"Comprehension Windows Strategy" Article

Reading this article was refreshing because it opened my eyes to a completely new way to have students responding to the text they read. I haven't seen anything like this before and I could see my second grade students loving this. In addition to it motivating students, I feel like it would be a very effective strategy that could be carried over into many different content areas or lessons. I liked when it stated, "This process represents much more than just a gathering of facts. At its best, it should foster comprehension and engage students in critical thinking." This is so important because students should be expected to take their thinking to a higher level and not just recall the facts of what they read. In first reading this article, although I really like this strategy, I feel as though it would be difficult for second graders at first. As I read, all I could think to myself was model, model, model. It would have to be presented to students many times and in a variety of different circumstances, but I feel it would be worth it when finally being used appropriately. I had a thought that at the beginning of second grade you could some how incorporate this strategy and modify it a little for fiction text, just so students become used to using the prop and writing on sticky notes. They are already familiar with fiction text so they would just have to get used to the strategy itself to begin with. I was thinking you could give heading such as problems, character's feelings, etc. Once students became comfortable with using sticky notes and finding information from a fiction text and sorting it into categories, then you may introduce it with nonfiction text. But, I feel that there will have to first be a lot of exposure to nonfiction text and its features. You may even give students sticky notes with information already written down and just simply ask them to sort the already labeled sticky notes. I too feel like citing the information correctly might be a difficult step and may not introduce that right away. It may also be beneficial to have students get more modeling and guided practice in their guided reading groups. This way they had appropriate leveled texts and each prop could be differentiated to meet individual needs.
To teach about nonfiction in my second grade classroom, we spend a lot of time comparing fiction to nonfiction. We look at tons of books, sort them, discuss their features, do scavenger hunts in nonfiction texts to find the conventions which make them nonfiction. This takes a lot of time, and it would be necessary before being able to implement CWS. Every year my students work on a nonfiction conventions notebook, where they have to illustrate examples of each nonfiction text feature they have found, such as headings, labels, captions, etc. They then write about how it helps readers. This is a reference they can go back to throughout the year when they are engaging in nonfiction text.
This Comprehension Windows Strategy would have been an awesome strategy for me to use with my students this year. They worked on writing their own nonfiction books for young author's night on any topic of their choice. It took about 2 months for them to read books, search online, research, learn about note-taking, and then to finally create their nonfiction books. The books had a table of contents, glossary, headings, labels, diagrams, captions. It was an amazing project, but a lot of work for second grade, but they loved it. I'm thinking this next year that I could use CWS as a way for my students to organize their research, and then structure their research to write their books. This would have been really helpful if I had known about it this year. I'm looking forward to trying this in my classroom! Great article!