Monitoring comphension

mariabecht
Mar 26, 2017
2 min read

This week my CT and I taught our students how to monitor comprehension. This is a skill that can aid my students while reading. Strategies that Work states the importance of teaching this in the classroom. The authors write that it is when students follow the inner conversation, notice when they stray from their inner conversation, and to stop, think and react to a text! Monitoring comprehension focuses on questioning a text, which is what the anchor chart and objective below displays. This is a pivotal part of literacy and is needed for students to understand what a text is saying.

I pointed the thinking stems on the chart for my students to follow and modeled how to question a text during whole group instruction. This chart was a great reference for my students to turn to when they were doing independent work. During this lesson, my CT and I used the Gradual Release of Responsibility. Classrooms That Work states how this is when a teacher moves from assuming all the responsibility to having the students assume it. First my CT and I modeled, then we did it with the students, and then the students did it independently. This smoothly transitioned my students to monitor their own comprehension and ask questions in their own text.

In Strategies That Work chapter 6, the authors write about the teacher using a large copy of the text to monitor thinking with the class and chart the response right on the text together. This is done for younger learner and ELLs. My classroom is made up of half ELL students. My CT and I used the Elmo to project the text and make it an anchor chart. We write on the text our thinking and monitor comprehension with the students. This helps guide students as they do their own reading and lets them practice monitoring their own comprehension! In the image below, a student coded the similarities and differences between Elephants in a text. My CT and I did this with the students as group and let them share their thinking and we wrote down their response on the text. The ELL students can share their comprehension and connections they are making with the text by my CT and I doing this. This is a form of differentiation in my classroom.