[MOSAIC] Nancy Atwell

[CNJPALMER at aol.com]

Okay, the conversation has been amazing and it has me thinking such deep  
thoughts. All this talk about whether or not to interrupt reading with  
strategies has reminded me of a professor I had in my graduate program in  reading. He 
said that there is no proven way to teach thinking or comprehension.  This 
bothered me then and has always bothered me. This professor was terrific  and 
everything else he taught was "spot on"...but this seemed hopeless to me. If  you 
can't teach thinking then there is no hope for kids with comprehension  
problems. I can't teach or function that way! I have to believe that I can make  
things better for them...
 
So...when I found Mosaic and strategies, I thought, AH HAH! We can  teach 
thinking. 
 I wonder about those kids who are already good comprehenders...are  they 
always good thinkers??? While I understand that comprehension is the end  goal, 
and that we should not overdo strategy instruction, I can't agree that we  
should abandon strategy instruction for them. Are we saying that they can never  
get better??? That they can learn to think by talking about books with others?  
While I believe that kids learn a great deal from talking to each other, 
isn't  there some benefit in deepening their thinking through conscious use of  
strategies on text that is challenging? While I don't want to spoil their love  
of reading by doing this all the time, isn't their value in teaching them ways 
 to think through any reading problems they might come across later? 
 
Maybe, once again, the key is balance. We need to remember that  
comprehension is the end goal, but comprehension doesn't just drop out of the  sky. It is 
a process...a thinking process. Perhaps by bringing it to a conscious  level 
for good readers now and then, we make good readers even better.
Just my two cents...
Jennifer
Maryland



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