Spotlight on Comprehension: Building a Literacy of Thoughtfulness

Spotlight on Comprehension presents a tapestry of short, highly practical essays loaded with ready to use strategies for teaching reading comprehension and assessing understanding. Hoyt and an All-Star ensemble of contributors - including Ellin Keene, Tony Stead, Nell Duke, Franki Sibberson, Mike Opitz, David and Yvonne Freeman, Adria Klein, Mary Lee Hahn and Gretchen Owocki - cover the spectrum of comprehension instruction, addressing topics like:

• implementing the latest research on reading comprehension into your instruction
• improving children's comprehension strategies, especially questioning, inferring, and summarizing
• helping emerging, developing, and second language readers improve their comprehension
• using writing to build reading comprehension
• tackling a range of texts and genres across the curriculum, including standardized tests
• building a robust vocabulary
• organizing instruction around guided reading, the read aloud, and independent reading.

Best yet, Hoyt and her expert contributors include handy tools like checklists, sample lesson plans, book lists, strategy lists, assessment rubrics, and learning extensions that will help you take their ideas and use them in your own classroom immediately. Each chapter even includes Key Questions designed to stimulate personal reflection and support professional conversations or book-study groups. Read Spotlight on Comprehension - in short segments, or all at once; by yourself, or with friends and colleagues - and gather a wealth of strategies for building a literacy of thoughtfulness which will empower your students to get the most meaning from the varied texts of our world.