Can you teach a kid to understand better?

    Recently for one of my graduate courses, I worked one on one with a third grade student.  I had the student read aloud to me.  After she finished the reading, I had her give a retelling of what she said.  She was to tell me about the characters, setting, and plot.  During her retelling, she missed many important aspects of the story.  I had to prompt her with questions to aid in her retelling of the plot.  She could, however, remember certain details about the setting or characters that would not have thought to include.  When she was finished with her retelling, I was knew what she needed help with, but I was unsure of what to do.  How can you teach a student to comprehend better? How can you show them what is important in the story and how to look for it? 
    In chapter eight of Catching Readers Before They Fall by Pat Johnson and Katie Keier, my concern is addressed.  Chapter eight focuses on strategies to help students improve their comprehension.  The heart of the strategies lies within questions and visualizing.  Students are taught to question before they read and while they are reading.  Asking questions before they read helps the students preview the text.  They can get a sense of what the story may be about and what to look for as they read.  As they read, questions will appear as a response to what they are reading.  Asking questions while they read can help  students predict what might happen next in the story.  When students visualize, they use prior knowledge and previous experiences to create a mental picture of the story and to help them infer things about the story.  Visualizing helps students make meaning about what they are reading.
    Some students may ask questions and visualize without being prompted to.  However, some students may need instruction with these two strategies.  Johnson and Keier offer strategies to help teachers teach these strategies.  The teacher plays an important role in the teaching of these strategies.  A productive method to teach questioning and visualizing is for the teacher to demonstrate both strategies as he or she reads.  After the teacher demonstrates, the teacher and students can work together and use the strategies as they read.  After the teacher models and the shared demonstration, the students can work in small groups as guided practice in these strategies.  Once the students are comfortable using these two strategies, they can work independently.
    As I was surfing the web in search of more strategies to help improve students' understanding, I came across this image.

     This picture includes the two strategies of questioning and visualizing from Catching Readers, as well as the addition of some other helpful strategies.  The strategies are explained in kid-friendly language.  I think this would make an excellent poster to hang in a classroom for students to use as a reference.  The poster is called The Inner Conversation.  What a great way to explain to kids that these strategies are inner ways of connecting an engaging with the text.
    

The Rights of the Reader

    Any parent or teacher can go to a local or big chain bookstore, find the children's section, and find the leveled reading books. It is as simple as that.  Leveled books are everywhere and they make finding a book for your developing reader a piece of cake. The teacher provides the parent with the right level that their child is at and the parent merely has to go to the bookstore and pick some books at that level. The parent and teacher are providing the child with books at "the right level of difficulty," and the child is reading. It appears to be a win-win for all!  Unfortunately, there is no one clear way to help your child learn to read and some ideas are not so good after all.
    In their article, Let's Start Leveling about Leveling, Kath Glasswell and Michael Ford discuss the idea that "leveling takes a complex idea and makes it too simple." The idea behind leveled books is a noble one.  They help parents and teachers alike find books at the right level of difficulty for the student.  However, as most of us have seen or experience, sometimes bad things happen to good ideas. Leveled books are not the one way to assess a student's reading achievement.  These books leave out many factors that help to determine the student's reading level.  
    Leveled books do not focus on the skills a particular student may need to become a proficient reader.  Many children are diagnosed at being at the same level, so they are put in groups to work. However, just because the students are at the same level, does not mean that they have the same reading needs.  Although leveled books have the purpose of helping students improve their reading, they can sometimes hinder the student's progress.  If a teacher or parent is adament about a student only reading at a certain level, then that student's reading may suffer.  Often, high leveled books provide more challenge and more opportunities for the reader to develop.  If a reader is forced to stay in one level until they master it, they may become bored with reading and no longer grow as a reader. This is one thing that a teacher or parent never wants.

    Glasswell and Ford introduce the idea that readers have rights. As readers, students have the right to choose books that are stimulating and interesting. They have the right to engage in enriching activities that develop their thinking abilities.  Students have the right to choose a book from a different level if it interests them.  Parents and teachers need only offer more support to the student.  Leveled books have the ability to take away these rights from the student.  Parents and teachers need to keep these rights in mind when they are helping their students select books to read.  While, I believe these rights are all true, I found a picture that provides some additional rights that are equally as important. 

Activate Your Schema!

