Chapter one gets at the heart of what students should know for success. Assessing students background knowledge is important to know where to begin the lesson, or if you should review old material. This book has a lot of practices that I will take into my future classroom. First, I like the idea of writing “what do you already know or think you know about_____” (p 2). I may start a lesson with that question, just to get them thinking. Allen incorporates a few exercises into this, including admit slips, book pass, here and now, skimming and scanning, writing to learn, list-group-label, etc. All of those exercises will prepare them for work they will do in class as well as becoming a successful reader.
Chapter two’s main concern is getting students to comprehend vocabulary and in turn, comprehend what they are reading. Classroom conversation is critical in comprehension because it helps establish connections. This chapter provides two strategies to help students make a commitment to learning: questions game and request. Learning a strategy to figure out vocabulary words will benefit the student in all content areas. Using background knowledge, local context and global context can aid them. “Students comprehension in reading history will depend largely on our ability to get them engaged, interested, and wanting to know more.” (p 62)
In chapter three, the most important aspect in making the content meaningful to students is to show them the importance of it. this chapter offers many examples of how students can organize their content to be able to synthesize it better. One example that I currently use frequently are outlines which trigger memories from the unit and make it easier to read/understand. I really liked the REAP activity because it gives students the opportunity to make connections and formulate questions with the reading as well as “establish purposes for further reading” (p 69). A concept that we have learned in many of our teaching classes is to allow students the opportunity to view events from multiple perspectives. Being able to do this gives students broader knowledge and also teaches empathy. The graphic organizer multiple sources, multiple perspectives is a great tool to utilize for it.
Chapter four was short, but the beginning passage is extremely touching – as future teachers, we want all our students to be able to see history as relevant and meaningful and our goal is to show our students that. This chapter also provides many strategies that teachers should increase the use of and decrease the use of, which will be extremely beneficial when putting these strategies to use in practice.
While reading our book, Reading History, for our book club I noticed a particular point that to me proved very interesting. On pg. xii the second paragraph Allen states, “For many students, their disinterest in reading history is characterized by several roadblocks to success. These roadblocks include a lack of interest and motivation, classroom resources that are insufficient or inappropriate for their reading levels, the absence of instructional support that would help them learn to read complex texts, insufficient background knowledge, an inability to break the code of the textbook and a lack of independent reading and research strategies.” This paragraph in the intro is important to me for several reasons. First, it gave me a heads up on the issues this book would touch on and specific tools we might be able to use in the classroom to counteract these problems. Second, this section gives great insight into the problems a history teacher will face in the classroom. Lastly, now since I know about these problems I can face them head on. I am ready for the challenges I will face with my students when I am teaching and will try my best to be prepared for these problems when they arise. If you break down this section, these problems we face are many and big. I think the best way to fight back against these problems is to break them up. To have our students have a bigger interest in our content and more motivation in the classroom we should immerse the students’ funds of knowledge into our curriculum. We will have to make classes more interesting and creative by using different forms of literacy, i.e. videos or the smart board. This book helps by giving great ideas to add to your classes to try to lighten up the dullness history can sometimes have. Unfortunately, the problems of resources being insufficient and lack of support are tough to deal with. Hopefully, we can bring in outside information to help our students such as articles or artifacts to deal with the lack of resources. The problem with support is extremely tough to deal with and hopefully this does not happen to us, but in the end we are going to have to just make do with what we have. The remaining problems listed are also dealt with in the book with great strategies to help students become independent readers and stronger researchers. With guidance, modeling and practice we can correct these problems. If we as teachers stay steadfast to our disciplines and make our students practice these tools till we are sure they have a greater understanding of the content then we will be able to correct these wrongs. In time, I would like to believe we can help all of our students achieve a higher level of success, but it will be a challenge we must be up for.
