Summarizing or Synthesizing?

Chapter 11 in Stephanie Harvey's Strategies That Work was about summarizing and synthesizing. This chapter was very interesting for me to read. While we summarize what we read frequently, synthesizing information is never a strategy that I have taught my kindergarten students. It was really interesting for me to read about synthesizing. According to Harvey, the difference between synthesizing and summarizing is using our background knowledge. To synthesize, we must rely on what we already know to adjust or change the way we are thinking. We merge all of our thoughts together to create deeper meaning of a text. Summarizing is just using our own words to retell a story.

To be completely honest, I have never thought of myself as a good reader. Growing up I was never confident of my ability to read. I did not enjoy reading and I was a classic "word caller." Reading the chapter alone gave me a much better understanding. As I become a great reading teacher, I am realizing that I was always a good reader. I do all of these things, I had just never heard them called these things before. We did a lot of "round robin" reading and not much else.  Still, I will always be a visual learner. I needed to see teachers modeling how to teach synthesizing for their students. 

I could not get this video to upload, but here is the link: It is excellent to watch someone else model teaching. It is definitely one of the greatest tools for me.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=synthesizing+reading&sm=3

This week I plan to talk to my students about how to synthesize as we read. While it may be difficult for them to articulate it, I can model this after watching the video.

What's Important in a Text?

Important to Whom?

Chapter 5 in Strategies That Work this week was interesting to read. One topic I found of great interest was how students think when they are reading. We often ask our students to pick out the most important parts of something they read. However, I think we overlook that everyone may find different parts of a text are more important to them, personally. For instance, the author gave an example about a student reading a text about antismoking programs. However, when the student came across a shocking statistic, the studnet related that statistic to people in their family that smoke. To them, that information became of extreme importance. 

I have to admit that not only am I a victim to considering what is most important to me in a text, I also teach my students that reading is thinking and nothing matters more than what they are thinking and feeling as they read. All of these things help them connect with a text and undestand it on a deeper level. The more connections they make with a text, the more likely they are to remember and even read something new. However, I do not always remember to remind them to pick out what the author states as the most important information from the story. It does not always have to be just one main idea, but is usually more than one; especially with non-fiction texts.  To prepare students for test-taking, they need to be reminded to think of what the author would consider the most important information. We can find this out by examing what they author writes and what kind of details they include on what topics.  A way to do this is by writing many different details down, then concluding the topic that these details are about. This can also be done by using different kinds of anchor charts. I have attached a picture for a way to do this with my younger students.

Book Clubs

This week I read Chapter 5, "Building a Better Book Club" in Comprehension Going Forward.  After reading the first few pages, I was very excited about the way the author portrayed the book club. She explained how excited the students were and how the book club was run. She was not working on fluency, but comprehension and thinking, so she reads as the students follow along. This way, she can stop at more specific points in the story and talk with the students about what they are thinking. This confirms a strategy that I already use with my students. When I am focusing on comprehension, I sometimes do this too. My students actually do follow along, and this allows me a chance to model my fluency and expression. This is so much better than a "round robin" read. This book club is her guided reading group. The rest of the class has something else to do while the teacher meets with different club groups.

Book clubs are fun and exciting for students. It allows the students to enjoy reading and get excited by talking with their groups about what they are feeling and thinking. The author made note about what the students are thinking through this. Are they understanding how these book clubs are helping them become better readers. So, asking your students questions to probe their own thinking is extremely important. "How has your thinking changed? Why? And how has it deepend?" This is a key to teaching comprehension and it must be modeled.

Anchor Charts and other strategies must be modeled for students to see how a good reader thinkss through their reading. As we read, we think. I model this for my students each day when I read aloud. If when I read something I begin to feel sad, I stop and tell my students why I am feeling this way. However, students need opportunities to do this themselves. They need to have a chance to apply what I model. For me, I do not provide enough of these opportunities for my students. I do so much decoding and fluency in kindergarten, that it makes me wish I focused more on comprehension. While most of my student's books do not have enough of a plot to trigger emotions or provoke much thought, I have an idea for moving forward. As I read aloud to my students, they could create their own anchor charts and write down about how they are feeling about a story. They can also write questions they are wondering.

