Comprehension Connections

Delving into a colleague's bookshelf before break, I came across TannyMcGregor's book, Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Reading. This book captured my interest since I am currently working with a group that has poor comprehension skills. Her premise is two fold: one, reading strategies, like other skills should be taught from a concrete model to an abstract one and two, reading is thinking. She subtitles her book bridges to show how to teach an abstract concept by starting with an object.

The thinking strategies she identifies are:

• use schema
• inferring
• questioning
• determining importance
• visualizing 
• synthesizing.

A chapter is dedicated to each concept. Many of her launching lessons, ideas that are used to introduce a thinking strategy, could be used for more than one strategy with minor tweaking. I would  not try to teach two new ones at once. After the first has been taught, however, new ones should be introduced in tandem with reinforcing the old ones. While the target audience is the elementary market, with minor adjustments, I can see these easily being adapted to middle and high school students.

 One key idea that she suggests is teaching that Text + Thinking = Real Reading. Too many of our students think that reading is merely identifying a group of words and perhaps getting a surface level understanding. What we want them to realize is that reading is more than that. It requires, utilizing background knowledge, making inferences, questioning the author, identifying importance  and more.

I really liked one of her suggestions for showcasing schema. Make a T-chart. Give the students 30s to list everything they know about a topic they know about- a local amusement park, common video game or pop star, or a common experience- and record on the left side of the chart. They should be able to generate quite a list in the short period of time. Then give them something few, if any are familiar with- Tivoli (an amusement park in Copenhagen), Centipede game, or Mansa Musa (an African leader who single-handedly reduced the worldwide value of gold on his pilgrimage to Mecca). Record their thoughts on the right. This chart represents their schema. It will be easier to read about and learn about things for which they know about than those they do not.

Another important item the author mentions is developing listening comprehension. In special education we often use tests may be read as a test modification and audiobooks as a compensatory reading strategy. These are important activities that help our kids move forward, but listening comprehension is different from reading comprehension and needs to be taught. We want students to follow along while they are being read to, perhaps annotating important parts with symbols we have taught. We also need to develop their listening skills. She suggests using songs and poetry as ways to develop these skills. You can, and should, teach all the thinking skills with listening as well.

My biggest area of concern is around visualizing. I do not visualize anything. I think in words and charts. About 10% of the population struggles with this skill as well. Our strong visualizers can be reminded to visual while the read and the impact will be dramatic. (Many people on the autism spectrum are great visualizers. Some, like Temple Grandin, are such extreme visualizers they think only in pictures and need pictures to help them think.) Our mediocre ones need practice making a movie in their head of the story or draw a picture or create a storyboard of the story to show what is important. Weak to non-visualizers need support to understand that many people do this routinely and need alternate strategies. I paint pictures with words. Every thought I have is laden with lots of words. We can teach them constructs like graphic organizers that can be used to help with maintaining order and flow.

I like how she talks about using nesting dolls to begin to discuss synthesizing. There is a surface level or biggest doll, but nested within are many ideas that require deeper thought, and sometimes exploration. Synthesizing means taking all those levels and developing meaning or a complete set of dolls. The analogy works well for showing multiple meanings of text.

This book is not a set of scripts, but a series of jumping points to begin discussions. A list of ways to start teaching about thinking from concrete examples and expand to the abstract. A quick and easy read with major implications.