Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, in Strategies That Work, labeled each individual chapters that sum up what reading comprehension should ideally look like: reading is thinking, reading is strategic, and reading is effective comprehension instruction. To me, reading comprehension should be a natural thing to come by; a skill that does not have to be reminded of for us to use. In the text Close Reading of Informational Texts by Sunday Cummins, it states "the term reading skill refers to what a reader does automatically without thinking." It should be a process that is pleasant, challenging but not impossible, and engaging. Engagement through the text should be seen by self-monitoring and through metacognitive skills. Metacognitive strategies can be of many things, but a few were listed from Ch. 1 in Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann: monitoring for meaning, using and creating schema, asking questions, determining importance, inferring, using sensory and emotional images, and synthesizing (Keene and Zimmermann, 2007, pg.14).
I also believe that the best way to enhance and foster reading comprehension is through readiness levels and enjoyable methods of reading. It really struck me hard on this point while reading the article by Richard Allington. There was a good comparison to students vs. adults, as where Allington alludes that "most adults will work to reading any such difficult text" (Allington, 2003). The article goes into specifics on how we, as educators, think if a student is reading with high percentage of accuracy, we tend to think it's an 'easy' text. But, Allington compares the statistic to if we as adults were graded by accuracy then we would be considered not 'trying hard enough.' Reading comprehension should not be measured on accuracy and fluency of decoding words; it should be about the thought process a student is engaging in with him/herself and the strategies they are using.
While reading the texts for this theme, I was able to self-reflect on my own teaching practices. I realized that I had moments where I focused so much on students sounding out words, blending, and phonics rather than the actual comprehension part. I specifically remember during a small group lesson of about 4 students, I had a student who was struggling with letter names and sounds. But, after several weeks of drill and repetition, he finally started to blend sounds and read simple CVC words. One day, he read a simple sentence: A cat sat on the log. When he sounded it out and read the sentence, I was ecstatic! I was so excited that I didn't even realize the fact that although he was able to read the sentence, he did not understand the meaning behind the sentence. Vocabulary was lacking and the connection between the cat, log, and sitting did not click.
The overarching idea that I grasped on reading comprehension is that it is not a stagnant process. Strategies will build upon one another and each strategy and tool we learn in that process should not be forgotten or neglected. Reading comprehension will only improve by vast exposure to reading. Each strategic tool taught will only be of use when a student has a chance to use, implement, and reflect. Reading comprehension should be a personal experience for each student and once that experience is found, it will be an everlasting one.
