Dear Professor,
We would like to introduce you to The Comprehension Experience, our new book with Heinemann on reading comprehension. Part of our motivation for writing this book was to provide a new choice for people like you who are teaching undergraduates and graduate students of education and who want to give them an excellent grounding in the principles and practices of effective comprehension instruction. Here are some of the features of the book that we think are relevant:
· Our pre-reading Anticipation Guide engages students immediately in discussing their beliefs and primes them for the ideas that are presented in the book. The same guide is presented at the end of the book so that your students can compare their initial responses with their post-reading responses.
· The first chapter lays out important milestones in the history of comprehension research and theory. This useful foundation for your students will form the basis for interesting discussions and build an intellectual framework for their future decisions on classroom instruction.
· We have separate chapters for guiding the reading of narrative and informational text. Many in our field don’t make clear distinctions between the two, but understanding the difference makes for much more effective instruction.
· Numerous dialogues illustrate effective teacher-student interactions for narrative and informational texts. These useful models bring key instructional principles to life.
· We give considerable attention to metacognition and offer specific examples for engaging students in this important kind of thinking.
· Our comparisons of different ways of guiding readers through text will spark fruitful discussions about various classroom practices.
· We offer practical ideas about how to use writing to enhance and deepen comprehension in ways that seamlessly integrate reading and writing.
· In the final chapter, we analyze key instructional practices in terms of how well they foster independence of K–12 readers.
We have heard from graduate and undergraduate students and faculty who say how readable the book is and how much they appreciate the natural flow of ideas. Many have said how well the book presents a clear and practical treatment of constructivist learning. Literacy coaches have told us how they are using the book in their work with classroom teachers, suggesting that it will be a welcome addition to classes on literacy coaching.
We hope you will consider The Comprehension Experience as a text for your university classes. If you’re interested in discussing any of our ideas, we’d love to hear from you.
Dorsey ()
Denise ()