September 16th

To Understand: Foreword, Prelude & Chapter 1

Foreword: Throughout these few pages, Debbie Miller talks about a women named Ellin, the author, and the idea of this book.  To Understand challenges us to think beyond comprehension strategies; it invites us to ask what these strategies are for.  

Prelude: This section is about the author and how she eventually wrote this book. She describes her reactions with her friend, Tom Newkirk and how he compared her writing this book to the super bowl. "You're talking about writing a book, not winning the Super Bowl!" (Page xvi).  Finally in 2007, Ellin & Susan Zimmermann dug back in and created the second edition of Mosaic of Thought.

Chapter 1: This chapter starts out by Ellin attending a second grade classroom to observe the types of programs that school uses and to also observe the books the kids were reading.  Ellin first starts out by talking to a student named Jamika.  She asks her a few questions about the book shes reading and Jamika comes back with a firecracker response and continues on asking why does everyone always ask "does the book make sense?".  Ellin continues on to the next student but can't get Jamika's question out of her head.  Throughout the next few days, Ellin started thinking that if the students understand what it means to comprehend or to "make sense".  She decided that a new definition for comprehension needed to be made, a definition more worthy of our children intellectual potential.  Ellin attended several different classrooms of different ages and ability level and read aloud and invited these students to use the comprehension strategies and to define and describe what they understood after using the strategies.  The students exceeded her expectations.  Ellin then goes on doing other observations and working with teachers to decide what it really means to understand.  

So far, I enjoy reading this book.  It has really made me think what it means to understand.  We always ask our students to describe what they read, retell it, or answer questions and sometimes the students really don't understand what they are reading and whether or not it truly does make sense.  I am interested to see what she concludes about what it means to understand and how we can work with our students to make sure they know what "understand" really means.