More than anything, this chapter on comprehension strategies applies to the English Language Arts classroom and curriculum. More than that, I find that many of these practices have been already been instituted in various guises throughout my short teaching career. Gone are the days when students jumped at the chance to read something new or learn material because it is what the teacher wanted. Material has to mean something, anything to the students in some shape or form.
Activating prior knowledge is something that must be done in practically every lesson, no matter what the content area is. To be sure, the youth can gauge their level of interest and how much they know about the material based on whether they have seen it or read about it previously. It goes without saying, textual meaning demands bring aware of the material. As students go further into the material, they begin to shape feelings and thoughts of what the message means to them. The teacher aids in this process by selecting or providing material that appeals to the students’ interests and needs.
Moving on, I found that the strategies offered were most appealing, as they have been repeatedly throughout Reading and Language Arts/Writing classrooms. Content and process statements occur rapidly and seemingly all the time. Students unconsciously respond in this way. Other examples include visuals of what is expected to be taught and what is expected to be learned. The students have a visual of what they should do and what they should learn. This occurs everyday in content-area classrooms. Through objectives and informal assessments, the teacher can effectively gauge how the students master content.
Finally, text mapping and charts play a huge role in most classrooms. As most students, including my own, are visual learners, visual graphics are the biggest aid in expanding comprehension. These visuals apply to the senses. They are presented in an organized style that let students see the big picture, be it text, formula, or math problems.
In sum, comprehension has to unfold through a multi-layered process. In following the steps suggested in the text, teachers in varying areas can have success. Visual aids are a given in any class; few students retain information just through “teacher talk.” The only concern I struggled were the social dimension strategies. My students are upper elementary. I wonder if they can handle the activities meant to foster student learning. While I can try it, I am wholly unsure of its success in my classroom.
Marc,
ReplyDeleteAs you said that students no longer jump at the chance to read, I've noticed a major difference between the students I teach in Chemistry and the students I teach in Physical Science. My Chemistry kids love reading, and it is because they read well. They especially love reading and answering questions loud. My Physical Science students who struggle with reading hate reading aloud and answering questions aloud. It is still a surprise everyday that some of my students still struggle so much with reading when that is something I've taken for granted for as long as I can remember.
Big Farma,
ReplyDeleteYour keen observations touch on what I will probationally call Preacher's Paradox: engagement invariably entails a diminution in rigor. That is to say, broadly speaking, my students are not really interested in thinking hard about anything. Perhaps tailoring lessons to their interests is one step in the learning process, but I'm not sure. Most of them are interested in simple dynamics. I should add that the Preacher Paradox is applicable in many humans in many different contexts, not just kids in critical needs schools.
What types of informal assessments have you used? What has worked best for you? How have you applied your informal assessments to instruction and comprehension? I totally agree that comprehension is a multi-layered process. But how can we provide material that appeals to the students interests and needs while still challenging them and increasing their level of comprehension? I guess I have many more questions than answers at this point. We'll have to talk about this in class this weekend.
ReplyDeletere: Gone are the days when students jumped at the chance to read something new or learn material because it is what the teacher wanted. Material has to mean something, anything to the students in some shape or form.
ReplyDeleteMarc, I quite agree with this point. I have made it my mission to find my students high-interest reading materials. I figure that at the sixth grade level, the absolute best thing I can do to serve my students (AND my district, actually) is to get my students interested in reading. Even for the test, I figure that if they like to read, they will read better, and they'll do fine on the test.
Thanks for the thoughtful and well-written blog, LeMarcus - I don't quite know how else to say this, but you're the man.
On a slightly, very slightly, philosophical note: it is interesting that for those learning to read we need so much more than the text to teach them. We don't teach them to read by reading, or by making them read, but by introducing all this other stuff that's not reading around the reading to help them when they eventually get around to the task of reading.
ReplyDeleteThis, though, was not always how people learned to read. And in the past, people who were educated were on the whole much better readers than the people who are educated nowadays. My evidence for this is that most contemporary college students don't have the stamina to read the materials written for college students 100 years ago. (This is not to say we are worse off. Some would argue that we are better educated, since more are educated.) Anyway, most of those educated folk of the past learned to read by being forced to memorize stuff in English, Greek, Latin, and French. Whatever.