First of all, thanks to you who are staying faithful with the reading of this book. It has great ideas and many practical suggestions thoughout that will help us better prepare our students to be successful at high school.
The student named Kayla reminds me of several I have taught and known before. "Nope, I keep reading and hope it makes sense when I am done". If she doesn't understand her response is, "Then, oh well". That is frustrating for us for sure but a student can't really be happy with that feeling either. Have you had this experience with a student? If so, and I know you have, found a reliable solution?
I know a lot of these fix-it strategies are familiar to you but are there any that are new that are of interest?
Reading and language arts teachers, what can you advise a content teacher that may not have your expertise as to which fix-it strategies would work best in given textual situations?
I experienced this frustration quite a bit this past year as I was teaching poetry. I came up with a 3 part plan for increasing comprehension. The first time we read a poem, reading was simply the task at hand. I told them to simply follow along as it was read aloud. Second read was all about putting the pencil to the paper (yes, they wrote in their books ;)) and circling ANY word, sentence, or passage that stood out to them no matter the reason why it stood out. After, students shared what they circled and why. This way, they were personally connecting to the text and getting their brain working with the text in mind. The third read was about determining the author's purpose and making sense of the bigger picture. I had never done this before when teaching poetry and I was completely amazed at how well it worked. My students (mostly inclusion) learned to analyze poetry in a way that, at times, left me speechless!!
ReplyDeleteMy advice to other content teachers is to determine what the student does understand about the passage and build from there. Also, the use of graphic organizers to document information as the student gets it is a very effective reading strategy.
When students express to me that they are confused by what they read, I always start with the statement, "Tell me what you do know." Once they do that, I work from there. I cannot simply tell a student to read it again until I know where they lost track. I build on what they know and then keep going with the "what you do know" until I get to the area of confusion. I will have them read the paragraph/section aloud and usually the light bulb will go off and they can continue. (I am mainly referring to my regular classes here, though I do have Pre-AP students who are strugglers.) I also try to anticipate what might confuse them and address that ahead of time, but there are times I don't anticipate it and have to address it during the reading.
ReplyDeleteI think perhaps that with content area reading, students would have to understand the author's purpose before making personal connections to the text (which is a little different from literature, I think). I think student need a purpose for what they are reading other than "because they have to" or "because I said to". That way they know ahead of time what/why they are reading the piece; they can focus on author's purpose and then their connections to it. I would help them make connections to previous topics covered in class.
Being an elective teacher, I have not used these methods. When students expressed to me that they were confused by what they read, I suggested they use background knowledge or read it again. By reading the above blogs, I can keep my students more actively engaged in reading.
ReplyDeleteI have found that graphic organizers work well when reading historical text. A lot of the reading in history involves people, dates, and important events. Graphic organizers seem to help students with organizing the information they are reading. I also use one of the methods mentioned by Mrs. Johnson. If I can find out where the student is getting lost in the text, then I can help them with gaining a better understanding of what they are reading.
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