97 Page Book of Primary Grade Comprehension Lessons With an Emphasis on Multicultural Books

This collection of reading lessons focuses on grades 1 and 2 and privileges the explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies through a reading workshop format, using primarily multicultutral texts. Graduate students I taught in 2006 and 2007 at Manhattanville College authored these lessons. The lessons were informed by Debbie Miller's (2002, Stenhouse) Reading With Meaning. The lesson plan format was prescribed by the college.

The comprehension strategies listed below are privileged:

Reading Comprehension Strategies

1. Schema/Making connections— between texts, the world, and students' lives (sometimes called text-to-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self connections). Readers bring their background knowledge and experiences of life to a text.
2. Creating mental images. These "mind pictures" help readers enter the text visually in their mind's eye.
3. Asking questions. Readers who use this strategy actively ask questions of the text as they read.
4. Determining importance. This strategy describes a reader's conscious and ongoing determination of what is important in a text. 
5. Inferring. When readers infer, they create new meaning on the basis of their life experiences and clues from the book.
6. Synthesizing. Although this strategy is sometimes considered a retell, synthesizing is a way of spiraling deeper into the book. Readers might explore the text through the perspective of different characters to come to new understandings about the character's life and world.

Table of Contents
I. Activating Schema 
Emily Traychef: A Shelter in Our Car ...........................4
Dawn Meldrum: An Angel for Solomon Singer .................7
Gail Dobosh: The Royal Bee. ....................................11
Nikyda Scott: Cornrows ..........................................13
Joanna Lewczuk: The Araboolies Of Liberty Street ..........16

II. Creating Mental/Aural Images 
Jennifer DeLaney: What Charlie Heard .......................21
Nancy Woolf: Sky Sisters..........................................23
Ashley Blondin: Night in the Country...........................26
oanna Becker: Peach and Blue .................................29
Roni Blaustein: The First Music .................................33
Stacey Cleary: Georgia’s Bones .................................38
Mary Carroll: Ellington Was Not a Street .....................44
Meghan Zandoli: Lily Brown’s Paintings ..................... 47
Heather DeBlasio: Mud ...........................................50
Meghan Winslow: Salt Hands .................................54

III. Asking Questions
Corinne Berthiaume: The Librarian from Basra:A True Story from Iraq ....................................59 Cynthia Carpentieri: If You Listen..................................62

IV. Determining Importance: Non-Fiction 
Nancy Alderman: Spiders .........................................65
Lindsey Keller: Creepy Crawlies .................................70
Amanda Jenkins: Bugs Bugs Bugs.............................. 72
Sheila Chaglasian: Dirt............................................74

V. Inferring
Lindsay Guerra: Creatures of Earth, Sea, and Sky and Where Are You Going Manyoni? ............77

VI. Synthesis 
Lindsay Babcock: The Dot and Museum Trip .................................81
Karen Thornton: The Pot That Juan Built..................... 84
Lauren Mintzer: The Rag Coat ................................. 87
Miriam Stein: The Story of Jumping Mouse and A Color of His Own ...............................91

You  can access the full work here: Comprehension Lessons