I read the article Kindergartners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers. I chose the topic of kindergartners and their comprehension because I have a child in kindergarten and I’m curious to learn strategies for his age group as opposed to the 5th grade strategies that I use in my own classroom.

I was immediately enthralled with her strategy in the article of having students raise their hands in different forms to indicate the contribution they intended to make (whether it be a connection or a visual mental movie). The article called this meaning construction. I thought this was ingenious and was building the children’s higher level of thinking capabilities already. I have always been told that you must activate background knowledge and allow students to search within their schema's to make connections.I never quite understood that activating and discussing schema's was the 1st step in comprehension skills. I knew it was important but I never recognized it as the basic foundation.

She then allowed the students to make connections, visualize and then ask questions, or infer. This was her way of teaching the strategies without the children ever understanding that they were learning. The students seem to believe they were merely interacting and taking part of the reading of the story. I think that her strategy was genius! The students were engaged and it was obvious in her examples of her anchor charts where she credits each child with the questions that he or she posed to the whole group.

I think I will try the strategy of having students share their mental movies or connections in various content areas. Such as social studies: I could have students share their schema's about particular battles or wars and then allow other students to voice questions or concerns that they wish to be addressed. It is whole-group engagement that could take our learning to a whole new level!