Читать книгу Comprehension [Grades K-12] - Douglas Fisher - Страница 13

Knowing how readers comprehend should help us design instructional experiences that foster students’ ability to comprehend. Unfortunately, there have been a number of false starts when it comes to teaching students to comprehend. Simply understanding the behaviors of proficient readers and then encouraging students to engage in those practices is not likely to produce the desired results. For example, let’s look at the “the super six” comprehension strategies: building knowledge and making connections, predicting and inferring, questioning, monitoring, summarizing, and evaluating (Oczkus, 2004). There’s nothing wrong with these, and most of us use these as we read. They come from the body of research on the behaviors of proficient and precocious readers—what readers do when they encounter text. Our concern is that these strategies are becoming “curricularized.” By this, we mean that the strategies—rather than the text—are becoming the center of instruction. One publisher even markets this curricularization by noting that its program teaches “one strategy at a time.” We can’t find any evidence for the effectiveness of teaching one strategy at a time, especially with pieces of text that require that readers use a variety of strategies to successfully negotiate meaning.

Models of reading comprehension instruction

We can’t find any evidence for the effectiveness of teaching one strategy at a time, especially with pieces of text that require that readers use a variety of strategies to successfully negotiate meaning.

This was highlighted in a recent classroom visit. We entered a sixth-grade classroom. On every wall there were posters about making predictions: how to predict, what to predict, when to predict, what to record about your predictions, why predict, and so on. Some of these posters were classroom created, while others were publisherproduced. We sat next to Tim, a sixth grader who was reading Stone Fox (Gardiner, 1980). We asked Tim what he was doing, and predictably he answered, “predicting.” Having read Stone Fox, we asked him what he was predicting, expecting a discussion about the dog dying and the family losing the farm. To our surprise, Tim rolled his eyes and said, “Everything, man?” We have to say that it is very unlikely that Tim will incorporate predicting as a habit based on the five weeks his class spent on predicting. We would argue that Tim has developed a significant dislike of predicting and will do just about anything not to predict. Obviously, this runs counter to the goal of the instruction, which is to increase Tim’s use of making predictions when they are needed.

A goal of strategy instruction should be consolidation, so that the reader can activate the right strategy (for him or her) at the right time. Consider your own experiences with reading a plot-driven book such as The Da Vinci Code (Brown, 2003). We’ll venture a guess that you didn’t make predictions to the exclusion of everything else. It’s likely that you evaluated (“Hmm, not a lot of character development here”), made connections (“I’ve seen these paintings before”), and so on. In addition, you didn’t make predictions at the beginning of the text and then not return to them. Each time a new clue appeared, you revised your predictions. How did you know how and when to do that? Because you were able to consolidate those strategies and activate them when you needed them. A very real danger of curricularized strategy instruction is that the strategies fossilize to the point that readers hold narrow and rigid understandings of how and when they are used.

A second concern related to the increased concentration on strategy instruction is the goal that teachers have for this type of instruction. We believe that the goal should be for students to use these strategies with automaticity, applying them authentically as they read. Afflerbach et al. (2008) argue that, over time and with purposeful instruction, strategies can become skills and that skilled readers should be the goal of instruction. As they note, “Readers are motivated to be skillful because skill affords high levels of performance with little effort whereas strategic readers are motivated to demonstrate control over reading processes with both ability and effort” (p. 372). Another look inside a middle school classroom, this time an eighth-grade classroom, will highlight this concern.

The goal should be for students to use these strategies with automaticity, applying them authentically as they read. Strategies can become skills, and skilled readers should be the goal of instruction.

Alexandria is sitting at her desk staring at a piece of paper when we enter the room. She has read a passage from the book Hattie Big Sky (Larson, 2006), a book she chose to read. Alexandria is required to document on a worksheet the strategy she used to understand the text on a The form is blank, so we ask her “Any surprises so far?”

Alexandria, excitedly, answers, YES! I’ve been stuck on a word in the book—honyocker. The word doesn’t matter that much, I guess, ’cause I can read the whole thing without knowing what the word really means. But I wanted to know, so I looked on the internet at home. Here’s what I learned: In German, it’s from a word meaning hen hunter. In Czech, it kinda means a shaggy fellow. In Hungarian, it comes from a word meaning negligent, careless, sloppy, or forgetful. A long time ago, ranchers in Montana didn’t like the homesteaders and they called them honyockers, a mean cowboy slang word. In North Dakota, it means a backward, old-fashioned type of rural person. I feel better now,” she says with a grin.

Impressed, we ask Alexandria, known to be a collector of words and a bit of a trivia hound, what the problem was with her completing her work. She showed us the worksheet, which required that she identify one of the “big six” comprehension strategies and she said, “I’m not sure what I did. I read the whole thing, really. I understand it all, but I wanted to learn more about the word honyocker. I’m not sure which box to check and what to write. Can you help?”

Focusing heavily on reading strategies can have unintended consequences.

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Again, we were struck with the unintended consequences of the concentration on strategies. Forcing students to independently identify which strategy they use and explain it is not likely to ensure that students develop as skilled readers. Was it monitoring? Sure, she knew herself well as a reader and knew she wanted to mine a specific word. Was it evaluating? Yes, she looked at several websites before settling on one that gave her definitions she found useful. Alexandria had moved into the realm of a skilled reader. Forcing her to deconstruct what was becoming an elegantly automatic process for her was counterproductive.

Forcing students to independently identify which strategy they use and explain it is not likely to ensure that students develop as skilled readers.