In chapter eleven of Subjects
Matter, it talks about key strategies teachers can use to help teach
students how to read for their content-areas. Reading has always been difficult
for me, and an issue I have is that I’ll read the whole passage and then realize
I got nothing out of it. Then I have to go and read the whole thing all over
again.
When I read the section about promoting self-monitoring, I thought the “stop and
think” guide would be useful for helping students (and myself) really
understand the reading from the first time around. These guides make the
students pause in the readings to think about questions the text can answer,
explain what they’ve already read, highlight words they don’t know, and see if
they have any questions or if they are confused. One of the other strategies
the reading brought up was being able to build engagements with the text. I
sometimes have a hard time visualizing what I’m reading, especially when it
comes to unfamiliar concepts. At Downers Grove South High School, the freshman
social studies class participated in a role-play that was about world poverty
and explored what it was like being in a high, middle, or low-income category.
After the role-play, their teachers read them excerpts on Nelson Mandela’s
speech on poverty. I really liked this example for building engagements because
after the role-play, it makes it so much easier to visualize how certain income
levels can affect quality of life.
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Hey Deana,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the part of your reflection where you were talking about the “stop and think” guide and how you gave a meaningful example that actually included yourself. I think when students see the strategies modeled and also know that even good readers, like teachers, use these strategies to help them read better, it can be a powerful experience for them.
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