Very sorry about the late post you guys. This was kind of the last thing on my mind this week. I looked at Chapters 10 and Chapter 14 from the Strategies Book. Chapter 10 focused on figuring out the importance of texts. This chapter was very informative in that it gave many ideas that we could use for our own lessons. Although I am doing Fables, there were some really good ideas about Nonfiction texts. It gave ideas about creating links and how to show the importance to students for this type of genre. It also gave the idea abut effective highlighting strategies. It says that they need to read the text, highlight it, think about it, and make conscious decision about what they need to remember. I am actually using this strategy within my Unit. I am using Guided Reading and Reader's Theater as Centers and am having students highlight to help effectively comprehend the texts. Another part of Chapter 10 I liked was the section based on "Coding Important Information on Unfamiliar as Well as Familiar Topics." This section focused on how how students might be very broad in their understandings of a lot of topics, but it is just as important for them to make similar connections with unfamiliar topics. Again, with my unit, I will be reading Fables which have morals that most students should be familiar with. I actually challenged myself to look for Fables that maybe they were unfamiliar with. If students are able to make connections on unfamiliar texts based off of ideas that they may have learned previously, it will be beneficial to my students.
When looking at Chapter 14 it talks about reading to understand textbooks and how to actively do this. I found this section interesting because we haven't really dug into any textbooks. With the MEAP review, we have only done stuff out of those workbooks. I feel that understanding how to read a textbook and take the most out of it is really important though. The book talks about "merging student thinking with textbook information in the same way we have them merge their thinking in other texts." This is sometimes hard though because of how structured textbooks can be. I do not use Reading Street, but I know you guys do. How do you think you can make reading out of a textbook fun? Especially when it's so scripted? What practices have you found useful when it comes to contextually understanding works right from a textbook?
I like your thinking about connecting unfamiliar texts to the students. Throughout this year, I have been conducting Self-Selected Reading conferences which have been incredibly informative for me to see what it is the students are reading, why they are reading it, and their general enjoyment of books. As I try to figure out these objective while conferencing, I have specific questions I like to ask to help me understand the student's thinking. The one that I find most helpful sometimes is asking, "can you make any personal connections to the text, a character, or relate to the story?" Often times, the students are using unfamiliar texts, and they are challenged to really analyze the text and themselves. When the texts are familiar, the student connections to a familiar text often come very easily and naturally.
ReplyDeleteI almost disagree with the text when it says "merging student thinking with textbook information in the same way we have then merge their thinking in other texts." I think that reading an informational text, like a textbook, requires a completely different set of reading skills and strategies. Often times, using these skills and strategies can be exhausting and can frustrate students when reading textbook, which ultimately causes students to not want to read the textbook. If the students are reading their own texts, such as self-selected reading, they also could become frustrated and exhausted with the texts they should be reading for enjoyment. By having 2 separate reading understandings for my own enjoyment, and one for learning, helps me to create balance because I know when to employ specific reading strategies.