After reading this chapter, I am remembering my student teaching experience. At the end of first grade students can actively participate in a book club. I did this, along with literature circles, with those first graders. It was not only enjoyable for them, but also was for me. We had so much fun reading and digging deeper into the texts we read. Moving forward, I would like to do more of this with my class. My professional development proposal for change this semtester is also going to help me do this. My students are going to have chnaces to respond and talk more in the classroom. Now I know to be sure to ask them how their thinking has changed, a question I do not ask nearly enough. I cant wait to see what happens! :)

Questioning

Curiosity inspires learning, and questioning while reading takes us deeper into the text. As a kindergarten teacher I enjoyed reading about questioning strategies in the text this week. Immediately, I recognized that I frequently incorporate sharing my questions with my students. For me, this is just so natural. As I read, I have lots of questions. Some even force me to stop reading until I answer the question. Others, I write down and answer after reading. However, teaching this to my kindergarten students is not always so easy. They struggle with asking themselves questions as they read. I think that so often they just do what is asked of them, asking them to start questioning what an author is telling them can be difficult. One way I have begun to see success with questioning is with difficult vocabulary. I have asked them to raise their hands if they hear an unfamiliar word while I am reading. Naturally, I can usually stop reading when I know they will not understand a word. Slowly, I will begin incorporating other strategies to help them question as they read.

One strategy that I believe will work in my classroom is the "I learned, I wonder" strategy. As my students read or conduct research, I will record their ideas in a chart/list format. Afterwards, we can revisit and talk about each of our "I wonder" items. We can either research or talk with each other about the answers. I was inspired to try this with my students. This week we read a story about the sounds that animals make. Here is a copy of what we did. While it was quite simple, it really allowed my students to dig deeper into the text and ask their own questions.

Another stratgey I enjoyed reading about was that some questions were answered and others were not. Teaching students to categorize their questions and determine when further research is needed. A difficult concept for young students, but even with our chart above, we realized that we needed to find the answers to our questions in other places.

In relation to a proposal for change I have been working on I enjoyed the strategy for gathering information through questioning. In this strategy students write and create lists of information they have learned while questioning before, during, and after reading. For my students, I plan to have them each write down both questions and information they have gained by using sticky notes inside of their book. I intend to do this during my guided reading groups, so my students each have their own book and can proceed at their own pace.

This week I also did some more research on questioning during reading and came across this video that I wanted to share.

Activating Background Knowledge

Activating background knowledge was always something that I spent a lot of time and energy on. For the past 3 years I taught at a title 1 school where students came to school with little to no background knowledge at all. To aid in comprehension, I always spent time talking with them, showing videos and pictures, acting things out, and basically doing anything I can to "create" these experiences that were non-existent. This year? Wow! I am shocked. Being that I am not at a title 1 school anymore, my students come in with a wealth of background knowledge. I am finding it much easier for my students to relate to the books we are reading.
Each week we focus on one comprehension strategy during our shared reading. This week we focused on predicting and connecting the text to what we know. We spent time discussing what we know, thus activating background knowledge. It was so different and "eye-opening" for me. Our first story this week was titled "Pizza at Sallys."  In this story, very simple things happened. Sally had a pizza shop, she used different ingredients to make her pizza recipe, she then sold her pizza to hungry customers. When we started to discuss the pictures my students were wiggling all over with their hands high in the air. They were so excited to share the things they cook with their parents, different recipes they like to make, their favorite restaurants, and what they know about people who worked in restaurants. This was very different for me than a room full of students who didnt speak much English and were reluctant to raise their hands.
Being that I know how important it is for students to share their experiences and connect with the text, I decided to try something different. In order for everyone to get to share I tried doing a mix, pair, share with them. The students had to mix up in the room, pair up with a partner, and share what they knew. We did this kagan strategy over and over allowing students to focus on different questions. They shared about their favorite restaurants and what they serve, our favorite pizza toppings, our least favorite toppings, and things we cook at home with our families. It was a great success! The kids were so excited to read the story to see how it compared to what they knew. When we finished we had a conversation about how the story was similar to our own experiences.
I found that when I spend a little extra time activating their background knowledge and allow them all to share what they know, they were more engaged in the story. My students remembered our experience and our story. In fact, all week they have been asking me to talk about what we know by doing a mix, pair, share! This was a great way to allow all my students to get talking about what they know in a meaningful way. We have been doing this all week. Next week, I am thinking of having them write down their experiences to share with a friend. I can't wait!

