To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension [Paperback]

Ellin Oliver Keene (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0325003238 | ISBN-13: 978-0325003238 | Publication Date: January 29, 2008

"This is a work of incredible scope: adventurous, ingratiating, challenging, genuinely groundbreaking, and gorgeously written. It will knock the socks off this profession."

-Harvey Daniels

Author of Subjects Matter and Content-Area Writing

The renaissance in comprehension instruction launched by Mosaic of Thought has led to changes in hundreds of thousands of classrooms, where teachers now model reading strategies, and students probe meaning more deeply. But no book in the field has satisfactorily answered the question: What does it really mean to comprehend? In To Understand, Ellin Oliver Keene not only explores this important question, but reveals what teachers can do to encourage all students to engage in deep understanding far more consistently than before.

In discovering what's really behind comprehension, To Understand goes well beyond comprehension strategy instruction. Keene identifies specific Dimensions and Outcomes of Understanding-characteristics identified in readers with a highly developed ability to make sense of text-to help you rethink what comprehension is. She demonstrates how to leverage the Dimensions and Outcomes into relevant, provocative, memorable instruction.

To Understand proposes a model that incorporates all aspects of literacy instruction-word learning and comprehension-and describes how teachers can focus on what matters most in literacy content. Keene shows that when teachers target the most essential content, they have the time to help every student engage more deeply with texts and discover a passion for reading and learning. The model is founded on four simple, but powerful concepts:

• Focus on what's important by teaching vital concepts in depth rather than skimming over nonessential skills
• Use research-based teaching and learning strategies, including proven-effective comprehension and language-based strategies, then taking them further by showing students how the strategies lead them to a fuller understand of a text
• Teach the essential concepts over a long period of time so that children have an opportunity to learn not only a comprehension strategy, but to explore where that strategy leads in their understanding
• Give students numerous opportunities to apply the concepts in a variety of texts and contexts.

With To Understand in hand, you'll find new ways to draw out the innate intellectual interest in every student and spark dramatic improvements in literacy learning and comprehension, even among students who struggle. You'll see that by rethinking what it means to understand-by teaching children the Outcomes and Dimensions of understanding-you can help students exceed expectations while broadening your vision of their abilities, their capacity, and their energy for learning.

There's still more-much more-to learn about comprehension. Read To Understand, join Ellin Oliver Keene, and discover that what's at the very core of comprehension can not only reinvigorate your teaching but take your students to new, uncharted levels of learning.

Book study groups and PLCs, save 15% with the To Understand Book Study Bundle. A $412.50 value for $350.63.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ellin Oliver Keene is the author or coauthor of Talk About Understanding (2012); Comprehension Going Forward (2011); To Understand (2008); and Mosaic of Thought, Second Edition (2007), all published by Heinemann. She has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, and adjunct professor of reading and writing. For sixteen years she directed staff development initiatives at the Denver-based Public Education & Business Coalition. She served as Deputy Director of the Cornerstone Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania for 4 years, where she oversaw literacy and professional learning for teachers in high-poverty schools throughout the nation. She lives with her husband, David, and daughter, Elizabeth, in Denver and works with schools and districts around the country. Ellin Oliver Keene is a Heinemann Professional Development provider. She now provides long-term professional development residencies in partnership with Heinemann Professional Development. Click for an overview of the Keene Residency or to learn more about Heinemann residencies as a long-term literacy action plan.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Heinemann (January 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0325003238
• ISBN-13: 978-0325003238
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #94,991 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ellin Oliver Keene is the author of To Understand (2008), coauthor of Comprehension Going Forward (2011), and coauthor of Mosaic of Thought, Second Edition (2007), all published by Heinemann. She is also the author of Assessing Comprehension Thinking Strategies (Shell, 2006). She has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, and adjunct professor of reading and writing. For sixteen years she directed staff development initiatives at the Denver-based Public Education & Business Coalition. She served as Deputy Director of the Cornerstone Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania for 4 years, where she oversaw literacy and professional learning for teachers in high-poverty schools throughout the nation. Ellin Oliver Keene is a Heinemann Professional Development provider. She now provides long-term professional development residencies in partnership with Heinemann Professional Development. She lives with her husband, David, and daughter, Elizabeth, in Denver and works with schools and districts around the country.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The future of comprehension instruction..., February 18, 2008

By 

James Hiller (Beaverton, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension (Paperback)

... is beautifully and inspirationally detailed in Ellin Keene's new book, "To Understand".

