Continuing my reading, I of course
came across more useful information. I
think this book will help me a lot when I do begin teaching classes. A good point the book brings up is that many
students are not good readers because they don’t spend enough time practicing; and
as most of us know, we learn through repetition. I had a college professor in my undergraduate
program who believed that a student needed to hear or read something seventeen
times in order to learn it. This concept
agrees with what Benjamin discusses in her book when she says, “learning is
habitual. The more we practice a
process, the more its steps become automatic.”
She also states that, “practice builds more speed and stamina”. There are two types of learning she discusses
in the book: memory and habit learning.
Reading and listening would be a type of memory learning. Habit learning would be actually doing a
behavior that you’re trying to learn. In
the book, Benjamin talks about the environmental conditions needed for reading,
which include a quiet setting with minimal to no distractions or noises. A lot of kids only have that quiet time for a
short period at school. Benjamin
stresses the importance of sustained silent reading and giving these kids a
little more time at school to read on their own, even just 15 minutes every day
would be incredibly beneficial! I agree
with her and I fully intend to give my students some individual reading time
during class.
To become more literate, students
need to become better readers and thus better able to decode text and
comprehend it. In order to do this, they
must learn how to put what they already know together with new information. Benjamin calls this, “connecting the dots”. She says “we get dots from our education,
experience, cultural activities, and social interactions”. I like the way she talks about knowledge
being like wealth or investment capital.
She says, “The more learning (wealth) you have, the more you can use
that knowledge (wealth) to create more”.
As a teacher, I hope to get away from the “dispenser of knowledge
paradigm”; where the teacher stands in front of the class talking and showing
with the assumption that the students are learning. Some students do learn, but many do not. We need to teach students skills and
strategies in order for them to know how to learn. Students also need to be given processing
time during the school day. Homework is supposed
to be one of the main forms of processing time however, homework does not always
get done; and we have no idea if there is anyone even at home to answer
questions they may have or give them the help they may need. This means that students need more in
class processing time in the form of assignments, worksheets, question and
answer, group discussions, etc.
References
Benjamin, Amy. But
I’m Not A Reading Teacher: Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content
Areas. Larchmont, NY. Eye on Education, 2007
Leslie, I’m enjoying following your blog. I didn’t know what dyslexia was until nineteen sixty-five. At that time I entered a teacher certification program of my own and a required, Reading class. I soon realized that I was dyslexic. It explained a lot. Miss Durslag my fifth grade teacher at Short Avenue Elementary School recognized my decoding difficulty, my poor comprehension, my confusion about the meaning of words and sentences and my lack of ability to connect ideas in a passage of text. My coping skill had been to simply omit, or gloss over specific words and passages and when reading aloud it was one word at a time but with little or no comprehension. During the previous four grades I had been making things up as I read and somehow had been able to fool my teachers. I imagine they regarded me as simply “not very bright.” Miss Durslag enlisted the help of my parents and within the year I was reading on my own and enjoying it. Thanks to a conscientious and perceptive teacher my childhood was enhanced and unknowingly she set me on paths which lead to a thirty-five year teaching career. I know my own dyslexia made me a more patient and effective teacher. Wishing you continued success on the road to becoming a teacher.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that as teachers we need to give our students reading strategies. I think students need more time to practice reading, and I think they need that time to practice during school. As you mentioned homework doesn't always get done, and I don't think enough reading takes place at home either. I find it important to get kids to read more while in school.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with the repetition. Practice makes perfect as we say in sports. It would make sense to use the same logic in the classroom. Just as we are learning about reading across the curriculum I see the information we have read as a group in my book and our classmates books regurgitate over and over again in different others voices. Its as if we are reading it 17 times if not more. The more we or a child read helps us to increase the rate at which we decipher text and our ability to find meaning in what the text is trying to tell us. They will also see differing genre, paragraph, sentence structures, etc. All of which will improve their overall literacy.
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