Comprehension

It is interesting to sit down and think about your own comprehension processes. Before I began the readings for this week, I had considered myself to comprehend texts similar to any one of my peers at the collegiate level. However, I was very unaware by how many different ‘reader roles’ exist. While thinking about my past with reading, I realized that reading has always been considered an enjoyment in my life and I, therefore, have many experiences with different author styles, genres, themes, characters, etc. I feel that because of this, I seem to fall into what Gibbons refers to be a “reader as a text participant”. This type of reader connects the text with their own background knowledge. Even though I am a Caucasian white female, and my actual viewpoint may be limited, I am aware of many other cultures and groups that may be present within a text. If I should come across a book that addresses a group of people I am unfamiliar with, I take the opportunity to learn about that culture, and perhaps think of myself in their position. As Gibbons states, “Being at text participant, means having the resources to match text with appropriate content and cultural knowledge.”
Looking a bit deeper into the ways that I comprehend literature, I realized that my task is much easier since I fall into the unilingual sense of things. I am able to draw on all three kinds of knowledge (semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic) simultaneously when I read a text. Compared to the new ESL students in my classroom, I feel as though I (along with the other English-born speakers) must have a much easier time when it comes to analyzing and comprehending a book. Gibbons explains that “when you are unable to bring personal knowledge and understanding of a topic to a text, you are effectively robbed of the ability to make use of a key resource for reading: what you already know.” This statement helped me to see my ESL students in a much better light; not only may they be struggling with the knowledge of our language, but they are also uneducated about our culture and kinds of literature, which must make reading and comprehension so much more challenging. I think that this makes my ESL students that much more behind their fellow classmates, because the main Language Arts concentration for them is level by level phonics books.
As for the rest of my class, I feel that they are doing very well with comprehension for the third grade. My CT has been working on inferring with them for a few weeks now, and they really seem to be understanding the concept and applying it to the texts that they read. My CT always chooses intriguing picture books that are appropriate for the age level, while still posing interesting topics to think about and discuss. I found a remark in Tompkins’ text that I thought fit very well with my students. It said, “When students read picture books stories and novels, their writing reflects the more sophisticated language structures and literary style of these books.” I can definitely see this being true within my classroom. The students are given response journals to write in after they have read either independently, or as a group, and their writing seems to have truly benefitted from the books that they have read, or been given, by their teacher.