7 Keys to Comprehension by Susan Zimmermann & Chryse Hutchins

Author:Susan Zimmermann & Chryse Hutchins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307453181
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2008-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

© THE NEW YORKER COLLECTION 1961 CHARLES E. MARTIN FROM CARTOONBANK.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The best reading gift you can give your child is to honor her thinking. You want her to feel she has a personal stake in finding the answers to her predictions. You want her to know her unique interpretations matter. This is what will make reading exciting, fun, and, ultimately, meaningful to her.

You can help your child understand that she makes inferences throughout the day, not just when she reads. In effect, everyone “reads” the world, taking in external clues, combining them with understanding of how the world works, and drawing conclusions based on a blend of evidence and personal experience.

A child can size up Dad's exhausted slouch in the recliner when he's fixated on Monday night football and infer it's not a good time to ask for more allowance. A 6-year-old guesses from her mom's expression that the toy she reached for at the checkout counter will not end up on the grocery bill. A boy hears his father on the phone and, while privy to only half the conversation, infers that soccer practice was cancelled.

Just as your child is becoming an expert at reading body language, picking up clues from a one-sided phone conversation, and making predictions about what will happen, she can also use similar skills to draw inferences from her reading.

DEMONSTRATE INFERENTIAL THINKING

When you read to your child, you can share the behind-the-scenes thinking needed to draw inferences.

Once, sandwiched between her young nephews Neale (9 years old) and Jacob (4) on a road trip from Denver to Omaha, Chryse read them a Clifford book. On each page, the huge red dog accidentally crashed into buildings, dump trucks, or light poles. She explained to the kids how Clifford's big body kept getting him into different mishaps, until her sister Laura interjected, “They really leave a lot out of the story. You have to make up Clifford's disasters in your mind.”

Chryse, then, consciously went beyond the words in the book and encouraged her nephews to talk about each of Clifford's funny encounters. At one point Neale piped up: “Oops! Clifford's not supposed to play with the electrical spools. He thinks they're a toy. I bet he gets in trouble!”

Sure enough, on the next page Clifford crashed the heavy spool through a neighbor's garage. Neale's prediction helped him understand the worried look on the dog's face as he watched the spool's path of destruction. Without thinking back to the words and the pictures, Neale would have missed the humor surrounding the gangly dog's mishaps.

Word Games Build the Power to Infer

Word games also help children develop their ability to infer. The road trip progressed with Chryse and Laura switching among reading to the boys, driving, and playing diversionary games.

One of the boys' favorite games was the Simile Game. One person would call out a phrase like, “As prickly as a ______.” Then they would rotate around the car, taking turns to fill in the blank. The tricky part was not to repeat a previous guess.

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