Comprehension

 Right of the bat this weeks readings struck me with Pardo's opening sentence talking about how teachers need to understand comprehension and all that is involved in comprehending before students can be effective comprehender's. As educators it's easy to think that our job is only to teach but really are job is to learn. To learn the subjects we are teaching and the most effective and up to date methods of teaching them, to learn from our students and base our lessons on their needs, and to learn are own strengths and weaknesses and constantly work for improvement. This is reinforced by Gill's discussion of the comprehension matrix. Utilizing resources can make teaching easier, more effective and more fun.
Comprehension like all aspects of reading is complex Comprehension itself is all about interaction with texts and bringing your own knowledge, experiences, and ideas into the text you're making sense of. This correlates with a responsibily for the teacher to introduce the students to a lot of text so they can broaden their vocabulary and knowledge and thus comprehension. It also is a responsibility to introduce text that bring unfamiliar and new ideas that can fall anywhere from scientific language to cultural ideas outside what students are normally exposed to. Reading is all about putting pieces together. It is a very involved experience.

 Teaching students to make connections helps them learn to do it automatically.

 You can also help readers show their thinking to increase comprehension. I really like this activity below.

The final article showed that it's never too early to teach reading comprehension. As with all aspects of reading it develops as the student develops as a learner. 

Question of the day: What part of comprehension do you is the most difficult for teachers to teach?
What methods would you use to promote comprehension that are more fun than just a worksheet?