The Shift From Skills to Content
I vividly remember my first year teaching, fresh out of college, with all the popular teaching books in tow. The summer I was hired I spent most of my time reading those books, learning how to spend the first 7 days of school, how to set up my guided reading stations and centers, and how to teach reading comprehension. In college, I learned that comprehension was a set of skills, skills that could be applied to any topic. The teacher would choose a skill of the week or month, read many different, often unrelated texts, and would model to students how to apply that skill to each text read. Then, students would go off on their own, usually with a leveled or “just right” text, and would show whether or not they could apply the skill independently. Things were fine, until they were not.
You see, what I was doing in the classroom was fine, but I could not shake the feeling that something was off. I was doing everything I should. I was modeling the comprehension strategies, I was having students work on them independently after days or weeks of practice, I was using high interest trade books, so what was the issue? Not only that, the same kids year after year were still struggling. My struggling kids were consistently not understanding the texts they were reading.
I needed to do something, change something. A colleague and I decided to get LETRS trained. We had heard impressive things about the training and were reading to freshen up our teaching. I left the first session nearly in tears. Everything I had learned about teaching comprehension was incorrect. It was somewhat validating, knowing my gut feeling was right. I was not teaching effectively. The next day I scrapped every comprehension “skill” lesson plan and began to research more and more.
To better understand how we got here, let me explain my previous way of teaching. During my first 10 years teaching first grade, I used a text that explained how to teach the main comprehension skills: schema, inferring, questioning, determining importance, synthesizing, and visualizing. I created my units, gathered my texts, and got to work. My students loved the unit on schema. We would talk about things they had schema on, using a lint roller to show how new information “stuck” to our brains. I would then read some nonfiction texts and after each read my students would list all of their new “schema” on a chart. After each text, we would move on to the next, unrelated text.
Then, I would focus on the next skill: inferring. I planned elaborate activities in which students would have to solve mysteries or infer details of stories based on picture clues. While my students loved the lessons, again, they were not really learning anything. Inferring what a student did on a snow day was not going to eventually help them read a 5th grade history book.
Moving on to determining importance, again, I planned complicated lessons. I explained that important details were like pasta and less important details were like water. The important details (pasta) stayed in your brain (strainer) and the less important details did not (water). I chose unrelated nonfiction texts and witnessed my students struggle book after book to determine which information was important and which was not. I continued the year doing the same with questioning, synthesizing, and visualizing. I used unrelated fiction and nonfiction texts. Year after year I did not realize the disservice I was doing to my students.
After getting LETRS training, I continued my deep dive into comprehension and how to effectively teach it. I spent the next few weeks devouring Natalie Wexler’s The Knowledge Gap and E.D. Hirsch Jr. 's Why Knowledge Matters, highlighting and notating much of each text. I learned that comprehension comes from content, not skills. Students need to know something to learn something, as our brains are like velcro. We need to have some background knowledge on a topic in order for new knowledge to stick. As teachers, we need to begin building background knowledge in kindergarten, or earlier if possible. Units should build upon each other, so students can make connections from one unit to the next. Then each year teachers should build upon that knowledge. This is why choosing a content rich curriculum is essential for comprehension.
Instead of teaching comprehension as a set of skills, I now teach content. The Knowledge Matters Campaign is a great place to start to look for a content rich curriculum. Our ELA block no longer consists of modeling with trade books followed by independent practice. I outline each ELA lesson using the LETRS comprehension checklist. We begin by establishing our purpose for reading. Why are we reading this? What should we take away from the text? We quickly identify text structure and move onto vocabulary. I teach 3-5 tier 2 and 3 words per lesson. For each tier 2 word, I follow the LETRS 5 step sequence:
Pronounce word, write it, read it
Provide a student friendly definition
Go over examples and non examples
Ask yes or no questions
Elicit word use by students
I ask provided comprehension questions during and after reading. I also interleave previously learned vocabulary and content to solidify those connections. Not only is reading content important, but writing about content is just as important. The Writing Revolution by Judith C. Hochman and Natalie Wexler stresses the importance of writing about the content students are currently learning. In second grade, we spend a lot of time summarizing the content we read using our vocabulary words.
While it takes time to see growth on paper for comprehension, this shift has brought upon such a change in what I see in my students and how engaged and excited they are to learn. Seeing my students shine and find new interests is incredible. They hoard nonfiction books, bring in projects they did at home based on our units, and ask parents to take them on vacation to places we learned about. Their enthusiasm is contagious.