"the one in the yellow sweater..."

Our class just wrapped up the first Comprehension Focus from the pacing guide-- Questioning.  In exploring the many aspects of questioning with my students, I learned something important about their text comprehension.

One of my research goals for working with students this year is to study comprehension.  Our primary literacy instruction across the division is very successful as measured by PALS.  However, the percentage of students who leave second grade with adequate word reading in and out of context is in the 90s, but our SOL pass rate for third graders is most often in the 70s.  Why is there such a gap between our students' fluency and their text comprehension?

In the first weeks of school, I approached questioning by establishing habits of noticing and wondering.  In classroom activities, I began to observe that many students only felt comfortable noticing things in the pictures.  When they did notice something from the author's words, it was often random details instead of the most important ideas in the text.  As a result, I have been very mindful to model (1) noticing from the words and (2) noticing what's important to lay the foundation for more advanced work in text.

This reliance on the pictures also became apparent in the weeks that followed in a Question-Answer Relationship (QAR) lesson related to the basal story, The Trial of Cardigan Jones.  We had already read and discussed the story.  On a subsequent day, student pairs were given a QAR graphic organizer and slips of paper with story questions.  They had to write the answer to the each question and place the question on the graphic organizer to indicate the QAR.

One of the Think and Search questions asked, "Who saw Cardigan by the window?"  One student pair responded, "the one in the yellow sweater and the other one that looks like a cow" instead of the text-based answer- a neighbor and a milkman.

This strategy of answering questions and interacting with text using primarily the pictures is an emergent reader strategy.  Most students in my class can read text fluently at levels ranging from 2nd-4th grade.  So in essence, several are instructional level readers using emergent level comprehension strategies.  Many of these students appear to be disconnected from the meaning in the print that they are able to read quite proficiently.

It is easy to imagine how students with this strategy profile might struggle with the complexity of an SOL test.  It also explains why so many of them are reluctant and bored and disconnected when reading early chapter books that have few pictures.  I am challenged to help them increase the maturity of their comprehension strategies to match their fluency levels.

Note:  Resources for teaching questioning and the lesson materials are available on the Questioning page in the right margin of the blog.