"Explicit Instruction in Comprehension"

"How will you teach an 8th grader who struggles to read?" On the first day of my internship, my principal began our meeting with this question. I stumbled through a response, citing a short litany of possible activities or lessons that could pique students' interest and develop their skills. In my head, however, I was thinking, "How will I teach an 8th grader who struggles to read?!"

In Kylene Beers' chapter, "Explicit Instruction in Comprehension," she offers a gracious, yet challenging response to new teachers like me. She validates my bewilderment by citing Edmund Huey's description of reading as "'the most intricate workings of the human mind...the tangled story of the most remarkable specific performance that civilization has learned in all its history'" (Beers, 2003, p. 59). And she offers clear, effective methods of teaching strategies for reading comprehension. Almost all of these strategies are new to me--since teaching how to read is new to me--and I am grateful to grow my tool kit of techniques and strategies. Beers' chapter helped me to reflect on some of my experiences with struggling readers, imagining how I could be of more service to them byimplementing strategies for comprehension.

The most useful information to me is her step-by-step explanation of teaching comprehension strategies explicitly. I'll briefly summarize: 1) Planning which strategy and when you'll teach it makes for a more meaningful lesson. 2) Clearly introduce the strategy you will model to your students. Explain that you will stop periodically to implement the strategy as you read. 3) Model the strategy: "This is the time when your thinking (which is normally invisible) becomes visible for them" (Beers, 2003, p. 43). 4) Give readers many opportunities to practice these strategies, with, and then without, your guidance. 5) Repeat when needed and with new texts or genres.

While Beers' approach may seem formulaic, I appreciate the way that it clearly articulates the process of scaffolding and Vygotzsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Beers provides an example of the kind of structure and support struggling readers need in order to gain independence. She gives the new teacher a tactile technique for teaching strategies--one that is quickly and successfully adopted by the student teacher she cites. And she gives the seasoned teacher a way to reflect on his or her instruction, by modeling her own reflection after years of experience. In this way, her approach functions as a scaffold for me, and my use of her approach will function as a scaffold for students.

Reference

Beers, K. (2003). When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.