Chapter 4: Explicit Instruction in Comprehension

The story about Al really opened my eyes. "How do I know unless I already know?" Throughout school, we're told what to do, and most of the time we're not told how to do it. I really liked this chapter because it showed me how to actually teach the strategies that I'll be telling kids to use in order to read. I always thought that it was just common sense on how to read and how to pick up on different strategies, but I suppose it's not.

I liked that Beers put her interaction with Kate in this book. I can see myself in Kate's shoes making mistakes while teaching and then correcting them. I liked how she refined her technique and got the students involved with discussing by having them use strategies. Just by the simple change of having them tell her what they thought the story was going to be about based on the picture showed that she was teaching them a reading strategy instead of just expecting them to know to look at the picture. We know that some of the students probably already looked at the picture and figured out what the story was about, but for the few that didn't it brought them up to speed with the other students.