Comprehension Literacy Log 2

Fresch, M.J. (Ed.). (2008). An Essential History of Current Reading Practices. Newark: International Reading Association, Inc.

I actually enjoyed reading Chapter 5, Reading Comprehension: An Evolution of Theory, Research, and Practice by Maureen McLaughlin in An Essential History of Current Reading Practices by Mary Jo Fresch.  I'm sorry I did not seek out a text like this on my own because I have often felt out of the loop when it comes to certain parts of the history of education.  I remember reading about Vygotsky, Piaget and the like but when the conversation turns to programs and politics in education 20-30 years ago, I feel lost.  This might be a book I'd skim/read over the summer just so I'd feel more confident in the trends and constants in literacy instruction. As I read about the history of research in reading comprehension I realized that a lot of the theory and practice I use in my classroom today has been supported by research since before I was born!  Ken Goodman coined the term miscue in 1967 and "changed our thinking about oral reading errors by suggesting that they were not errors, but rather insights into the child's reading" (Fresch, McLaughlin, 2008, p.86).  This is what I was taught throughout my college education, I'm wondering if my teachers in elementary school understood this as well.  A recurring theme in the chapter highlighted the time it takes for research based practices to make their way into the classrooms.  If this idea was published in the 60s surely the practice would have made its way into the classroom by the 90s when I was in elementary school.
I really enjoyed the way this chapter was organized by decade and the implications for teaching  included within each decade.  It was easy to see the progression and the patterns over time. 

Pearson, P. D., Hamm, D. N. (2005). The assessment of reading comprehension: A review of practices - Past, present, and future. In S. G. Paris and S. A. Stahl (Eds.) Current issues in reading comprehension and assessment (pp. 13-69). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

This text took longer and was more difficult to comprehend fully, but the way it was organized helped me skim the text and helped me organize my notes.  Many parts of this text took me several readings to understand. I enjoyed how Pearson and Hamm organized the text by different assessments, theories, processes, and shifts.  One part that stood out to me covered the creation of the Cloze Procedure.  I was amazed that the procedure was developed to battle the subjectivity of test developers but nothing is mentioned about how texts were chosen!  Every nth word is to be deleted and only exact replacements were scored correctly!  I don't guess I understand why synonyms were not counted as correct answers from the beginning.  I would really like to learn more about passage selection because of course the text matters a great deal to a students success on a comprehension activity, not that the Cloze procedure is a comprehension activity.  I'm not convinced of that.  I liked the amount of information on what happened in the 90s and new initiatives for the future.