The take-home message....

The final chapter of my book discusses at length, “What works and what doesn’t”, according to the National Council of Teachers of English.  They use a scale from 1 to 4 to rate several different genres of teaching tools, techniques and content for an effective literacy program.  This scale describes 1 as being not important, 2 as having minor importance, 3 as being important, and 4 as being essential.  There is an abundance of information for each rating in several different categories, so I would only like to focus on what I think is important and also what I plan to use as a teacher in the “essential” category. 

The Essential Media and Tools Used to Teach:

•          Authentic connected texts which are complete and unabridged
•          Nonfiction texts
•          Predictable texts
•          School-to-home connections
•          Suggestions for extended readings

The Essential Reading Materials:

•          Authentic multicultural perspectives (text and illustrations)
•          Accurate and current information
•          Wide range of purposes
•          Content likely to engage and interest readers
•          Content that is of interest to both genders

The Essential grouping techniques:

•          Small groups selected for ability and interest
•          Students working individually

The Essentials for Instruction:

•          Role play
•          Projects
•          Student generated topics and questions
•          Scaffolded instruction toward independence
•          Discussion

The Essentials for the Student’s Role:

•          Choice of reading selections
•          Choice of reading extension activities

In the assessment section of, “What works and what doesn’t”, the author ranks unit tests and multiple choice tests as a 1 and a 2, but she gives student-directed assessment and classroom-based ongoing assessments a 3 and a 4.  I agree and disagree with her for the following reason: As a science teacher I feel like I need to be able to assess my student’s knowledge of the material using quizzes and exams.  I propose using a combination of all of these assessment techniques. I feel like every student should have the opportunity to dispute any answer that is marked incorrect.  If they can provide me with logical justification for why they gave a certain answer, even though it was not necessarily the answer I was looking for, I will give them credit.  I had a professor in my undergraduate program use a similar technique and it worked out very well.  He called it an I.I. or Individual Intellectualism.  The other students and I felt respected and were able to show that we didn’t get the question wrong because we were ill prepared, we just interpreted the information in a different way. 

I have learned a lot from this reading and will be taking a great deal of it into the classroom with me.  I will do my best to make sure my students will read with a particular purpose in mind and I will help them though the before, during and after reading process so they can extract meaning from the text.  I will assess the background knowledge the students have in a particular subject before moving on to the next thing and provide a frame for them to build on in order to help their knowledge grow, brick by brick. 

I would like to thank everyone who followed my blog and thank Penny for making me do this blog.  It has been very educational and I feel like I am taking a lot from this assignment and from the class in general.  I haven’t ever taken a class like this, being a science major.  I have to say there is a definite learning curve but overall it has been a good experience and I appreciate the knowledge that I am taking away.

Namaste

References

Benjamin, Amy.  But I’m Not A Reading Teacher: Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas.  Larchmont, NY.  Eye on Education, 2007

Who knew there were so many different strategies to teach reading?

In continuing the topic of reading strategies, Benjamin had some great insights into strategies for the reader to use during the reading process and afterward to help them retain the new information.  There is a lot of repetition in this book.  The author seems to reiterate what she has already said in nearly every chapter.  I can’t help but think this is to help me as the reader of her book to retain the information that she is presenting.  After all, repetition is key to successful learning.  The reader must be engaged, they must have prior knowledge of the subject in order to make meaningful connections and learn new information, and there must be a purpose for reading. 

It is important during the reading process for the reader to recognize and be aware of when their concentration and comprehension breaks down so they can get back on track and repair the gaps in the comprehension.  Benjamin discusses meta-reading, which implies that the reader is thinking about reading and learning.  It is also called self-talk.  This self-talk is what helps us stay on track.   For example you may say to yourself, “Wait a minute, I’m not sure I understood that sentence, let me go back and read it again more slowly this time.”  Another example could be, “Oh there’s that word again.  I’m still not sure what it means, maybe by reading the surrounding sentences, I can figure it out.”  

 

Trouble with comprehension is a common problem caused by either internal or external factors.  An internal factor would be if the reader doesn’t have the prior knowledge to understand the new material.  In this case, the reader would need to scaffold in order to understand the text.  An external problem would be sensory interference such as noise, uncomfortable physical conditions or insufficient light.

 It can help a reader to comprehend a text by recognizing textual pattern clusters.  These include:

1.       Narrative and description

2.       Classification, definition, exemplification

3.       Cause and effect, comparison/contrast

4.       Process analysis (sequence)

Reading in the each individual content area has its own textual pattern cluster.  Any kind of story will be narrative and descriptive, newspaper editorials will have cause and effect, comparison/contrast, a biology textbook will have classification, definition, exemplification, and mathematics and foreign language texts will have process analysis. 

In the real world of teaching, we know it doesn’t stop here.  It is important to recognize if a reader may be struggling with the text and one way we can do this is by assessing comprehension after the reading.  Post-reading exercises can tell us a lot about whether a student understands and is retaining the material they have just read.  Traditionally this would come in the form of a quiz or test however the author calls those, “Guess-what-you-have-to-remember assessment”.  She suggests a few wrap-up activities that could be more beneficial to the students.  Having the students write a sentence expressing the main idea or maybe some supportive details is a good way to assess comprehension.  She stresses the importance of including some vocabulary in the wrap-up activity and asking them to make inferences about the reading.  Another good after-reading activity is an out loud question and answer segment, where the teacher asks the class questions about the reading and then calls on students to answer.  We need to look for opportunities on a regular basis that allow students to tie their learning into their own culture.  Wrap-up activities create a link between the known and the new information.  I don’t have experience teaching kids yet but I do teach patient education classes at the hospital I work at, and I always make it a point to leave a little time for a question and answer segment at the end of the class.  I ask the patients questions from the material I just presented and call on them to answer.  It has proven to be most effective in helping them to understand and retain what they had just learned.  

