I read through Karly’s unit planning. I think that your point with comprehension being extremely important is a great point because you’re right it is needed in every aspect of their lives in school and outside of school. This is a great strategy to focus on.

            You said that you were planning on focusing on picking out important events in stories and summarizing. You also talked about incorporating both teacher-led and student-led methods to your daily routine. Are you going to use this method as a whole class or are you going to work in small groups so that you can differentiate the books you use based on their reading skills and abilities? It sounds like you do not separate your students based on reading levels. I think that peer-to-peer help is great, but how will you make sure that students are not reading above their level and get frustrated and make sure that your higher-level readers will not get bored?

           

            I think it is really cool that you will be incorporating technology/online resources into your lessons, because I agree with you that it may become boring for them to just fill out graphic organizers. It would be neat if they did some sort of project where they do a re-tell of the story they read to a group who did not read the same story. They could do some sort of presentation to “teach” another group which would get the student led teaching in your lesson.

           

            It sounds like you guys already have a lot of systems in place and that your kids are doing a lot of great student led lessons which I think is awesome. It sounds like your classroom community is really supportive and I think you should really monopolize on that! I am really interested to hear about the activities that you come up with because comprehension is so important at every level. I am also really interested to hear how these lessons go and how your students do with learning comprehension skills!