As I began reading our book I noticed the same exact paragraph Denny pointed out as important. I looked at the road blocks as Allen described them and totally agreed. Students having a lack of motivation and interest, insufficient resources and text books that aren't appropriate for their reading level, as well as having instructors who are ill-equipped to teach them how to read complex sources and a lack of background information are all challenges that teachers must face when teaching historical reading to their students. The introduction provided a lot of knowledge into the issues of literacy in history. In my opinion the most important thing to do when trying to increase the literacy of history students is to make sure they know their background information. Meta cognition should occur while the student is reading. They should be reflecting and thinking about what is occurring in a text. They are more likely to do this if they understand the events that led up to what they are reading about. A student is also more likely to be interested and enthusiastic about what they are reading about if they have prior knowledge and insight on a subject. It is our jobs as teachers to make sure we interact with our students and have them consciously connect one event to the other to generate more understanding.
This book provided great insight on how to address these roadblocks in the classroom. There were great examples on how to instruct the class and assess reading and how much the students have learned from it. I liked the graphic organizers provided and the different examples of texts that we can use to make sure our students are reading and comprehending.
“Reading History” (Allen (2005)) lives up to its self-imposed label as a practical guide to improving literacy. The directness with which the authors address the problem of Social Studies literacy is matched by the usefulness of their solutions. Allen, et. al. ‘s heads-on approach makes each exercise they profile come to life complete with its challenges for and benefits to students. The book’s hidden gems lie in its resource-rich Appendices. This book will be a resource for me and its exercises could be extended to other domains with relative ease for the teacher and disproportionate benefit for the student. Allen divides her chapters, broadly, into pre-reading strategies (Chapter 1), reading strategies proper (Chapter 2), and assessment tools (Chapter 3). The Appendices are segmented by worksheets (A), reading resources (B-C), theme-oriented reading lists (D), and websites (E). All of the examples used on the book are well-grounded in theory and supported by pointed examples. I appreciated the explicit invocation of the classic demons which plague Social Studies classrooms for some students (“boredom, lack of motivation, confusion, frustrations, anxiety…” etc. (p. xii)) when they designed their approach to their exercises. The strategies that fill “Reading History” are each valuable when deployed as Allen models. Each teacher will have personal favorites among the exercises and techniques in the book. Some techniques will translate better to some teaching styles than others. One thing that can be said for this book in any environment is that each of Allen’s “Enduring Questions” (How can I prepare readers before the engage in content? How can I train my students to digest content for meaning and understanding? How can I have students self-regulate their learning outside my watch?) is a good lodestone to steer our classroom ship by. The series of exercises designed to “[make] learning meaningful” (Chapter 3) were especially powerful. A common hurdle that all teachers have to how to relate material to students’ lives and allow them to create meaning for themselves. The various techniques enumerated in the chapter get at the heart of that problem. They each force students to recontextualize the issues raised by their content in new ways. Any reframing of the issue is an inherent act of creation and meaning-making, a small step on the road to student self-regulation. While I hoped in vain for empirical data to support the advocacy of one strategy over another, the subjective insights derived from eventual trial-and-error will have to suffice. This books provides a great springboard from which to create an active literacy-building classroom.
To be literate in content classrooms, students must learn how to use language processes to explore and construct meaning with text. It helps them discover, organize, retrieve and elaborate on what they learn. When a new topic is introduced to the class misinformation comes from the student’s lack of meaningful connection to the history they have studied. Janet Allen always begins class with a brief read aloud. She then asks students questions to clarify what they just read. Rather than just reading to them she actively involved them in building background knowledge for reading. Students sometimes tend to lose focus easily and ask or say the most outrageous things that make a teacher wonder, “Why the hell am I teaching?” I have really noticed this more in my middle school observations where my students say the first thing that comes to their head. The new generations of kids are all born into technology and sophisticated media, so it becomes hard for teachers to have students just read plain old textbooks because of boredom, lack of motivation, confusion, frustration, anxiety helplessness, hopelessness and failure. Like Allen, I was always expected to do my work even if I was bored; no excuses just get my work done. I may not have been engaged but I was able to read the text without a problem. Many of my teachers depended on textbooks as a primary source for classroom instruction. I had many teachers in high school that just had me read from the text and spit back information to them during a unit test. “We are addicted to coverage.” Many teachers of mine have all said at one point we need to cover this because it’s on the regents or we do not have enough time to slow up and repeat instructions The importance of reading history is to learn from our mistakes, translate truths to our lives, see where we come from, and know what we are connected to. It is very vital to build background knowledge with students before asking them to read, write or conduct research. As teacher we must assess what knowledge students already have. Next, we must provide an experience that students will remember for context reading. Then, I must read over text to figure out what words or phrases might be difficult for students to understand or interpret. Finally, I will scaffold students to ask questions that might have a purpose for reading. A great strategy used by Allen, “What do you already know or think you know about________?” A teacher should record answers then revisit them during unit. A bridge between student’s lives and interests in the content material will motivate them to read and participate in class. Read a loud: I would use this strategy in all my classes, but in high school we read from the text. This was very boring, no one would pay attention because fellow classmates would make fun of each other when one student stuttered or couldn’t read as well as others. Admit Slips: impacts a student’s schema before reading. With background knowledge it is easy for students to find information, answer questions, and make connections between readings (transferability), their lives and other texts. Admit Slips do not ask students to read entire articles but to make predictions or inferences on small details like the titles and headings. Book Pass: opportunity to briefly examine several books related to the topic of the unit. It is best to use different genres like: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, diaries, primary sources and some art work if possible. “Multiple perspectives” is a constant phrase used when writing a unit or lesson plan. We want our students to be able to look at a topic from many different angles. I love group work so this would be an ideal activity in my classrooms.
