October 10, 17, 30 and November 7
Tell me if you can relate to this classroom scene: You are done reading through a passage of text and you want to check for understanding, so you ask the class a few questions…and they look at you with blank stares as if they have no idea what you’re talking about! Does this sound at all familiar? Well, this scene replayed again and again in my own classroom. What I realized is that my students didn’t have skills for comprehension or thinking about text. I thought that just throwing out a bunch of questions about the text would lead to comprehension. What I have learned now is that we have to explicitly identify and teach the most important SKILLS for comprehension and critical thinking in order for kids to understand the text. In our course, I will teach you how to take a very practical look at what comprehension skills are worth teaching, how to teach them and then how to pull it all together through lesson planning.