Product Details

• Author: Andie Cunningham and Ruth Shagoury
• Year: 2005
• Grade Range: K-2

• Media: 136 pp/paper
• ISBN: 978-157110-396-3
• Item No.: WEB-0396

It is never too early to start comprehension instruction. In fact, reading begins with meaning making. Andie Cunningham and Ruth Shagoury designed a reading program for five- and six-year-olds based on this premise.

Most of the students in Andie's Portland, Oregon, kindergarten class have little or no alphabet knowledge when they enter the classroom in the fall. English is a second—or third—language for many of the children in this low-income neighborhood. Through research-based principles, carefully structured routines, and innovative activities, even the youngest learners can develop comprehension skills from their first days in school.

The children in Starting with Comprehension are grappling with school culture for the first time and learning to work with classmates who speak a variety of different languages. These emergent readers learn to present their understanding of what they read through writing, talk, movement, and art.

Kindergartners and preschoolers are different from readers who know how to decode texts. Andie and Ruth show how comprehension skills can be nurtured and strengthened even before decoding begins. In this classroom, meaning making becomes part of community building as children link reading, thinking, and communicating.

Table of Contents

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Contents
A Note to Readers
1. Kindergartens and Tide Pools
2. Becoming a Community of Readers: A New Language for Learning
3. Connections and Comprehension: "Sprouts Are the Same Color as Green Power Rangers"
4. Using Movement, Mind Pictures, and Metaphor to Comprehend
5. Asking Questions Together
6. Spiraling Deeper: Determining Importance and Conferring
7. Standing in the Waves: Synthesizing Information
Acknowledgments
References

Andie Cunningham
Andie is currently teaching at Lewis and Clark College's graduate school of education in Portland, OR. She teaches graduate students who are working to become teachers and current teachers who are working to become reading specialists.
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Ruth Shagoury
Ruth Shagoury (formerly Ruth Shagoury Hubbard) can't imagine anything more fascinating than exploring the minds of children and adolescents as they grow as readers, writers, and language users.
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