Skimming and Scanning: I remember my mother would take me to Barnes and Noble when I was younger. I would go to the children’s section and grab ten books off the shelves because the covers were so interesting. When time came to purchase the books my mother would open up to a page of each book and ask me to read the page if I misread or did not know five words I was not getting the book. Just from the title I assume that this is what skimming and scanning is. Skim and scan is mostly used in textbooks. Students must fill in a chart: first impressions, fast facts and final thoughts. I bet both of our techniques are pretty useful, but mine less used in a classroom. Writing to Learn: I have done K-W-L charts in my classes before and I actually enjoyed it. (K) what do you know about the topic, (W) what would you like to know, and (L) what have I learned? Writing to learn offers experience with several texts. Its purpose is to provide students with context and emotional impact for the event or topic. A teacher can select anything from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, news article, video, news clips, artifacts, interviews, art or music. With new technologies these sources can be found all over the internet directly in class. Students will notice that each new experience will add to the previous one by giving more information. Predict-O-Gram: As stated before it is important to read text before your students do because if not “It is like letting a stranger into the classroom, never know what to expect.” The teacher chooses a couple of words from the text that students will be reading in class. This list of words is given to the students and they must use their background knowledge to guess what these words have to do with the unit they are about to be read. Concept Ladder: I am using concept ladders as my reading strategy study. It is an organizer that helps students arrange and simplify their understanding. The teacher gives some background knowledge then allows students to write questions on the topic. Throughout the unit students would be able to revisit their questions and answer them. “Teachers who read a wide variety of historical texts to their students find that reading builds back ground for the content.” I personally love when I am read to. I like it better because I am able to enhance my visualization of the text in my head. I usually read along while I am read to, I have never not had the text in front of me, which I would like to experience. In this seventh grade class they are able to have their own personal word wall. I have never seen a word wall until I went to college. I currently have my own word wall that grows every week just like the students of this class.
Wow - great reactions from everyone. I appreciate all of your comments. Jessica - I wonder about your thoughts about background knowledge being most critical in reading history. I wonder what you think the implication is for teachers. I often hear teachers discuss how kids don't have enough background knowledge to make the connections they are trying to make. What's the implication of your statement in light of this common complaint of teachers? I love all of what you say ... since you chose to read the whole thing first, one challenge for the discussion director is figuring out how to focus this discussion. There is a lot here and some of it tends to border on summary. How will you move this discussion beyond a review of the strategies towards some of the deeper issues implied by them and raised in some of your posts here? I look forward to seeing your DD do this! One thing I especially appreciate is Jesus' post because it makes connections between this text and the field experience. Remember text to self, text to text, and text to world. You are forefronting your comment on this text but you are limited to just speaking about this text. How are you connecting what Allen is saying here to what she said about vocabulary last week to what we've been reading and learning and thinking about reading, more generally? Can't wait for the discussion and glad you're off to a good start!
