Reading with Meaning (Paperback)

by Debbie Miller (Author)
Key Phrases: creating mental images, determining importance, five little ducks, Teaching Comprehension, Stenhouse Publishers, Debbie Miller (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

If you have ever wondered how to teach comprehension strategies to primary-age children, read on.

First, imagine a primary-grade classroom where all the children are engaged and motivated; where the buzz of excited, emerging readers fills the air; where simultaneously words are sounded out and connections are made between the books of their choice and the experiences of their lives. Then, open these pages.

Welcome to Debbie Miller's real classroom where real students are learning to love to read, to write, and are together creating a collaborative and caring environment. In this book, Debbie focuses on how best to teach children strategies for comprehending text. She leads the reader through the course of a year showing how her students learn to become thoughtful, independent, and strategic readers. Through explicit instruction, modeling, classroom discussion, and, most important, by gradually releasing responsibility to her students, Debbie provides a model for creating a climate and culture of thinking and learning.

Here you will learn:

• techniques for modeling thinking;
• specific examples of modeled strategy lessons for inferring, asking questions, making connections, determining importance in text, creating mental images, and synthesizing information;
• how to help children make their thinking visible through oral, written, artistic, and dramatic responses to literature;
• how to successfully develop book clubs as a way for children to share their thinking.

Reading with Meaning shows you how to bring your imagined classroom to life. You will emerge with new tools for teaching comprehension strategies and a firm appreciation that a rigorous classroom can also be nurturing and joyful.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Stenhouse Publishers; 1 edition (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571103074
• ISBN-13: 978-1571103079
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,938 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

109 of 109 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reading for Meaning is a "must have" for any primary teacher, June 3, 2003

By	Cindy (San Diego) - See all my reviews

If you have dedicated yourself to producing thoughtful readers who read for meaning, this is the book you need! Not only is it filled with helpful lesson ideas, but the arrangement of each chapter follows a scaffolded approach to help young readers engage and develop as lifelong readers. Miller shows teachers how to lay out the entire year. Included in this book are chapters about schema building, mental images, inferring, questioning, non-fiction reading, and synthesizing. She focuses on one comprehension strategy in each chapter, including how to introduce it to students AND what children's books she considers "tried-and-true." At the end of each chapter, the author includes a list of children's book titles that all highlight the comprehension strategy perfectly for young children. I have purchased many of the titles that she recommends. All of the books are outstanding pieces of literature that children adore. Also, the lessons work well in a Reader's Workshop format. After instruction, students can get busy practicing reading from their own books by using what they learned right away. This book is an outstanding resource for any teacher!

54 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Have for Any Primary Grade Teacher, December 7, 2003

By	Education Oasis "Education Oasis" (USA) - See all my reviews

There are certain "must have" books for teachers. This is one of them. Miller takes a decade of reading research (as synthesized by Pearson, et. al., 1992), and puts it into practice in her classroom. We move through the year with her, watching as she scaffolds for us and her students explicit reading instruction that truly works.

In Chapter 1, Miller goes straight to the crux of the matter: Gradually release responsibility to students; teach a few strategies of great consequence in depth over time; give students the gifts of time, choice, response, community, and structure.

Chapter 2 tells us how-and why-we should create a sense of community in the classroom. "Real classroom communities," writes Miller, "are more than just a look. Real communities flourish when we bring together the voices, hearts, and souls of the people who inhabit them." We must be "deliberate" in September if we are to create the type of environment in which growth and authentic learning will occur.

The Reader's Workshop is the topic of Chapter 3. Wait a minute, you may be saying, how does one have a "Reader's Workshop" when most of the students are not yet reading? "Readers' workshop in September," Miller writes, "is less about teaching children how to read and more about modeling and teaching children what it is that good readers do, setting the tone for the workshop and establishing its expectations and procedures, and engaging and motivating children to want to learn to read." And so Miller shows us, in detail, how we can go about this foundation-building. She begins with "Book Selection," then "Reading Aloud, Mini-Lessons, Reading and Conferring," and finally "Sharing."

With our solid underpinning in place we are now ready to settle in---the topic of Chapter 3. Here we learn how and why to give children choices when selecting books. Miller also discusses briefly phonics and word identification---two things that she believes should be taught side-by-side with comprehension strategies.

In the next two chapters Miller delves in depth into the comprehension strategies of schema and visualizing. She then devotes a chapter to "Digging Deeper." It is now January, she notes, and "[t]he time is right for increasing the sophistication of the read-alouds, showing them how to engage in more challenging dialogue and making connections from our past experiences to more in-depth learning." Timing, as they say, is everything. It is this type of knowledge and the ability to exploit the foundation that has been so carefully laid that makes Miller a teacher extraordinaire.

Chapter 8 through 10 are devoted to the remaining reading strategies of inferring, questioning, determining importance, and synthesizing. Miller includes numerous anecdotes, vignettes, lesson models, tips, techniques, and more. A list of references and a detailed index are included.

Practical and brilliant, this is one book that is definitely required reading for primary grade teachers.

Reviewed by the Education Oasis staff

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a great book for primary teachers!, August 24, 2002

By	Stephanie Bentley (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

In this book, Debbie Miller takes you inside the walls of her first grade classroom, leading you through the course of the school year where her students become independent and motivated readers. You can hear the excited buzz of the students as they discover meaning in their reading and thoughtfully discuss their findings with their peers. Her students are intrinsically motivated to learn from their reading as they simultaneously decode the text.

I highly recommend this book to any primary teacher looking for new strategies and techniques for teaching and modeling comprehension in their classroom. Debbie Miller gives fun and practical ideas that can be applied in most any grade. She supplies the reader with endless strategies for creating a collaborative and safe learning environment. Every page is packed full of inspiring stories and examples that will transform your teaching and questioning strategies. Don't let this book pass you by!