Module 2: Comprehension

The blame game! When no one will take responsibility for the short comings of student’s success and points fingers on everyone else.

Upon initial reaction of the Vanderbilt Resource it reminded me of one of the flaws we have as educators. Why do we play this so called blame game? Why do we feel the need to not be held accountable for all areas of teaching regardless of what specific content are we teach?

Upon initial reaction of the article Using Collaboration, Co-Teaching, and Question Answer Relationships to Enhance Content Area Literacy it his close to home as I teach Special Education and often see my students struggle with content subjects. When working with special education students often times co-teacher exists. This co-teaching can be especially helpful in that the general education teacher has an expertise in teaching content areas while the special education teacher can teach the content area as well as strategy based instruction. This combination can prove be to very beneficial to special education students. I found it comforting to read the various strategies presented to assist in student learning. In particular, the QAR strategy is a personal favorite of mine. We utilize the question answer relationship strategy in our district and I really think it works. According to Fenty, McDuffie-Landrum, and Fisher (2012), QAR allows students to demonstrate their ability to determine importance, make inferences, and monitor their comprehension. These three components are very important pieces of information for us educators. By utilizing the QAR strategy we teach the students that there are two different ways to find answers to comprehension questions. These two ways to find answers are found in either the book or in my head. In the book simply means the answer can be found within the text whereas in my head means the students need to think beyond the text to compile an answer.

QAR is a beneficial strategy that can be utilized across all content areas. Since this strategy can be used across all content areas, repetition is extremely useful when working with special education students. The consistency allows for these particular students to eventually utilize this strategy on their own. Furthermore, as mentioned above this strategy can be used in collaboration and co-teaching situations. Table 1. Collaborative Planning Template for the Question Answer Relationships Strategy was a wonderful chart to provide insight as to just how co-teaching and collaboration can work in a classroom. This chart broke down the roles of the special education teacher and content area teacher while shedding light on the steps needed to execute the lesson and even the materials needed! I felt this was such a helpful chart that I made copies of it for some of my colleagues.

Moving on to the Vanderbilt Resource I particularly liked the Frayer Model. I find it interesting to think back to the initial video and how no one felt they were responsible yet there are so many great and useful resources to help assist in this learning/teaching component of the classroom. The Frayer Model is a graphic organizer that assists students in building vocabulary. Like much of our teaching, this model will only work once it has been heavily modeled. Why model? I have seen this time and time again. Teachers who tell the students to read the following pages and answer the questions. How are students expected to read and answer the questions if they cannot comprehend what they have read? Students need to have things modeled. They need to see how we think and how we work through such organizers. We need to show them the expectation and outcomes so they can follow suit. This doesn’t just apply with organizers but in almost every aspect of teaching.

Another component of the Vanderbilt Resource I found interesting was “Page 9” activating prior knowledge. “Students’ comprehension of new information can be improved by activating their prior knowledge, a process that helps students make connections between new information and information they already know.” (iris.peabody.vanderbuilt.edu, 2016) Activating prior knowledge can be helpful when working with special education students because often times they don’t or can’t conceptualize an idea on their own. They need prompting and someone to help initiate that thought. By doing so, these students can take what they are learning and make the connection to something they may already know.

Personally, I am a graphic organizer lover. Why might you ask? Simply spoken because I am a visual person. I have a very very hard time doing or understanding anything without seeing it. This can be especially difficult in my day to day life. For example, I am currently working on the baby’s nursery. Without physically putting things in the room and hanging things up, I can not for the life of me make a decision until I have seen it. It drives my husband nuts! In teaching special education students, I have come to learn that many of them need just that same level of visualization to understand or have an “ah-ha” moment in their own learning. Page 11 focused on graphic organizers and their uses. Graphic organizers allow for students to gather information into specific categories, relationships and etc. “Teachers can find or create a variety of graphic organizer templates to improve reading comprehension in the content areas.” (iris.peabody.vanderbuilt.edu, 2016) Once again we go back to this idealization that content area teachers can in fact teach “reading comprehension and vocabulary” by utilizing various strategies. These teachers just need to be guided in the right direction. Of course as mentioned previously, when introducing any new organizer, the teacher needs to model how to use it and what it’s purpose is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pIe6CZX6PM This was a quick video that focuses on co-teaching with special education students.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StP9VavNr10 This is a 10 minute video that focuses on vocabulary instruction across content areas in particular science in this video.

Fenty, N., McDuffie-Landrum, K. and Fisher, G. (2012). Using collaboration, co-

            teaching, and question answer relationships to enhance content area

            literacy. Teaching Exceptional Children, 44(6), pp.28-37. 

Iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu, (2016). IRIS | Seconday Reading Instruction (Part 1):

            Teaching Vocabulary and Comprehension in the Content Areas. [online]

            Available at: http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/sec-

            rdng/cresource/#content [Accessed 15 Feb. 2016].