I had agreed with all of your points. I believe that engaging these students is what is most important now-a-days. You see i so many classrooms the lack of participation from so many students that it is hard to assess their understanding on a day-to-day basis. They are lack-luster and sometimes just lazy. Students need an extra boost, a little more motivation these days and there are so many ways that us as teachers can provide this for them. You want to use classroom conversation as a way to get students to talk and interact with each other. Using the students to help one another is a great way to get their brains flowing. I know it is easier to think outside the box when someone is pushing you there. These conversations give students a way to express their understanding to the rest of the class and even the teachers. The strategies in chapter two express how to get students more engaged, and i believe in the long run they will help students indefinitely. Graphic organizers and outlines are things that help students keep their thoughts organized and in a neat fashion. You want students to learn these techniques early on because it will help them throughout the rest of their educational career. Being able to read and write is one thing, being able to comprehend what you have just read and/or wrote is a completely different thing. I know outlining is something very important to my mentor teacher and i can see why it is for an 8th grade classroom. The strategies are very helpful in this book and I can see myself using them in the future. I feel as though history is an important subject that shouldn't "die out" of schools. Its important that students learn where they have come from and the history of their nation and world.
Just to summarize the discussion we had on Thursday...
We discussed the question "Is it more important to teach a strategy that works the best for the student or is easiest for the teacher?" It was basically a unanimous decision of all of us in the group that the student's learning is the main priority, therefore if a teacher is a little uncomfortable with a strategy but the students like it, it should be used. We all decided that the "alike but different" chart on page 99 is an incredibly effective tool in Social Studies for connecting ideas from different units together. This led to another discussion question..."How do teachers get out of the 'addicted to coverage' mindset?"
This question led to a great discussion about deciding what is important to teach and how we can show our students that Social Studies is important. There were a lot of great opinions on this subject such as talking more about current events and topics that students can relate to instead of spending so much time on what has happened 200 years ago. Basically as long as there are standardized tests, it is difficult not to be addicted to simply covering content, however using an "alike but different" chart can help us connect certain subjects throughout history and strengthen our students content knowledge. This in turn will help them with their understanding while reading about certain events; knowing what led to the next event and making connections.
The four-pronged system that Allen sets as the goals for “activating and building background knowledge” draw on key themes that research and anecdotes consistently reinforce as vital, necessary, and ultimately beneficial to student literacy outcomes. The particular exercise and drills that populate Chapter 1 are each designed to set the stages for further understanding. The exercises themselves have variable value depending on the teacher and the students involved but the overarching concepts that those strategies bring to life are key areas we as teachers should focus on as we prepare our students for deeper literacy involvement. Before we can begin to develop new understanding in students, we need to know what base they are building from. Accepting constructivism as a guiding principle of education underlies Pace’s mission of social justice. Without knowing what preexisting knowledge our students have, we cannot design lessons to build on those understandings. Assessing student preexisting “knowledge” also provides teachers with the opportunity to “correct” misconceptions. When teachers place their lessons within significant historical contexts they encourage students to draw connections of personal import. The creation of context can come in many forms as Allen illustrates (Documentation Web, Admit Slips, Book Passes, etc.). The diversity of exercises and literacy skills that students have to employ allows learners of different strengths to express their ideas in their own fashion. The KWL exercise (a personal favorite) is a great way to bridge what is know (K) to what students want (W) to know. Placing those ideas on paper concretizes that transition for students. Anticipating difficult concepts of vocabulary is a key skill for any teacher to have. Vocabulary-study in isolation is less valuable that when placed in context. Words are not idle concepts in space but are the roots of any subject. If students can master, or at least appreciate and understand, the vocabulary of a subject, then they can begin to fathom the higher-order integrated aspects of the subject. The final key that Allen outlines in Chapter 1 is perhaps the key to future learning: students without motivations have no intrinsic reasons to read. When students know the what they are looking for and why they are looking for it the chances of them finding those understandings are amplified. Allen astutely concludes that, “[a]ctivities done during this stage of learning will lead to higher levels of student interest and engagement, support critical thinking, help students make connections and discover patterns…When students want to learn, half the battle is won.”
i rather do it thursday at 415!!!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteChapter one gets at the heart of what students should know for success. Assessing students background knowledge is important to know where to begin the lesson, or if you should review old material. This book has a lot of practices that I will take into my future classroom. First, I like the idea of writing “what do you already know or think you know about_____” (p 2). I may start a lesson with that question, just to get them thinking. Allen incorporates a few exercises into this, including admit slips, book pass, here and now, skimming and scanning, writing to learn, list-group-label, etc. All of those exercises will prepare them for work they will do in class as well as becoming a successful reader.
