(Page 56) “She decides to create curiosity by building some background knowledge for students and explains a few key terms…”
I think establishing background knowledge and creating interest are two of the most important things we can do to improve students’ reading. After all, if a student is interested in a topic, he or she is more willing to read about it. Hence the reason students are so interested in reading the driver’s manual. Do we really think they care about all of those technical rules? Heck, no! But they have an interest in it because they want their licenses. Many of my reading strategies focus on pre-reading because I feel like if we can get them hooked initially in the book/topic, then we can maintain the students’ interest throughout the book or unit of study.
(Page 84) “I once saw a poster in a middle school classroom that read, ‘Individually we are smart. Collectively, we are brilliant.’”
I love this! When I first read this, I thought of our blog. I think we all are smart people, but we’re able to learn so much more when we get together and share our thoughts. The same holds true for our students. When we have class discussions about what we’ve read, we’re able to get so many more perspectives. There are so many ways to have students do this…they can do it through written conversations (many of you are familiar with this strategy; if you’re not and are interested in learning more about it, just let me know!) or they can mark the text as Tovani describes then trade papers and respond to the comments. Students (and teachers!) get so much more from the text when they have the opportunity to collaborate on what they’ve read.
I think establishing background knowledge and creating interest are two of the most important things we can do to improve students’ reading. After all, if a student is interested in a topic, he or she is more willing to read about it. Hence the reason students are so interested in reading the driver’s manual. Do we really think they care about all of those technical rules? Heck, no! But they have an interest in it because they want their licenses. Many of my reading strategies focus on pre-reading because I feel like if we can get them hooked initially in the book/topic, then we can maintain the students’ interest throughout the book or unit of study.
(Page 84) “I once saw a poster in a middle school classroom that read, ‘Individually we are smart. Collectively, we are brilliant.’”
I love this! When I first read this, I thought of our blog. I think we all are smart people, but we’re able to learn so much more when we get together and share our thoughts. The same holds true for our students. When we have class discussions about what we’ve read, we’re able to get so many more perspectives. There are so many ways to have students do this…they can do it through written conversations (many of you are familiar with this strategy; if you’re not and are interested in learning more about it, just let me know!) or they can mark the text as Tovani describes then trade papers and respond to the comments. Students (and teachers!) get so much more from the text when they have the opportunity to collaborate on what they’ve read.
5 comments:
"Purpose also determines what the reader remembers. When readers have a purpose, they tend to remember more of the text." Page 52
I agree with this statement. I remember teaching the dreaded speech unit over at Fulmer for oh so many years. I would always tell my students to tell the speaker what you are going to talk about, then talk about it, and then remind them what you just talked about it. That intro was so important, because the audience could better get your point if they knew what it was ahead of time. I think our students would better understand a reading selection - paragraph to an entire novel if they knew why they were reading and what they should get from it. Also, I think an interesting twist would be to get the students to determine the purpose for reading a piece prior to actually doing the reading. Sometimes a title or headline could clue them in - basically let them predict. I enjoyed reading the info on p. 53 where the students wrote about what they read during a weekend and what their purpose was for doing that reading.
Guidelines for marking text on page 69 - Great information here. If you have never done this with your students, you should try it. I did this activity first semester with a short story ("Priscilla and the Wimps") we were reading. I asked my students to mark and explain examples of figurative language. They were able to find examples of similes, metaphors, idioms, and onomatopoeia. I have also used this strategy with newspaper articles. It's a great technique for them to learn, and they can use this on standardized testing (HSAP, SAT, ACT, etc.)
I like the chart in chapter 5, page 53 (figure 5.1) where students record what they have read over a weekend. My students read the newspaper. They admit freely that they don't read books! Creating a purpose for reading Shakespeare is a stretch. I point out his insults, his hidden messages, his comic relief, and sometimes they sit through a video. I preface Shakespeare with something I heard years ago, "If you can decode Shakespeare's writing, you can understand anything.
Holding for thinking is difficult, too. We've tried sticky notes, pulling quotes from text, and keeping journals, but if I say, "let's create a PowerPoint, they're cooperative." Visual learners....
When Cris discusses determining a purpose for reading she quotes something that Kelly Gallagher said, “I suspect, many of these reasons have become internalized. We often take them for granted because we have long ago acknowledged their value.” I think it is very interesting that this same concept has been discussed before. In a previous chapter, Tovani said that adults just know how to read something where many students do not even know where to begin when they come across a difficult text. It makes me wonder where we as adults learned how to do this. How did we internalize the importance of reading and being able to determine a purpose for reading many types of text? I don’t remember being taught this in high school or even college. Could it be that it was taught to me but I have since internalized it? I know that I seem as though I am rambling but I thinking out loud, trying to get my thoughts down. This idea of being whether we were taught this is the first thing that popped into my head when I was reading that quote.
I love the idea of marking the text. I have tried this only briefly within my classroom. I had my students write their comments, thoughts, and questions directly on the text. It did not seem to go as well as I would have hoped (I even picked out an article that I thought would really grab my students attention). I now know that I will have to model this to my classes, mark the text as a group and then let them try it on their own. This is something I will definitely do more of and I hope to explore new and exciting ways to mark the text. I also really liked Tovani’s idea of using student work samples on overheads as positive examples. This can be especially useful if you have a student or two that does mediocre work but comes up with a great piece of work, it can be a big motivator and can also help boost their self-confidence a little bit.
Chapter 5- Many of my students sound like Lisa (p. 51) when she stated that she would need to slow down because she was being asked to think especially when asked to select their own topics for their research and collection of 5 articles. I agree with the assertion made on page 52 that if we give our students a purpose for their reading other than a grade then they tend to remember more. In social studies we tend to try to cover as much time as possible and are forced to water down our content to get through to modern times (p. 54) when what we really want to do is cover less but have our students to learn more that is relevant to their lives as has been noted when comparing the sizes of the textbooks from Asia verses ours in the US.
Chapter 6- I agree with Christy that the sticky notes are a good idea. I also liked the idea suggested on p. 70 that we could ask our students to record to pieces of thinking rather than quizzing them on their reading assignments the following day. I agree with Monica on the kids being able to write in the margin as I myself don’t retain things well if I don’t record what I think about what I am reading while I am reading. I particularly liked the quote work sheet requiring students to reveal their thoughts about passages of their own selection.
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