Enhancing Comprehension

• School: Nightingale Elementary
• Text: Understanding Texts & Readers: Responsive Comprehension Instruction with Leveled Texts by Jennifer Serravallo 
• Group Members: Emily Cozzie, Diana Del Real, Study Group Leader; Alma Ramos, Elizabeth Thibeau
• Goal: To enhance comprehension through small group instruction. 

We originally thought we might have to change our study group goal to conferring with students but we quickly realized that our goal was indeed what us a study group are trying to better understand as we work with our students.

As we started with remote learning, we began our whole group and small group lessons. We transferred the learning of Jennifer Serravallo’s Understanding Texts & Readers to our online small group lessons. This allowed us to really focus on student needs. We found this text to be valuable with developing reading comprehension skills across the ability levels. By better understanding the abilities of these levels, it allows us as teachers to help students in areas that they may be struggling in. Here we will be providing examples of different levels for small group instruction when working with “main idea” as our strategy (J, L, N).

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Students reading levels are fluid, they may test into a level L text but that does not mean those students are only viewed as level L. This text discussed how understanding a wide spectrum of levels will better help us support our students’ comprehension as well as make our kids feel confident when reading. As mentioned earlier, we are using this directly with our small group instruction to help guide us as we choose texts and comprehension questions.

We would highly recommend it for any teacher who is looking to better understand reading skills for comprehension. As stated in the book, comprehension is challenging to measure because it is invisible. This text is similar to a road map that helps break down how to teach reading skills as well as what to expect. The “what to expect” is the useful part because it allows us to see how our students may be understanding the text.

This text has also provided so many charts that provide useful resources in the classroom. So helpful that my colleagues and I will be making a few of these into classroom sized posters. In doing so, we will be offering posters to our school community for any teacher in need of a quick guide to building comprehension. Here is an example of a poster we will be making:

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