ReplyDeleteChapter two’s main concern is getting students to comprehend vocabulary and in turn, comprehend what they are reading. Classroom conversation is critical in comprehension because it helps establish connections. This chapter provides two strategies to help students make a commitment to learning: questions game and request. Learning a strategy to figure out vocabulary words will benefit the student in all content areas. Using background knowledge, local context and global context can aid them. “Students comprehension in reading history will depend largely on our ability to get them engaged, interested, and wanting to know more.” (p 62)
In chapter three, the most important aspect in making the content meaningful to students is to show them the importance of it. this chapter offers many examples of how students can organize their content to be able to synthesize it better. One example that I currently use frequently are outlines which trigger memories from the unit and make it easier to read/understand. I really liked the REAP activity because it gives students the opportunity to make connections and formulate questions with the reading as well as “establish purposes for further reading” (p 69). A concept that we have learned in many of our teaching classes is to allow students the opportunity to view events from multiple perspectives. Being able to do this gives students broader knowledge and also teaches empathy. The graphic organizer multiple sources, multiple perspectives is a great tool to utilize for it.
Chapter four was short, but the beginning passage is extremely touching – as future teachers, we want all our students to be able to see history as relevant and meaningful and our goal is to show our students that. This chapter also provides many strategies that teachers should increase the use of and decrease the use of, which will be extremely beneficial when putting these strategies to use in practice.
While reading our book, Reading History, for our book club I noticed a particular point that to me proved very interesting. On pg. xii the second paragraph Allen states, “For many students, their disinterest in reading history is characterized by several roadblocks to success. These roadblocks include a lack of interest and motivation, classroom resources that are insufficient or inappropriate for their reading levels, the absence of instructional support that would help them learn to read complex texts, insufficient background knowledge, an inability to break the code of the textbook and a lack of independent reading and research strategies.” This paragraph in the intro is important to me for several reasons. First, it gave me a heads up on the issues this book would touch on and specific tools we might be able to use in the classroom to counteract these problems. Second, this section gives great insight into the problems a history teacher will face in the classroom. Lastly, now since I know about these problems I can face them head on. I am ready for the challenges I will face with my students when I am teaching and will try my best to be prepared for these problems when they arise.
ReplyDeleteIf you break down this section, these problems we face are many and big. I think the best way to fight back against these problems is to break them up. To have our students have a bigger interest in our content and more motivation in the classroom we should immerse the students’ funds of knowledge into our curriculum. We will have to make classes more interesting and creative by using different forms of literacy, i.e. videos or the smart board. This book helps by giving great ideas to add to your classes to try to lighten up the dullness history can sometimes have. Unfortunately, the problems of resources being insufficient and lack of support are tough to deal with. Hopefully, we can bring in outside information to help our students such as articles or artifacts to deal with the lack of resources. The problem with support is extremely tough to deal with and hopefully this does not happen to us, but in the end we are going to have to just make do with what we have. The remaining problems listed are also dealt with in the book with great strategies to help students become independent readers and stronger researchers. With guidance, modeling and practice we can correct these problems. If we as teachers stay steadfast to our disciplines and make our students practice these tools till we are sure they have a greater understanding of the content then we will be able to correct these wrongs. In time, I would like to believe we can help all of our students achieve a higher level of success, but it will be a challenge we must be up for.
As I began reading our book I noticed the same exact paragraph Denny pointed out as important. I looked at the road blocks as Allen described them and totally agreed. Students having a lack of motivation and interest, insufficient resources and text books that aren't appropriate for their reading level, as well as having instructors who are ill-equipped to teach them how to read complex sources and a lack of background information are all challenges that teachers must face when teaching historical reading to their students. The introduction provided a lot of knowledge into the issues of literacy in history. In my opinion the most important thing to do when trying to increase the literacy of history students is to make sure they know their background information. Meta cognition should occur while the student is reading. They should be reflecting and thinking about what is occurring in a text. They are more likely to do this if they understand the events that led up to what they are reading about. A student is also more likely to be interested and enthusiastic about what they are reading about if they have prior knowledge and insight on a subject. It is our jobs as teachers to make sure we interact with our students and have them consciously connect one event to the other to generate more understanding.
