Chapter 6

Chapter six was about how to scaffold comprehension of digital literature. Throughout this text we were introduced to many different ways to build comprehension. Think alouds were encouraged for introducing some of these comprehension skills. This means that the teacher literally “thinks out loud” as they are going through the digital text or resource.

Some of the comprehension tools introduced in the chapter were features that are built right into the text, such as animated illustrations, online sticky notes, or hyperlinked vocabulary. Other features are online features, such as Google lit trips and online book reports/reviews. One of the tools that I found the most fascinating was the virtual author visits.

The authors emphasized the importance of getting to know the author of literature, and their background to their writing. This made me think about how important that truly is. When I began researching Mo Willems, for the module 6 explorations assignment, I learned so much about the books that I read every single day to the child I babysit. This gave me a whole new look at these books that I thought I was so familiar with. For children to understand the author, they are digging deeper into the stories, from the author’s standpoint.

Meeting authors is obviously difficult to do, along with being costly, so the internet creates this much easier and much more affordable way to get to know an author. I think this would be important to do several times throughout the school year, on authors that teachers spend a lot of time on.

One author I can remember learning a lot about in elementary school is Dr. Seuss. This is the only author that I can remember learning about, and it was not as in depth as it could be today with the use of technology. The things I learned about Dr. Seuss still stick with me today, which shows how important getting to know an author can be.