Comprehension

As children read, their brains make sense of the text. By doing so, they make connections, formulate questions, visualize what they read, draw inferences, critique the text, and much more. The questions formulated throughout Chapter 8 in Catching Readers were: Is strategy instruction necessary for every student in the classroom? and Does the child need to be able to name which strategy helped him/her to comprehend what they read? The answer is that while comprehension strategy instruction has a place in schools, it is not necessary for every child to have lengthy teaching over comprehension strategies. A child also does not have to be able to name a strategy that they used to comprehend text. Throughout the text, they talked about how asking a child to explain what he/she is thinking actually slows down their thinking process. A student that would benefit from comprehension strategy teaching is the struggling reader who cannot engage with the text, or is just memorizing lines in case asked what the text said. If a struggling reader is taught the kinds of strategies that successful readers use, they could add their own spin to those strategies and find a way to make meaningful connections to text. The successful readers should also be provided with ways to be further challenged so that they do not become bored with the readings that are too easy for them, and assignments that provoke creativity. Children are already doing a lot of the comprehension strategies in their head without even realizing that they are doing it. If they can make meaningful connections to texts, we do not need them to explain every little line of thought. When teaching comprehension, children should be taught to have their own thoughts about reading. It is their job to create meaning, formulate questions, visualize, and make inferences. Comprehension is all about thinking, and every student is capable of that.