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Some typical connections are text to text, text to self, text to world, text to movie, text to current events.

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Post words or phrases that may be puzzling, repeated, or challenge your comprehension. Post the page number. Look it up and post the definition. Explain why you picked this word.

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What it Means to Comprehend

p. 40 "Meaning, as Rosenblatt explained, did not reside in the text; it was not, as I inaccurately understood, something to grasp. Meaning was created in the interaction-what she called the transaction-between the words in the text and the thoughts in the mind of the reader. Meaning is created."

p. 41 "...comprehension is so much more than a thing to test and score. Comprehension of a text is an experience that, if we read well enough, allows us to change ourselves."

Struggling Through a Text

p. 49 "Teaching kids how to struggle through a text successfully helps create independent readers."

Making an Inference

p. 63 "We hear the words we read. But we do not hear punctuation marks; we respond to them."

p. 64 "Punctuation, as silent as it is, proclaims loudly how we are to read the text."

Accessing Prior Knowledge

p. 81 "Students who need the most help often don't seek help. That's counterintuitive. If you know a lot, then you are willing to seek more help when confused; if you don't, then that confusion can lead to silence."

p. 100 "When students default to "I don't know," we need to step in and help them discover they do know something. You are building their confidence and that's important. You can't improve competence without confidence."

Clarifying Meaning

p. 111 "The point is not to have a lot of tools in the toolbox; the point is for students to know how to use the tools they have."

p. 114 "The first read of a story, a chapter, a poem, a novel, a webpage, a letter, an editorial cartoon-any sort of text-yields the first draft of understanding."

Extending Understanding

p. 161 "Finally, though, the reading that is most valuable to us and to our students will be the reading that in some way touches us-touches them-on an affective level. This reading offers us something we want to consider for a longer time, lessons we want to hold on to, ideas that help us see ourselves and others in a new light. That won't happen with every text, but we should encourage this reading when we can."

p. 162 "...ultimately we read so that we are connected to ourselves, to others, to the past, and perhaps the future. When we let those squiggly marks on a page move from the book to our head to our heart, we stand for a moment alongside others and journey into the lives of others. This is the reading that helps make us more than we ever thought we could be. This is the journey we should want for all students."

*The passages I picked helped me to understand how important comprehension is and how I can help my students become independent readers.

As I listen (I am using an audiobook) I started to look into research that has been done about teaching children how to read.

One of the most prominent results of my research was the National Reading Panel Report (2000) it is a 449 page that talks about what issues are presented in children that struggle with reading. While I did not read the whole paper, I did read an excerpt of it. This article emphasizes that the panel found how necessary that for students to become good readers they must develop.

1. phonetic awareness

2. phonic skills

3. fluency and accuracy when reading

4. application of comprehension skills

This reading goes with what Beers explains about pronouns, inferences, synonyms and many other skills that are very important to enrich students vocabulary that will be help students reading skills.

The most intriguing word to me was "prosody" (p. 205).

Prosody: the rhythmic and intonational aspect of language (from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prosody)

This was not necessarily a new word to me, but I had not really considered its importance with regard to comprehension. I have coached my students to read with feeling, but I hadn't thought very deeply about WHY that matters for comprehension. Fluency and automaticity are important for comprehension, but prosody adds another dimension. I want my students to understand what they read- this goes beyond just sounding good while they read aloud :)

Pre-teaching Vocabulary:

"Direct instruction of vocabulary helps students understand one passage, but overall, this is not an efficient way to help students learn all the words they need to know to comprehend texts" (pg 183)

Scaffolds to Pre-teach vocabulary:

"research indicates that when we help students think more deeply about that word, they have a better chance of remembering it." (pg 185)

Vocabulary Tree:

"To build a vocabulary tree, choose which root word you want students to study and have them write it in the root of the tree. Under the root, students write its definition." (pg 199)

Fluency:

"Fluency does not automatically result in comprehension; a lack of fluency, however, can impede comprehension." (pg 205)

Prompting:

"Prompting means giving the student the prompt he needs to decode the word successfully on his own". (pg 218)

Spelling:

"Spell check is the answer. The problem is that this reduces the value of spelling to correctness and discounts the importance of understanding letter patterns in decoding". (pg 225)

“Instructional Discourse, Student Engagement, and Literature Achievement” by Martin Nystrand and Adam Gamoran is referenced at the beginning of chapter 18. In this article, the authors discuss the difference between “procedural engagement” and “substantive engagement.” Substantive engagement “involves a sustained personal commitment to understanding the world of a story or poem, as well as literary and other issues raised by the work itself” (p. 262). Nystrand and Gamoran go on to explain how to support substantive engagement through discussions with students. These discussions include “authentic questions, uptake, and high-level teacher evaluation” (p. 261)
Authentic questions- do not have predetermined answers
Uptake- the teacher incorporates students’ answers into further questions
High-level teacher evaluation- the teacher acknowledges and builds on what the student has said

My biggest take away from the article was that our discussions need to be more like true conversations where we listen to what our students say and follow up on their thoughts. When we can help our students see that their thoughts are important, they are more likely to be successful.

The phrase that was intriguing to me was "the million-word gap" (page 267)

Definition: "reading to children everyday from birth until the day they enter kindergarten exposes them to a million more words that children read to only once or twice a week. (Beers 269)

I found this phrase to be interesting because it proves just how important reading to children at a young age is and how it can impact them. The chapter went on to discuss how the word gap can widen if you do not continue to read and the effects is has on their achievement.

I believe one of the big themes for the beginning of part 4 is that "million word gap". As a teacher that has spent the majority of her teaching career working with early childhood, I can attest to this. There have been many professional development that I have been a part of that touch on this subject and why it is so important for parents to read with/ and to their little ones. I always try to give students a book at meet the teacher and if possible a couple more throughout the year. I also talk to parents on our conference about library resources, internet pages, or YouTube read aloud as ways to increase accessibility. I know how important reading is from an early age and how necessary it is to expose children to a variety of text. Sadly, yes in an EC classroom it is very evident who has been exposed to reading and normally has interactions with other kids and adults by the way they communicate, excluding of course students with speech issues. One can only assume if this gap is not addressed there is not much that can be done to support students as others move at a quicker pace.