Structured Tutored Reflection

In chapter five, by Cris Tovani, “Why Am I Reading This” explains how educators need to establish a clear reading instructional plan. In order to accomplish understanding students need to concentrate on main ideas from the readings. Tovani explains that it is vital for teachers to model how students should hold their thinking or slow down their reading. Throughout the chapters she gives examples as question strategies, highlighting text, or summarizing key points. As this will benefit students in their reading assignment. Tovani also explains throughout the chapter that teachers should model thinking aloud. This strategy will benefit students on how to negotiate difficult text.

Reading also requires imagination. A reader’s imagination is the act of his or her creative intelligence engaging with that of the author

This learning activity has the students looking more deeply into their chosen book using a more critical mind rather than just enjoying the book for its basic story line. It has them taking note of what is happening at each stage of the book and why these events are taking place, then taking this information they have gathered and developing a written report to convey their thoughts and ideas in the book along with developing the skills necessary to produce a piece of writing that is easy to read and understand for the reader. This activity also has a lot of hidden features to the task, such as using the correct grammar, development of sentence structure and use of creative thinking to make the piece interesting to the reader.

In a previous lesson, the teacher demonstrated a “Think-Aloud” strategy with Gary Soto’s short story “Seventh Grade,” to teach students the elements of a plot. The teacher read the beginning of the story and then stopped to ask the students to identify information about the characters, the setting, and the background information that establishes the exposition of the plot. She repeated this process with the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution. The students recorded notes and observations in a graphic organizer.

Taking a journey with your mind through the stories of reading a novel is a positive enhancement to proper brain function. In reference to the study of proper brain function and how reading a novel can improve the reader’s connectivity on a level of higher brain function; make myself think on my past neglect of not picking up a fiction book and exploring a novel for myself. Reading is the key to unlocking untapped potential in imagination with reading a book that challenges you to become one with the Arthur. The only way to truly free your mind and push the boundaries of proper brain function is to become an enthusiasm of reading fiction books.

After presenting the data from content area diagnostic and district level assessments, as well as pertinent research related to this topic, the team expressed their interest and motivation to help close the achievement gaps in reading comprehension. In addition to our team, district level specialists and outside vendors have been contacted and will provide support and their expertise relating to improving student reading comprehension

Reading has the power to broaden my perspective, expand my mind, and take me on an adventure far away from reality. Unsurprisingly, I am very enthusiastic about reading and it has earned its title as my favorite pastime. Admittedly, before this class, I usually chose to read my favorite genre, fictional novels, and would only read nonfiction books on occasion. This was due to my illusory belief that only a work of fiction would have the power to whisk me off into another world and evoke powerful emotions. However, after the first three lessons, I was challenged to read literature from all kinds of different genres, including speeches. I was astounded by how much I enjoyed all of the different works of literature. They were able to take me on an adventure, regardless of the genre.

* Use comprehension strategies to build literal and inferred meaning about key events, ideas and information in texts that they listen to, view and read by drawing on growing knowledge of context, text structures and language features (ACELY1660), (ACARA, 2012). Learning to read is essentially learning to decode and understand the words/language written in the story and to construct meanings from those words (literacy) (Nicole & Roberts, 1993). The more language the children (and adults) hear and read the more developed their vocabulary will become (Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998, Nicole & Roberts, 1993, Anderson et al, 1985). Reading fluency is enhanced with an enlarged

Teachers can help improve student reading comprehension by generating questions that get students to think about what the text means, and by

When Grace was asked comprehension questions during our first tutoring sessions, she was able to correctly answer comprehension questions by looking back at the pictures, but not based on what she had read. To improve her comprehension, tutoring sessions were used to help Grace become a purposeful and active reader. Before reading any books, she was asked to look at the cover of the book and to make connections with the book to things in her own life. She was then asked questions about the book and asked to make predictions on what she thought would happen in the book. After reading the book, Grace was asked to confirm or refute her predictions. Through working together to understand the books, making connections to the books, and looking for predictions, Grace is now able read a book with few pictures and correctly answer comprehension questions correctly more than 80% of the

In 2011, the professional journal, Theory Into Practice, included an article titled, “Comprehension as Social and Intellectual Practice: Rebuilding Curriculum in Low Socioeconomic and Cultural Minority Schools.” The authors, Allan Luke, Annette Woods, and Karen Dooley, focus on the issue of reshaping the reading curriculum, particularly comprehension, in diverse schools, such as low socioeconomic status and cultural minority. This article highlights a different view of comprehension and a new way to teach comprehension to diverse students to help them truly learn and grasp comprehension when reading. As I hope to become a leader, it is beneficial to learn about different curriculum developments and research the effects of the changes in different curriculums. I chose this article, because since I am a first grade teacher and I teach comprehension, I thought this may be helpful to me as an educator, as I could compare my curriculum of teaching comprehension to this article’s ideas of rebuilding their curriculum. In addition, I have students in my classroom that are diverse that could benefit from my new learning from the information in this article.

Comprehension strategies help children understand, remember and communicate what they read. Comprehension helps children have the ability to connect what they are reading to what they already know. With practice, students are able to make predictions, create ideas,

Using the anticipation guided prior to diving into this week’s reading was highly beneficial. It allowed me to activate my prior knowledge. My importantly it triggered my interest in multiple areas where I was uncertain. Because I was unsure about certain questions, I quickly grabbed a highlighter and was laser focused in finding the correct response. After reading, I soon realized that I’m not using enough adequately tapping into my student’s prior knowledge before reading. The many obstacles I face with motivation could easily be reduced with the inclusion of an anticipation guide. For example, prior to closely reading an informational text, I could build an anticipation guide to gather data about their knowledge of topic. After students complete their guide, results could be posted on the classroom’s board. A small debate could be used with evidence from their personal knowledge base. The desire to prove their responses would channel their focus while reading. Moreover, it would give them a boost in stamina needed to sustain the text

During the class, Getting into the Book with Marni Pingle, she covered strategies for comprehension which included; prior knowledge, making connections, questioning, visualizing, summarizing, inferring, evaluating, and synthesizing. I believe the most important of these is synthesizing because by processing the information the children create a deeper understanding of what they read. Both Pingle, Zwiers and Crawford (2011) feel Think-Pair-Share is an effective way to process information and help students increase understanding. Every week I select one picture book which I read each day and apply to a new reading strategy. The first day we usually retell so students understand what happened in the story. To scaffold and give

Reading comprehension at a knowledge level is a complex task. Reading comprehension instruction that attempts to move students beyond the knowledge level to a place of true understanding is daunting at best and not something that can be left to guess work. A review of current literature in