Building effectively on the base of her original work, Mosaic of Thought, Second Edition: The Power of Comprehension Strategy Instruction, Keene spells out the next steps in teaching those comprehension strategies by getting them to always think more deeply, more purposefully, more richly. More so than just a mindless rattling off of the comprehension strategies, To Understand challenges you to see how those strategies lead to a deeper understanding of how what you've read impacts you.

So often, we burn through a series of books with kids, inspiring them to read quantity, without much forethought of how this literature must be effecting them. We believe that reading a million pages, or a thousand book, and getting a principal to kiss a goat, is reading success. Keene challenges us to go beyond that, to seek ways that we must inspire our children not only to read books, but to talk about how that reading impacts our minds and hearts. Children have a remarkable capacity to think deeply and purposefully, if given the chance, if taught how to do it, and if supported in the classroom.

Keene offers repeatedly through her book a simple mantra: teach a few concepts, over a period of time, with great intensity, and across a variety of texts and genres. Instead of trying to tackle any state's 134 page document of what's "essential" in literacy learning, she had four pages (four!) of what research says "is essential", and sticking to those, in the face of increasing demands of teachers from NCLB, is the true way to go. Rather boldly, Ellin even encourages us to practice civil disobedience when it comes to making educational decisions for your classroom.

Ellin's writing style is personal and affecting throughout the book. She addresses us personally through many of the chapters, sharing bits and pieces of her life, as she encourages us to always do with our students. Rather magically, she begins each chapter of her book with a focus on a "master", an artist or a writer who exemplifies the traits that chapter is examining. I found these vignettes to be powerful. And as she shares the pain of losing her mother, sending her daughter off to college, and being transformed herself by looking at wonderful pieces of art, the real Ellin comes through.

What this book isn't is a guide for teaching comprehension strategies on day one. While she provides countless helpful charts detailing the information she's espousing, you won't find what to do the first day, what to do the second day, et. al. Ellin trusts her teachers too much for that, always suggesting that we look at our own classes, assess their needs, and teach from there. That trust scares many people, but I find it exhilarating.

In fact, this entire book is best described as exhilarating. When I first picked up "Mosaic of Thought" I had no idea it would transform my teaching and reading instruction so dramatically. Now, as I read her new book, I see Ellin, standing just off in the horizon, just a few paces, beckoning us to move forward ourselves, beckoning us to see "what's next". Buy this book, and savor her vision, her ideas, and transform your teaching again!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing and Inspirational, July 9, 2008

By 

Laura Candler (Fayetteville, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension (Paperback)

"Inspirational" is not a word I would normally apply to a book about reading comprehension, but this book is like no other. In her new book, To Understand, Ellin Keene explores what's essential in literacy instruction, but her words could easily be applied to the entire teaching and learning process. She charges teachers with developing "Renaissance kids" who pursue a wide range of interests, dig deeply into books, and who are willing to pursue new ideas through their own discovery and research. . . kids who truly experience the joy of reading to learn rather than just learning to read. Keene asks us to leave behind the scripted, cookie-cutter approaches to teaching reading and focus on what's important, giving students numerous opportunities to apply a wide variety of reading strategies. This book is not one to read quickly in order to prepare for tomorrow's lesson; instead, it's a book to savor slowly, a chapter at a time.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars To Understand New Horizons in Reading Comprehension, May 24, 2009

By 

M. Dorr "reading tchr" (Crofton, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension (Paperback)

This book is a detailed account of Ellin Keane's work in the area of reading comprehension. It included a lot of interesting charts to represent the information but did not include a lot of student work samples, graphic organizers, nor photos. Her "New Horizons" point of view and the idea of a "literacy studio" is quite different, especially if your county has curriculum mandates which dictate certain skills and strategies be taught. What does it mean to comprehend? This book leads us to many conclusions in understanding how to undertand.