ReplyDeleteThis book provided great insight on how to address these roadblocks in the classroom. There were great examples on how to instruct the class and assess reading and how much the students have learned from it. I liked the graphic organizers provided and the different examples of texts that we can use to make sure our students are reading and comprehending.
“Reading History” (Allen (2005)) lives up to its self-imposed label as a practical guide to improving literacy. The directness with which the authors address the problem of Social Studies literacy is matched by the usefulness of their solutions. Allen, et. al. ‘s heads-on approach makes each exercise they profile come to life complete with its challenges for and benefits to students. The book’s hidden gems lie in its resource-rich Appendices. This book will be a resource for me and its exercises could be extended to other domains with relative ease for the teacher and disproportionate benefit for the student.
ReplyDeleteAllen divides her chapters, broadly, into pre-reading strategies (Chapter 1), reading strategies proper (Chapter 2), and assessment tools (Chapter 3). The Appendices are segmented by worksheets (A), reading resources (B-C), theme-oriented reading lists (D), and websites (E). All of the examples used on the book are well-grounded in theory and supported by pointed examples. I appreciated the explicit invocation of the classic demons which plague Social Studies classrooms for some students (“boredom, lack of motivation, confusion, frustrations, anxiety…” etc. (p. xii)) when they designed their approach to their exercises.
The strategies that fill “Reading History” are each valuable when deployed as Allen models. Each teacher will have personal favorites among the exercises and techniques in the book. Some techniques will translate better to some teaching styles than others. One thing that can be said for this book in any environment is that each of Allen’s “Enduring Questions” (How can I prepare readers before the engage in content? How can I train my students to digest content for meaning and understanding? How can I have students self-regulate their learning outside my watch?) is a good lodestone to steer our classroom ship by.
The series of exercises designed to “[make] learning meaningful” (Chapter 3) were especially powerful. A common hurdle that all teachers have to how to relate material to students’ lives and allow them to create meaning for themselves. The various techniques enumerated in the chapter get at the heart of that problem. They each force students to recontextualize the issues raised by their content in new ways. Any reframing of the issue is an inherent act of creation and meaning-making, a small step on the road to student self-regulation. While I hoped in vain for empirical data to support the advocacy of one strategy over another, the subjective insights derived from eventual trial-and-error will have to suffice. This books provides a great springboard from which to create an active literacy-building classroom.
To be literate in content classrooms, students must learn how to use language processes to explore and construct meaning with text. It helps them discover, organize, retrieve and elaborate on what they learn. When a new topic is introduced to the class misinformation comes from the student’s lack of meaningful connection to the history they have studied. Janet Allen always begins class with a brief read aloud. She then asks students questions to clarify what they just read. Rather than just reading to them she actively involved them in building background knowledge for reading.
ReplyDeleteStudents sometimes tend to lose focus easily and ask or say the most outrageous things that make a teacher wonder, “Why the hell am I teaching?” I have really noticed this more in my middle school observations where my students say the first thing that comes to their head. The new generations of kids are all born into technology and sophisticated media, so it becomes hard for teachers to have students just read plain old textbooks because of boredom, lack of motivation, confusion, frustration, anxiety helplessness, hopelessness and failure. Like Allen, I was always expected to do my work even if I was bored; no excuses just get my work done. I may not have been engaged but I was able to read the text without a problem. Many of my teachers depended on textbooks as a primary source for classroom instruction. I had many teachers in high school that just had me read from the text and spit back information to them during a unit test. “We are addicted to coverage.” Many teachers of mine have all said at one point we need to cover this because it’s on the regents or we do not have enough time to slow up and repeat instructions
The importance of reading history is to learn from our mistakes, translate truths to our lives, see where we come from, and know what we are connected to. It is very vital to build background knowledge with students before asking them to read, write or conduct research. As teacher we must assess what knowledge students already have. Next, we must provide an experience that students will remember for context reading. Then, I must read over text to figure out what words or phrases might be difficult for students to understand or interpret. Finally, I will scaffold students to ask questions that might have a purpose for reading. A great strategy used by Allen, “What do you already know or think you know about________?” A teacher should record answers then revisit them during unit. A bridge between student’s lives and interests in the content material will motivate them to read and participate in class.
