Does it matter if children have different understandings, that are plain ‘wrong’?

2010-01-11T15:41:35+00:00

Our summary of a project on ‘Comprehension and the Silent Reader’ (Elspeth Jajdelsky and Sue Ellis) has just been published on the ‘Learning and Teaching Scotland website’. We took an historical view of reading, and looked at the changes that were introduced in texts as they moved away from being written for a ‘reader’ to perform out loud to a largely illiterate audience. With the rise of a literate middle class (with leisure time for reading), texts started to be written as texts for the reader to read silently for themselves and writers had to introduce all sorts of devices to overtake some of the things narrators did naturally. We thought that this approach could help teachers appreciate the linguistic features that can make texts hard to understand for young children - things like the way that shifts in time, point of view and place are marked, the introduction of an all seeing narrator, etc..

As part of the project, the teachers used ‘Literature Circles’ (in which discussion was wholly driven by the children - a different version from the ‘Literature Circles’ promoted by the NLS) to see what the children really understood, and were shocked. Children who were highly engaged in the story, sometimes had VERY basic mis-understandings about the characters - who they were, how they were related to each other and to the action, why they were doing things. The story still had personal meaning for them and their lives, raised questions, links with other stories and with their real life experiences etc.

Part of me thinks that this is bound to happen - it certainly happens when adults read - we can have completely different interpretations of the main message in even something as short as an email - and some people miss the main message altogether.

The difference is in the power relationships that exist. Young people in class and their teacher are in quite a different power relationship from the one that exists between colleagues, even when the teacher is approachable and open. Colleagues have a genuine debate, but does this (can this?) REALLY happen in the same way in classrooms? If not, what are the implications for comprehension teaching? Are we always bound to have an unspoken compliance operating, leading to rather passive readers looking to others to tell them the ‘proper’ meaning of a text?

Are there ways of teaching that get past this? What do you think? Any ideas or thoughts out there?

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2010-07-16T20:38:30+00:00

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Raising standards of student achievement in reading comprehension

2010-02-01T10:11:11+00:00

At STEPS Professional Development we are in contact with many schools who use the First Steps literacy resources, and we receive positive feedback and information about the impact of these resources on student literacy development. Would it be appropriate to invite some of these schools to join the Comprehension SIG? In this way, they could directly share some of the approaches that have been instrumental in raising standards of student achievement in reading comprehension.
We are also interested to know how the information gathered through the SIG will be used. We would be very pleased to contribute to any eventual publication.

UKLA Discussion Forums

Does it matter if children have different understandings, that are plain ‘wrong’?

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Raising standards of student achievement in reading comprehension