READ 408 Fall 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Laura Granger Blog # 6
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Laura Granger Blog # 5
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Jaimie Ekiert Blog 6
Harvey and Goudis’s chapter 4 in Strategies That Work provided many strategies that help students become motivated and independent readers. I think that encouraging students to become more autonomous in the classroom benefits their academic and personal lives. One strategy mentioned was asking open ended questions. I believe that open ended questions enable students to think critically and focus on the lesson. In my clinical class, my cooperating teacher asks the students “thick” questions when doing a shared reading. This allows all students to think deeply about the focus area and a chance to answer the question. As we have talked about in previous classes, activating student’s background knowledge benefits their comprehension of the text. I liked how the chapter describes how thinking aloud and reading aloud with the students helps them to activate their background knowledge and get them to think critically about their reading.
Another important aspect of engaging students with reading is allowing them to read material that they find interesting. I think that is an excellent point that is noted in the chapter, I feel that I would be more of a reader today if I was able to read books that interested me throughout my education. Students will be more interested in what they are reading and more eager to share their texts with the class. There are many methods to creating a fun and beneficial reading lesson to the classroom. Small group instruction seems to make a big difference with students understanding of the text. With more one on one time and everyone responding the students get to form their own ideas, questions and opinion as well as hearing other student’s perspectives. In my clinical class, students are encouraged to write post it’s with questions or comments about their independent reading books. I think that this helps the students better understand the text and reminds them if they have any questions. Overall, the strategies mentioned in the chapter are beneficial in motivating students to read and helping them better comprehend their texts. It is methods that I would like to utilize in my future classroom.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Jaimie Ekiert Blog 5
My group worked on chapter 7, Activating and Connection to Background Knowledge in Strategies That Work. I believe that background knowledge is one of the most useful concepts used in reading. I think that when students activate their prior knowledge it makes reading text easier and more interesting. The chapter describes how background knowledge helps students to understand the material better, helps them make connections to see the bigger picture of the text and adds to their experiences. Different student’s experiences can help other students relate or understand the material better. The chapter describes ways in which the students can form connections and relate to the text. Students can make text to text, text to self, text to world and reminded of connections. I think asking the students what type of connection they are making will help other students make connections and to relate to material easier.
The chapter also describes the importance of students understanding genres, formats, features, author, structure, signal words and writing styles. I believe that students are able to understand the meaning of the text better when they are familiar with the format of writing. A student who does not understand the format or structure of a text may become confused and overwhelmed. Understanding these features also helps students to pick out the important information from the text. Another feature the text explains in assisting students with their background knowledge is picture books. Pictures books, in my opinion, are a beneficial way for students to learn different vocabulary and information. Photographs are usually isolated and contain their own caption or label that will further describe and define what it is that students are looking at. It also puts a visual on a new vocabulary word. I am a visual learner, for others who are visual learners; picture books can help them understand the text.
Jaimie Ekiert Blog 4
The blackboard article on chapter six, Great Readers Read to Learn, explained a lot of important facts that contribute to young children’s interest and ability to read informational texts. The article began by introducing an educator named Adam and how he approaches informational texts. As I was reading along I noticed that Adam and I have similar styles to reading informational texts. I enjoy informational texts that have to do with animals or the environment, basically any earth or life science texts. Before I begin reading the text I will go through the table of contents, picture walk through the text and ask questions on material I hope to read about. This method enables me to get an idea of the information I am going to find in the text and if it the type that I want to be reading. The article also described how most schools across the country have less science and social studies being integrated into their curriculum. I agree with this statement and I think that it would be great if informational texts on science and social studies were integrated into the reading or writing lesson. This would allow students to practice reading, understanding the text and learn valuable information in other content areas. The article also discusses that students enjoy fictional texts more because they are more familiar with these texts. These texts may be used at home, they are in the classroom and they are easier to follow along with. I agree that it would be beneficial to the students to have non-fiction texts in the classroom and at home to help familiarize students with its format.
I believe students should work with non-fiction texts just as much as they work with fiction texts. Students can learn to the different features of the text and learn how to understand the format of the text. The students will see the differences between fiction and non-fiction texts, and hopefully not run into a problem such as the fourth grade girl Dahlia from the article. Teachers can ask students to pick informational text based off of something they are interested in and come up with focus questions just like Adam did in the article. This gives students a purpose and guides them along the text. I believe this would help students complete the lesson or activity because there is a lot of material used in non-fiction texts. Even for myself I have questions to focus on while reading because there is a lot of material. I like to look at the captions as I read. I also agree with the idea of students highlighting and marking their texts. This allows students to pull out important information or information pertaining to their focuses. All of these concepts will help students recognize the relationships and features in non-fiction texts.