Read a loud: I would use this strategy in all my classes, but in high school we read from the text. This was very boring, no one would pay attention because fellow classmates would make fun of each other when one student stuttered or couldn’t read as well as others.
Admit Slips: impacts a student’s schema before reading. With background knowledge it is easy for students to find information, answer questions, and make connections between readings (transferability), their lives and other texts. Admit Slips do not ask students to read entire articles but to make predictions or inferences on small details like the titles and headings.
Book Pass: opportunity to briefly examine several books related to the topic of the unit. It is best to use different genres like: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, diaries, primary sources and some art work if possible. “Multiple perspectives” is a constant phrase used when writing a unit or lesson plan. We want our students to be able to look at a topic from many different angles. I love group work so this would be an ideal activity in my classrooms.
Skimming and Scanning: I remember my mother would take me to Barnes and Noble when I was younger. I would go to the children’s section and grab ten books off the shelves because the covers were so interesting. When time came to purchase the books my mother would open up to a page of each book and ask me to read the page if I misread or did not know five words I was not getting the book. Just from the title I assume that this is what skimming and scanning is. Skim and scan is mostly used in textbooks. Students must fill in a chart: first impressions, fast facts and final thoughts. I bet both of our techniques are pretty useful, but mine less used in a classroom.
ReplyDeleteWriting to Learn: I have done K-W-L charts in my classes before and I actually enjoyed it. (K) what do you know about the topic, (W) what would you like to know, and (L) what have I learned? Writing to learn offers experience with several texts. Its purpose is to provide students with context and emotional impact for the event or topic. A teacher can select anything from fiction, nonfiction, poetry, news article, video, news clips, artifacts, interviews, art or music. With new technologies these sources can be found all over the internet directly in class. Students will notice that each new experience will add to the previous one by giving more information.
Predict-O-Gram: As stated before it is important to read text before your students do because if not “It is like letting a stranger into the classroom, never know what to expect.” The teacher chooses a couple of words from the text that students will be reading in class. This list of words is given to the students and they must use their background knowledge to guess what these words have to do with the unit they are about to be read.
Concept Ladder: I am using concept ladders as my reading strategy study. It is an organizer that helps students arrange and simplify their understanding. The teacher gives some background knowledge then allows students to write questions on the topic. Throughout the unit students would be able to revisit their questions and answer them.
“Teachers who read a wide variety of historical texts to their students find that reading builds back ground for the content.” I personally love when I am read to. I like it better because I am able to enhance my visualization of the text in my head. I usually read along while I am read to, I have never not had the text in front of me, which I would like to experience. In this seventh grade class they are able to have their own personal word wall. I have never seen a word wall until I went to college. I currently have my own word wall that grows every week just like the students of this class.
Wow - great reactions from everyone. I appreciate all of your comments. Jessica - I wonder about your thoughts about background knowledge being most critical in reading history. I wonder what you think the implication is for teachers. I often hear teachers discuss how kids don't have enough background knowledge to make the connections they are trying to make. What's the implication of your statement in light of this common complaint of teachers?
ReplyDeleteI love all of what you say ... since you chose to read the whole thing first, one challenge for the discussion director is figuring out how to focus this discussion. There is a lot here and some of it tends to border on summary. How will you move this discussion beyond a review of the strategies towards some of the deeper issues implied by them and raised in some of your posts here? I look forward to seeing your DD do this!
One thing I especially appreciate is Jesus' post because it makes connections between this text and the field experience. Remember text to self, text to text, and text to world. You are forefronting your comment on this text but you are limited to just speaking about this text. How are you connecting what Allen is saying here to what she said about vocabulary last week to what we've been reading and learning and thinking about reading, more generally?
Can't wait for the discussion and glad you're off to a good start!
