After reading the
article of Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers, I think I really didn’t
give enough credit for the kindergarteners that I have been observing. When I
am preparing my lesson, I do feel as the article has mentioned that it is
difficult to know where to begin when teaching for comprehension. When choosing
the materials for teaching, it is really hard to know which might be too hard
for the students to understand, especially for kindergarteners, it is really
hard to plan activities of comprehension for them because they just started to
learn alphabets and spelling. Based on my observation of the class, another
thing that related the most to the article is that they have been working on
several literary tasks that the teacher has created for them to do in their
literature centers. As the article has mentioned, it is surprising that when
young students interact with texts in any literary task, they bring the ability
to construct meaning. My mentor teacher always does read aloud to the kids while
they are sitting on the mat. After read aloud, each of them will be asked to
tell their own stories with a partner, then they will go to the centers with
assigned groups to draw and write down what has happened in their stories as
much as they can. It is a great way to engage students to comprehend on the
content of the stories and get them to practice their writing. However, after
reading the article, I think it would be better to get the kids more involved
like in Mrs. Hope’s class. I think my mentor teacher can also give her student
more credit to let them get more involved while the read aloud section. Actually
all of the strategies that has mentioned in the article, such as using gestures
or poses to making connections to the text, and visualization the illustrations
in the book, and questioning can help the students to get more engaged in
learning. I understand teachers might be worried about they will lose their
students’ attention if they give students the chance to interact with the
teacher and to get active in the read aloud section, but I also can imagine if
my mentor teacher uses these strategies, the students could be more involved in
a good way and I think teachers can figure out a way to let the students be
under controlled. Again, I think teachers should give their students more
credit, and I think I would try some of her strategies to my future students too.
