How to develop comprehension linked to literature

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debbie
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How to develop comprehension linked to literature

Post by debbie »

I'm afraid I am going to be somewhat challenging - yet again - it seems to be in my very nature.

I just read the article below in SEN magazine, and the overarching thought that occurred to me was how the suggested strategies were 'overkill' and that the comprehension of the literature could be developed through high-quality discussion with the learners - as age-appropriate and appropriate to the content and genre of the literature.

Read this article 'Comprehension is Key':


https://senmagazine.co.uk/articles/arti ... ion-is-key

So, I asked this question of some colleagues:
I just read the above suggestions.

I can't help but think that this is a serious case of 'overkill' and doing a book to death – ruining it.

What happened to a lovely straightforward discussion about these things.

What views do you have about 'comprehension development' and the description above?
Last edited by debbie on Thu Mar 06, 2014 12:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

Shortly after, I received my first reply thus:
I have always loathed the murdering a book aspect of 'teaching reading'.

There was a recent thread on Mumsnet in which a couple of parents noted that their children hated the cross examination aspect of reading and it switched them off. )

I can't help feeling that 'comprehension' is a language skill and would be better developed through speaking and listening.
Now, please note that our thoughts are NOT 'anti' comprehension, they are focused on 'how best to develop comprehension of literature'.

There are many people currently (in England) who are so concerned that government promotion of Systematic Synthetic Phonics is in danger of making teachers attend to phonics teaching to the detriment of 'comprehension' or the 'love of books'.

Thus, educational consultants and others involved with literacy - but who are not really into phonics or have no specific phonics expertise - may be focusing very heavily on the 'comprehension' process of learning to read as a reaction to the emphasis on phonics in recent years.
Last edited by debbie on Thu Mar 06, 2014 12:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

In record time (as always) sleuth Susan Godsland (or www.dyslexics.org.uk) came up with this interesting link via Dan Willingham:

http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/ ... ction.html
Daniel Willingham: Collateral damage of excessive reading comprehension strategy instruction
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

In Dan's piece above, he links to his full article which is this:


http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducato ... CogSci.pdf
HOW WE LEARN
ASK THE COGNITIVE SCIENTIST

The Usefulness of
Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies
In the opening paragraphs, we read this:
The effectiveness of teaching reading comprehension strategies has been the subject of over 500 studies in the last 25 years. The simple conclusion from this work is that strategy instruction improves comprehension. Much more difficult to answer are the interesting questions that follow: How much do strategies help? How do they work? Do all students benefit? How much time should be spent on them? The answers are not yet clear, but combining what cognitive scientists know about reading with patterns of data from experiments conducted in classrooms allows us to draw some tentative conclusions.

It appears that reading strategies do not build reading skill, but rather are a bag of tricks that can indirectly improve comprehension. These tricks are easy to learn and require little practice, but students must be able to decode fluently before these strategies can be effective.
[My emphasis]
Last edited by debbie on Thu Mar 06, 2014 12:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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debbie
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Post by debbie »

These are the simple summary statements throughout the article:

Listening comprehension processes greatly aid reading comprehension, but most speaking and reading situations differ in an important way. Speakers monitor their listeners’ comprehension.
How does one get a rich understanding? By relating what you are reading to other material that you already know.
Three factors are important in reading comprehension: monitoring your comprehension, relating the sentences to one another, and relating the sentences to things you already know.
Reading strategy programs that were relatively short (around six sessions) were no more or less effective than longer programs that included as many as 50 sessions.
Teaching reading strategies is a low-cost way to give developing readers a boost, but it should be a small part of a teacher’s job. Acquiring a broad vocabulary and a rich base of background knowledge will yield more substantial and longer-term benefits.
We can summarize what we know from the last 25 years of research on reading comprehension strategies fairly concisely:

􏰁 Teaching children strategies is definitely a good idea.
􏰁 The evidence is best for strategies that have been most thoroughly studied; the evidence for the less-studied strategies is inconclusive (not negative) and, therefore, there is not evidence that one strategy is superior to another.
􏰁 Strategies are learned quickly, and continued instruction and practice does not yield further benefits.
􏰁 Strategy instruction is unlikely to help students before they are in the third or fourth grade.
Last edited by debbie on Thu Mar 06, 2014 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Debbie Hepplewhite
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Post by debbie »

But look at Dan Willingham's musings over this issue of spending effort and time on strategies for comprehension:
The wasted time obviously represents a significant opportunity cost. But has anyone ever considered that implementing these strategies make reading REALLY BORING? Everyone agrees that one of our long-term goals in reading instruction is to get kids to love reading. We hope that more kids will spend more time reading and less time playing video games, watching TV, etc.

How can you get lost in a narrative world if you think you’re supposed to be posing questions to yourself all the time? How can a child get really absorbed in a book about ants or meteorology if she thinks that reading means pausing every now and then to anticipate what will happen next, or to question the author’s purpose?
And so say some of us!
Debbie Hepplewhite
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