EDHD5008 Blog #2

I enjoyed reading the Fisher, Frey and Ross article this week, “Comprehension is More Than a Strategy” (2009). It was interesting to begin with the example of a student who is clearly comprehending the text, and then try to suss out why she is successful in her comprehension. I’m guessing my experience of this might be similar to the other teacher candidates. As a former high school student who tended to have good reading comprehension, it’s not that easy for me to identify exactly what I’m doing when successfully comprehending a text – and that’s exactly what I need to do to be a good teacher of comprehension! Again, I see a clear parallel here to language teaching. As a person for whom language learning comes easily, I might miss the cues that lead to good language teaching, simply because I don’t need to see them to be successful. However, a teacher needs to know the trouble spots and the different combinations of variables present in their students’ learning. A teacher needs to make sure the lesson is focused, purposeful, and fun so that students don’t have trouble paying attention (Fisher, Frey & Ross 2009, p. 331).

I really loved the example of the science teacher modeling her thinking with the class about segmented worms (Fisher, Frey & Ross 2009, p. 334-335). Reading through this section and following along with the lesson, I’m amazed by the purpose in her pedagogical approach. It may seem to the students as if she’s casually talking them through this process. In reality, I’m sure that for myself as a student teacher, and as a first year teacher, creating a lesson like this takes a lot of preparation. Each word needs to be accounted for, and variables like classroom behavior can’t flap the process. Because of their teacher’s delivery, the students can focus on the content and the strategies she’s modeling. Because they’re being engaged learners in this moment, they know exactly what the thinking strategy for reading comprehension looks like, and they’ll have a better chance of recreating it on their own. After this example, the authors remind us as readers that part of the magic here is to “Be interesting!” (Fisher, Frey & Ross 2009, p. 337). I think part of what this means is to create a natural environment in which the reading strategies can live within the classroom. If this kind of learning is only happening once in a while, it can’t become habitual practice to which students can contribute on their own. As in the reptiles example, if students are familiar with “think, pair, share,” then each time they practice it they will get more out of the process – IF they feel that they are offering something special to the conversation. Part of that “buy-in” comes from a classroom environment, created by the teacher, that embraces and promotes student input as valuable. This is what I understood to be Palincsar’s “Reciprocal Teaching” method (Fisher, Frey & Ross 2009, p. 338).

To wrap up my thoughts this week, I wanted to share an anecdote that came to mind when I was listening to the mini-lecture “Comprehension Processes.” The example the professor used for prior knowledge was the mental schema of a grocery store and everything in it. The idea was that many who were reading a text about an event at a grocery store would have the grocery store schema in place and could make inferences and mental images based on this prior knowledge. I immediately thought of going to the grocery store with my friend Usman Buba, who was visiting from Cameroon for the first time to work at summer camp, and was staying with me for a few days. As we walked the aisles, everything seemed fine – until he came up and tapped me on the shoulder to ask, “What is this?” Usman had a shrink-wrapped Styrofoam tray of boneless skinless chicken breast in his hand. When I told him what it was, he got the weirdest look on his face. “But… how does it get… like this?” He was stupefied by the extreme processing that chicken breast undergoes to look the way it does when most of us eat it in the US. Not only was the shape and texture strange, but even the size was unimaginable to him. Remembering this experience helped solidify for me that our students are probably operating under many different schemas than we are. If we can build respect and trust into our classrooms, I hope that, like Usman and I did, this can produce not isolation or exclusivity but instead connection and a hearty laugh.