I had agreed with all of your points. I believe that engaging these students is what is most important now-a-days. You see i so many classrooms the lack of participation from so many students that it is hard to assess their understanding on a day-to-day basis. They are lack-luster and sometimes just lazy. Students need an extra boost, a little more motivation these days and there are so many ways that us as teachers can provide this for them.
ReplyDeleteYou want to use classroom conversation as a way to get students to talk and interact with each other. Using the students to help one another is a great way to get their brains flowing. I know it is easier to think outside the box when someone is pushing you there. These conversations give students a way to express their understanding to the rest of the class and even the teachers. The strategies in chapter two express how to get students more engaged, and i believe in the long run they will help students indefinitely.
Graphic organizers and outlines are things that help students keep their thoughts organized and in a neat fashion. You want students to learn these techniques early on because it will help them throughout the rest of their educational career. Being able to read and write is one thing, being able to comprehend what you have just read and/or wrote is a completely different thing. I know outlining is something very important to my mentor teacher and i can see why it is for an 8th grade classroom.
The strategies are very helpful in this book and I can see myself using them in the future. I feel as though history is an important subject that shouldn't "die out" of schools. Its important that students learn where they have come from and the history of their nation and world.
Just to summarize the discussion we had on Thursday...
ReplyDeleteWe discussed the question "Is it more important to teach a strategy that works the best for the student or is easiest for the teacher?" It was basically a unanimous decision of all of us in the group that the student's learning is the main priority, therefore if a teacher is a little uncomfortable with a strategy but the students like it, it should be used. We all decided that the "alike but different" chart on page 99 is an incredibly effective tool in Social Studies for connecting ideas from different units together. This led to another discussion question..."How do teachers get out of the 'addicted to coverage' mindset?"
This question led to a great discussion about deciding what is important to teach and how we can show our students that Social Studies is important. There were a lot of great opinions on this subject such as talking more about current events and topics that students can relate to instead of spending so much time on what has happened 200 years ago. Basically as long as there are standardized tests, it is difficult not to be addicted to simply covering content, however using an "alike but different" chart can help us connect certain subjects throughout history and strengthen our students content knowledge. This in turn will help them with their understanding while reading about certain events; knowing what led to the next event and making connections.
The four-pronged system that Allen sets as the goals for “activating and building background knowledge” draw on key themes that research and anecdotes consistently reinforce as vital, necessary, and ultimately beneficial to student literacy outcomes. The particular exercise and drills that populate Chapter 1 are each designed to set the stages for further understanding. The exercises themselves have variable value depending on the teacher and the students involved but the overarching concepts that those strategies bring to life are key areas we as teachers should focus on as we prepare our students for deeper literacy involvement.
ReplyDeleteBefore we can begin to develop new understanding in students, we need to know what base they are building from. Accepting constructivism as a guiding principle of education underlies Pace’s mission of social justice. Without knowing what preexisting knowledge our students have, we cannot design lessons to build on those understandings. Assessing student preexisting “knowledge” also provides teachers with the opportunity to “correct” misconceptions.
When teachers place their lessons within significant historical contexts they encourage students to draw connections of personal import. The creation of context can come in many forms as Allen illustrates (Documentation Web, Admit Slips, Book Passes, etc.). The diversity of exercises and literacy skills that students have to employ allows learners of different strengths to express their ideas in their own fashion. The KWL exercise (a personal favorite) is a great way to bridge what is know (K) to what students want (W) to know. Placing those ideas on paper concretizes that transition for students.
Anticipating difficult concepts of vocabulary is a key skill for any teacher to have. Vocabulary-study in isolation is less valuable that when placed in context. Words are not idle concepts in space but are the roots of any subject. If students can master, or at least appreciate and understand, the vocabulary of a subject, then they can begin to fathom the higher-order integrated aspects of the subject.
The final key that Allen outlines in Chapter 1 is perhaps the key to future learning: students without motivations have no intrinsic reasons to read. When students know the what they are looking for and why they are looking for it the chances of them finding those understandings are amplified. Allen astutely concludes that, “[a]ctivities done during this stage of learning will lead to higher levels of student interest and engagement, support critical thinking, help students make connections and discover patterns…When students want to learn, half the battle is won.”