CHECKING COMPREHENSION

From my new blog

Literacy and Me

How many times, as a teacher, have I heard a parent complain, “My student reads quite well; however, he never comprehends or retains what he read”? For many years in public schools, teachers broke down comprehension into its component parts and gave students a worksheet on that individual skill, isolating it from other skills or even from the paragraph/story they’d read. At least in our school district, AISD, the trend is away from pointless exercises like the aforementioned, which often cause students to hate reading. It is my feeling that we need to measure comprehension in a story or an article in a “gulp,” not individual “sips.”

One method I used back in the 80’s when I taught sixth grade language arts in an elementary school setting was to give a five question “quiz,” sometimes in written form, sometimes orally. Here is a breakdown of the five questions covered:

1.  Ask…

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