Choosing Books Makes a Difference

My entire childhood I did not enjoy reading. I didn’t like to read anything! It wasn’t until I was about 18 that I picked up a book and just fell in love with it. It sounds silly, but this book was “Bergdorf Blondes.” It was something that I could relate to and that was the winning ticket! Choosing a book is so important. Most of the time students are given a text book to read and are required to read what their teacher assigns. This model of teaching is flawed. Students should be exposed to a variety of different texts and different genres. We want our students to grow up with a love for reading that will carry over into their adult life. In chapter 5 in “Strategies That Work” the author confirms by viewpoint and explains that any strategy can be taught with any book.  In my classroom, I keep a wide variety of books in my classroom library. However, many books are chosen for us. I strive to make sure that my students enjoy reading and know that it is not just a chore. We pick out books at the media center and I model my love for reading. This year I have started keeping some of my favorite books on my desk to read, and also keeping track of my favorite books with a reading log. I have seen the effect this has on my students. They are loving it! Every day they come in and want to share with me what books they read at home. I love that they get more choices.

According to Harvey (2007), “We often ask teachers to write down the different types of reading they’ve done over the past few weeks. Usually, they mention newspapers, magazines, letters, manuals, cookbooks, brochures, reports, letters, and so on. Many also have a novel or a long non-fiction trade book going, but 80 percent of the reading they report is of the short-text variety.” However, she also stated that in schools students mostly read 80 percent of long-text variety. I love the idea of exposing students to more short-texts. When choosing a short-text, we need to consider the purpose, genre, audience, topic, quality, and text structure.  We also live in a technological age where students are able to access and find many short texts. At the intermediate or high school level, students can definitely find magazine articles online, newspaper articles, magazine clippings, or other short texts for their own reading pleasure. Giving students a topic and allowing them to expand of that and choose their own reading selections will motivate them, while also increasing their comprehension. I can imagine something like this could be done along with a required reading. Students can choose shorter texts that correlate with an assigned topic. I believe giving students guidelines, without setting limits, could make assignments take off! They sky could be the limit!

While I find myself often trying to relate to older students, I love kindergarten! So I wonder how this would look in kindergarten, as mostly everything we read is pretty short. However, I currently implement many different genres of texts. This week, we have been reading collections of poetry and discussing what makes a poem different from a story. My students are already starting to understand that some texts are shorter than others. We also just got in some National Geographic magazines that I plan on introducing to my students.

But Where Does Comprehension Fit in?

I often find myself struggling teaching comprehension with my guided reading books, mainly because my books are so simple and repetitive. Kindergarten books are generally focused on the decoding aspect of reading rather than higher thought. So how do we get all these awesome comprehension strategies in? We model them. When we read aloud with our students we can model all of the great strategies we learn. I can think aloud about what I am thinking or feeling as I am reading, while also asking probing questions to prompt my students thinking. Even if my students are not answering the questions I am asking, they are listening to them and thinking about it. Modeling comprehension strategies are a key when reading with emergent readers. This week in my classroom I intend to model that thinking not only during my shared reading, but in my guided reading groups as my kids work on a decoding skill.

Writing in a Digital Age