middle school...comprehension and first days

If it’s a memory thing, summarizing after short bits can really help; lots of kids need to *learn* to actively read and figure out what’s important and why.
I’ve got a bunch of links and exercises about reading comprehension on my site. I learned to teach it at a college-prep school for kids with LD; I also thought “answer these comprehension questions” was a pretty lame effort at teaching somebody reading comprehension.
For the links there’s a link on the “what’s new” list; there’s a whole section of stuff in the”reading comprehension” section of the site.

www.resourceroom.net

Read the books Mosaic of Thought and Strategies That Work. these two books will teach you how to teach comprehension. They will show you how to teach children to be deep thinkers and how to discuss and enjoy reading. The strategies they discuss are:
schema - connections (text-text, text-self, and text - world, background knowledge, author schema etc
determining importance- fiction and nonfiction
visualizing
inference
questioning
synthesis
Nan

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Lots of great books for first day of school. What age students?

Main problem with comprehension is lack of decoding skills and bad reading habits, ” when you see a word you don’t know, skip it read to the end of the sentence, go back and guess” They have been taught this and will still do it even when taught how to decode. If they can decode, may be a lack of visualization of print, or just word reading. Make sure before you do anything, what the problem is.

Thanks for keeping on the ball with this, Shay!

Well, there are two kinds of questions following the story. One is dry, dull, prove to me you read this because I don’t trust you, and is an absolute killer.

The other kind asks you to think about things, make connections, and relate your own feelings to the story. This kind requires writing one paragraph and developing an idea, rather than answering numbers one through twenty in less than a minute each.
At first it is very difficult to take students who have been trained in hurried regurgitation and change their attitudes to actually thinking, but it is what is worth doing.
You might try modelling just one or two questions, writing a paragraph from student suggestions on the board, over a whole class period or more. Most kids do have good ideas about what they have read (if, as Shay quite rightly points out, they actually CAN read! And this is vitally important as step zero. ) and like to express their ideas once they realize that they won’t be shut down in a rush to “cover the material”.
After you’ve modelled the idea once or twice, then you can ask the students to try their own paragraphs. At first you may not get much, but with perseverance it is possible.(Shay’s note to be taken into account again.)

Crash is a great book for middle schoolers especially if you want to dialogue with the class for comprehension. Another favorite is Stargirl which is about a girl who makes friends with everyone even though she is an outcast, it is a good one to teach feelings and not passing judgements.

Now I’m not even sure about where it belongs. I must be losing it. Just another inept public school teacher… :-)

(you might laugh too hard — have a glass of water handy! — and it’s *very* seventh grade, you’ll want to read ahead.

“Loser” and was unimpressed for the first time ever with a Spinelli book. I have used “Maniac McGee”, “Crash”, and “Wringer” bunches with middle school kids—5th, too. Loved them as did the students.

The message in “Loser” is good but I felt the story dragged. I felt like I was reading something “mass produced” for the education “industry.” (And what an industry it is, too!) I’m hoping that I was just “not in the mood” for this type of story (about a boy who doesn’t know everyone thinks he’s a loser.)

My ideas would be as follows…
#1 read all you can on brain research and function. When you understand “how the brain learns” your teaching will change forever. If you would like a list of resources, I would be happy to send this to you. I would send now, but my list is at school.
#2. Chunks
Teach the kids to read small chunks of info. and paraphrase. This is very difficult and they will need guidance and modeling until they are able to generalize to an independent level.
#3. Visualization
The brain remembers what it sees easier then what it hears. I have the students section their paper off in 2”x2” squares. They are to draw a picture of each paragraph. We had amazing results with this. Even though I had no idea what their picture represented they were able to retell the information much better than before. The pictures are to be simple. I had one student that got a little too detailed with the pictures so we did the next idea and it worked well also.
#4 key concepts
draw a line down the cent of the paper. put the subheading on the left. The student then reads the passage and is to write only words or phrases (may want to limit to 10) on the left. Using this information they then verbalize what they read. This gets them away from copying word for word and info. is then internalized.
#5 use many pathways
The more pathways we use in learning info. the higher chance of remembering that info. according to brain research. Have them read orally, Tell them to talk outloud. Follow the passage with their finger. If you have instucted them on “how the brain learns” they will understand “WHY” doing these things actually helps. It will really empower them.
Just a few ideas for you. Hope it helps. I love teaching middle school because they are so receptive to “LEARNING how to learn” Best of luck.

I’ve felt that way about some of SPinelli’s stuff — even Stargirl occasionally, and definitely with Wringer — that he was writing through the filters of his audience instead of letting the characters really take on their own characters.