect” answers.

Teacher B distributes a set of questions to guide the reading of part of a chapter in the social studies book. He asks the students to read silently and use sticky notes to mark parts of the text that help answer the questions. The students then individually write answers to the questions, using the text. At the end of the class, Teacher B collects their answers and grades the papers.

Teacher C tells her students to read a short story and focus on being able to retell what it is about. After they read, she gives the students a story map and asks them to fill in information about the characters, setting, plot events, and themes. Teacher C uses a rubric to grade each student’s work, with “very detailed and accurate” being the criteria for an A in comprehension.

Teacher D prepares a multiple-choice worksheet for students to show their comprehension of a science article. The worksheet directs students to identify main ideas and details stated in the article. The students read the article and then work in small groups. Teacher D collects one worksheet from each group, at random, and everyone in the group gets the same comprehension grade.

None of these teachers has explicitly defined what is involved in comprehension, but their teaching strategies and activities do give clues about their knowledge and beliefs. Decide for yourself what their behaviors imply. You will be invited to reexamine these snapshots at the end of this chapter, or you may choose to look ahead now to Snapshots Revisited on page 21.

Why Comprehension First?

As in the fable of the blind men who attempted to comprehend an elephant by each examining only one body part, each of Teachers A–D seems to use pieces of the whole of effective comprehension instruction. None explicitly states what comprehension is, but it is apparent that these teachers all operate on the basis of some unstated definition. Moreover, while Teachers A–D all use common comprehension practices, they all also deviate from instructional principles agreed upon by literacy experts. For example, the practices of merely calling attention to comprehension skills (e.g., “Each paragraph has a main idea”) and of assigning reading followed by testing information recall came into question over 30 years ago (Durkin, 1978–79). Nonetheless, many teachers continue to rely on questioning for recall, with only about 6 percent asking higher-level questions that require students to connect textual information to their lives and feelings (Taylor et al., 1999).

Concerns about traditional methods of learning come from psychologists, such as scholar Ellen Langer. Langer (1997) argues that students are taught to engage in “mindless behavior” when traditional methods focus on overlearning a task, with the implication that there is only one way to do it, regardless of the conditions. Quality comprehension instruction aims to develop “mindful” learners by teaching them to use strategies flexibly, from the beginning. However, even “accomplished” teachers continue to use a paucity of effective comprehension practices; fewer than 1 percent of teachers provide quality instruction for comprehension skills and strategies (Taylor et al., 1999). Pressley (2001) concludes that “there is no evidence of much comprehension strategies instruction occurring extensively now and certainly no evidence of children being taught such strategies to the point that they use them in a self-regulated fashion, which is the goal of such instruction” (not paginated).

When it comes to learning anything, time on task matters, but time devoted to comprehension instruction remains a fraction of the literacy instructional budget. Since comprehension is widely acknowledged to be the essence of reading, we need to reorder our instructional agendas and reallocate time in order to put comprehension first. There is some movement in that direction (Block, Paris, & Whiteley, 2008; Brown, 2008). In one study, time spent on comprehension instruction was found to have increased to 25 percent from the less than 1 percent Durkin observed in 1978 (Block, 2004). But what is important isn’t just how much time is spent on comprehension, but how the time is spent. This book explores how comprehension instructional time can be spent to achieve the best results.

Educational research, such as that of Dolores Durkin, continues to inform comprehension instruction, but there is a change force operating today that is even more powerful than this research. The worldwide communication revolution is now goin...