don't forget about kindergarten!

The article that I found most interesting this week was the one by Gregory & Cahill, Kindergarteners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers. We are all told that learning to read needs to start very early in life, but I think many people forget about comprehension. When we are teaching young children to read, we need to not only be focused on teaching the letter sounds and sentence structure. We also need to make sure that we are teaching young children comprehension skills. Mrs. Hope does a great job of this in her classroom. She challenges her students in a fun way and really gets their minds thinking. She has a system that involves the children either: raising their hand in the shape of a "C" if they make a connection to the story, a "V" if they have a mind movie to share, and a wiggling finger if they have a question to ask. I think that it is very important that the children are able to ask questions at any point during the story. Mrs. Hope has this statement written on top of the board that they use to write their questions, “Expert readers ask questions before, during, and after they read” (page 516). This is so important for teachers to understand. I think that many teachers forget to let their students ask questions at any point during a lesson or reading. By having the children ask questions and making connections with the story, you are allowing them to use the schemas that they already have in order to form new ones or to add to existing ones. They are able to get into the story and look at it more in depth than just seeing the words on the page and reciting them. All of the ways Mrs. Hope promotes comprehension are great, but can you think of any more ways to help promote comprehension in children?

Here are some good ideas that I found...