     When you grab a book, you grab the book with a purpose.  No one grabs a book to simply read the words written inside the pages.  If you wanted to simply read words you would grab a dictionary instead.  You grab a book because you want to absorb yourself in the story.  In order to get lost in the story, you have to have an understanding of the story and a connection to the text.  The story has to mean something to you.  Teachers cannot simply teach children to read the words.  They have to teach children how to connect with their texts.  One way to do this is to activate their schemas! 
     In Chapter 5 of Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades, Debbie Miller discusses the idea of schema.  She describes schema as "all of the stuff that's already inside your head, like places you've been, things you've done, books you've read- all the experiences you've had that make who you are and what you know and believe to be true."  Students can use their schema, or background knowledge, while they are reading to make connections with the text and search for meaning.  
    Children can use their schema to make different connections with the text. One connection is text-to-self.  Text-to-self connections are connections between the story and the child's life. As the child reads or is read to, the text reminds them of previous experiences. Another type of connection is text-to-text.  Text-to-text connections are connections between the text the child is reading or hearing and a previous text or texts that the child has read or heard. A third type of connection is text-to-world.  Text-to-world connections are connections that the child makes between the text they are reading or hearing and real-world events and issues.
     Now you might be thinking "Duh, I make these connections all of the time!"  But for a child, making connections is not always so easy.  Reading to begin with is hard work.  If you add comprehension and meaning-making to it, they have a full plate.  Using their schema to make connections is a good habit that children should work on developing in elementary school.  The teacher can model how to use their schema during read alouds by demonstrating the different ways to connect to the text.  When children make connections to the text, not only are they deepening their comprehension of the text, but they are also beginning to find the meaning of the text.  Using their schema is just another tool children can have in their reading arsenal. 
    

You Try Sounding Out "The"

    As a graduate student in elementary education, my courses often focus on teaching students how to read or working with struggling readers. Studying how children learn to read and how some students struggle with reading forces me to reflect on my own experiences with learning how to read. If you ask an adult if they remember how they learned to read or even who taught them, they often cannot recall. Many people think that one day it just clicked for them. Often that is the case for individuals who did have difficulty when it came to reading. Unfortunately this was not the case for me. As a child I had a speech impediment. If you cannot pronounce the words, you cannot read them.  Many times I would hear my parents or teachers tell me to "Sound it out," when I came across an unfamiliar word. Often this three letter phrase would leave me in tears. Why didn't someone offer some more useful advice? Why couldn't I just sound out those tricky words?
    The simple answer is that they didn't know any better. We are taught to focus on the phonics and that children need time to try these new words. Well sometimes words just cannot be sounded out. The English language is a vast and complicated language. Many words are irregular and do not follow typical phonetic patterns. How do we expect children to sound out these words if they have never had experience with them previously? 
   Now, I have some concerns about how I will be as a teacher. One new concern is how can I help struggling students improve their reading without say that horrible three word phrase, "Sound it out." In Catching Readers Before They Fall, authors Pat Johnson and Katie Keier offer a solution to sounding it out. The authors provide three new methods to help students read unfamiliar words. Instead of having students sound out the unfamiliar word, students should instead meaning, structure, and visual information to read the word. 

Meaning- knowledge that includes any background knowledge, information gained from the pictures in the text, or ideas gathered from the context of the sentence or story. Readers think about what makes sense.

Structure- knowledge that comes from being familiar with spoken language, English structure, and how it sounds. Readers choose words that sound right.

Visual-  any letter/sound correspondence knowledge a person has. Readers check to see if the word looks right.

   Students need to find a balance between these three pieces of information to determine the unfamiliar word.  For meaning, parents and teachers can help the student by providing them with a good foundation of the story plot. Students can use this information to help decide if the word makes sense with the story line. For structure, students can substitute words that follow the same English structure and have similar meanings. For visual, students can see if the word looks right by checking to see if the words share the same beginning letter and sound. 
    After reading about meaning, structure, and visual interpretation, I had the unique chance to give them a try. I had a family lunch today. My five year old nice Lillian brought along a Fly Guy book to entertain herself. I sat next to her and listened to her read. Not only did Lillian substitute words accurately to match  meaning, structure, and visual, but she went a step further. Lillian used the pictures in the book to help figure out the unknown word. When she came to the word bored, she quickly said it. I praised her for her ability to read such a difficult word. Then she told me, "I don't know that word, I just looked at the picture and thought he looks really bored." Needless to say I was impressed.
    So the lesson to learn today is to know when to use the phrase "Sound it out." Sometimes students can try and sound out the word and they should practice those phonics skills. But sounding it out is not the only way. Children can use what they have to read those difficult new words. What can parents and teachers do to help children with meaning, structure, and visual? Ask them questions! Prompt them with suggestions! Give guidance! Saying "sound it out," is a lot easier, but in the end, the child will benefit most from using meaning, structure, and visual to determine the word.