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A message from Mrs Mourinho - Comprehension
The teachers at St Paul’s have been very busy teaching reading comprehension strategies throughout the year. All teachers in grades 2 - 6 participate in ongoing professional learning to teach the program ‘Teaching Reading Strategies 2 - 6’. The students are explicilty taught how to use the 7 comprehension strategies; Visualising, Questioning, Making Connections, Predicting, Summarising, Inferring and Monitoring. Throughout semester 2, in particular, the students have had opportunities to apply their knowledge and skill in using the comprehension strategies when working in groups to discuss texts. This group work is known as a ‘comprehension routine’ and by the time students are in year 6 they participate in three routines independently. These include Reciprocal Teaching, Literature Circles and Questioning the Author. Comprehension routines are a set of practices that students can use with multiple texts in various settings. They are designed to help equip students with strategies they can use when reading other texts on their own.
Reciprocal teaching provides opportunities for students to participate in a group effort to bring meaning to a text. It involves four comprehension strategies: predicting, questioning, monitoring and summarising, and takes the form of reciprocal interactions between group members relating to segments of a text. Reciprocal teaching benefits all students as it encourages students to read, effectively use four comprehension strategies and understand more challenging texts.
Literature Circles assist students to converse about texts in meaningful, personal and thoughtful ways. Literature circles promote four types of talk:
- Talk about the text
- Talk about the reading process
- Talk about connections
- Talk about group process and social issues
After reading, students in small groups share understandings from the text and make personal connections in a form of a conversation. This helps broaden their interpretations and gain new perspectives from other group members.
Questioning the Author supports the view of reading as a thinking process, as students learn that building understanding involves determining what information means, not simply extracting it from the text. Using questioning the Author assists readers to determine what information is missing, implied and required in order to transact with the text meaningfully. Readers are encouraged to construct meaning by interacting with the text from their perspective and the authors.
It’s fair to say that our student’s enjoy participating in comprehension routines and are continuing to foster a love of reading.
Angela Mourinho
Literacy Coach
