Jaime S. Ch.6 Reflection

In Chapter 6, Taberski explains another useful assessment teachers can use to help the child become a better reader. Retelling is an important assessment because it shows if the child comprehends what they have read or if they’re just ‘barking at the text.’ I remember having to do Book Reports in elementary school and finding it so difficult to summarize or retell the story. It was hard for me to sum up the main story in a brief paragraph. I was kind of like Jessica in Chapter 6 who recounted each event of the story rather than explaining the main parts. It was probably due to the fact that the books might have been too hard for me to read.

Taberski made a really good point in this chapter about why a child is having trouble with comprehension. Sometimes children can have reading accuracy rates of 95 percent or higher and still have difficulty comprehending the story. That’s due to the difficulty in the text level. The child can read the words, but it doesn’t make any sense to them. At that point, they’re just reading words and not comprehending the story. I made the mistake of encouraging Sydnie to read harder texts because I thought that the other books were too easy for her. She was able to read the harder book, but she had difficulty with retelling the story. Now when she reads to me, I always have her retell the story. If she chooses a book that is too hard for her, then I read it to her and have her retell the story at the end.