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