 


References
Benjamin, Amy.  But I’m Not A Reading Teacher: Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas.  Larchmont, NY.  Eye on Education, 2007 

Preparing To Read....

Continuing with the topic from my last post, there are several other subject areas that the author delves into as far as what type of reading is expected.  Reading for computer education is largely metaphorical.  The meanings of some words are very obvious, like the word mouse for the finger-operated cursor-control that looks a little bit like the rodent.  Others, such as cookie, are more obscure.  In science text, we see a great deal of graphic information, such as tables and charts, as well as photos and illustrations.  However because the text is inauthentic, it can be bland.  Inauthentic text refers to text that has been written to explain the subject to students in a particular grade level and not to advance the field.  A good thing about this type of text is that it has been tailored to meet the reading needs of school-aged kids.  But a bad thing is that it’s difficult to get students interested in straightforward facts devoid of a point of view.  Authentic text is a primary source document. A primary research study in the medical field would be an example of authentic text.   Social studies tends to be like science in the way that it uses mostly inauthentic text in secondary education although some primary source articles have also been known to be used from time to time. 

Benjamin breaks down the reading process even further in the next few chapters.  The first topic she describes is, “Before reading strategies”.  To be a successful reader, one must establish a purpose for reading.  We can divide reading into three categories based on purpose.  These include, skimming, scanning and close reading.  Skimming gives you an overview or a general idea of what the text is about.  Any kind of informational text can be skimmed but fiction and poetry are not meant for this type of reading.  The purpose for scanning is to look up or locate specific information in order to answer a question.  Close reading is what we do for reading comprehension and it usually begins with skimming.  Skilled readers are used to knowing, before they begin, what they are looking for in a text.  Benjamin put together a reader’s guide to prepare for reading, that includes these questions:

1.       What am I about to read?

2.       Approximately how long do I plan to spend reading today?

3.       Approximately how many pages will I read today?

4.       What is my purpose?  What am I looking for?

5.       What are my expectations?

She gives a great example of a mini-lesson to establish a purpose for reading.  A 10^th grade Biology class is supposed to read a passage about how the heart pumps blood.  The teacher in this case divided the class up into three groups who each had a different purpose when reading the passage.  To achieve their goal, group 1 had to read the whole passage carefully, group 2 had to scan for the key words and group 3 had to scan for some specific words.  She describes this as a worthwhile expenditure of class time.  I would have to agree.  I think group assignments really help the students to comprehend the material. 

References

Benjamin, Amy.  But I’m Not A Reading Teacher: Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas.  Larchmont, NY.  Eye on Education, 2007

Subject Area Reading...

In continuing my reading, I came across a chapter on academic genres or subject area reading.  The author pointed out that it used to be thought that reading is reading.  That if you can read one kind of text, you can read anything.  Most elementary age children are taught to read by using story text.   However there is a colossal difference between comprehending and retaining story text and informational text.  Furthermore, comprehension of informational text in each individual content field can be very different as well.  In the book, Benjamin goes through the kind of text and language a student is likely to see in each subject area. 

Math language is very domain-specific.  The terminology cannot be figured out through context.  The student must know mathematical definitions before reading them in the context of a mathematical expression or problem.  In math reading, the student will need to read a lot of definitions.  Most math writers use a passive voice structure.  For example, “the ball was thrown” rather than “the pitcher threw the ball”.  This is one reason why some students may struggle when reading math.  The active voice construction is much more accessible: Its meaning is more direct.  As teachers we need to understand how to flip passive voice into active voice in order to effectively teach math.  People tend to say, “You don’t read math text, you work math text”.  But it’s important to read math definitions in order to be able to effectively work math problems.  It’s also important to make sure the students understand the definitions before they are expected to use them.  It may be a good idea to look at the homework that is going to be assigned that day to make sure the class understands the terminology being used.  They need to know what the text is asking them to do. 

Reading for business is sort of a cross between reading form math and reading for social studies.  Business language uses a lot of words that take on a specific meaning, apart from their vernacular meaning.  Benjamin says that getting used to the jargon is part of domain-specific learning.  As novices, we’re tongue-tied, and need a lot of exposure and examples to acclimate to jargon.  I have had two very recent experiences with this.  Firstly, this class has required learning a lot of new terminology and giving new meanings to many of the words I had known to have other meanings.  Secondly, I just bought my first house and I struggled a lot with trying to learn all of the terms that come along with purchasing real estate.  Although eventually after hearing the words multiple times and having to understand the documents I was signing, I finally felt somewhat literate in real estate terminology. 

Benjamin talks a lot about tools and mini-lessons to help students learn to comprehend the different types of reading material.  But one of my favorites is the flowchart.  This is such a good assessment to check for comprehension because you have to know the material in order to make a proper flow-chart.  This tool can be used in any subject area and should be taken advantage of.  


References
Benjamin, Amy.  But I’m Not A Reading Teacher: Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas.  Larchmont, NY.  Eye on Education, 2007