Chapter Recap

• One of the biggest milestones for early learners is learning to read. 
• Phonemic awareness and phonics is a major focus in the primary grades, but text comprehension also is a very important skill. 
• It's important to model metacognition skills to students to teach them to stop and think about what the author is trying to say. 
• During a read-aloud session, using digital tools to draw or jot down what they are thinking helps students master the content.

Explore the INFOhio and Open Space instructional materials that will help students to visualize and think about what they are reading. 

INFOhio Resources:

Draw and Tell

Find this app in the Early Learning Portal under the list of resources for Emergent Writing. This app allows students to draw or color then talk about the drawing. Memories and voice recordings will be saved with the drawing.

Open Space Resources:

• Using Google Drawing - Google Drawing is Google's least-used tool, especially as you move into online courses for your students. Find out how to use Google Drawing to promote interaction by creating products such as interactive posters and drawings or collaborative comic strips.  
• Building Reading Comprehension Through Think-Alouds - Students learn components of think-alouds and type-of-text interactions through teacher modeling. In the process, students develop skill in using think-alouds as part of their reading comprehension tasks.

Pause and Do

The author discusses the importance of phonemic awareness, but also the importance of comprehension. Read this article from Reading Rockets, Key Comprehension Strategies to Teach.

Reflecting on Your Learning

After reading the article above, consider the following question: 

What are comprehension strategies you are already using in your classroom? Which ones from the article would you like to try?