Who teaches reading? The elementary teacher? The textbook argues that the "credit (or blame) for students' reading ability goes to primary grade teachers, and subsequent teachers or college instructors need teach only new vocabulary and concepts relevant to new content" (17). This is not the attitude to have. Throughout chapters two and four, we see that there are so many different types of reading. A student who can finish a novel in one day may be the student who struggles the most with reading and comprehending primary sources. A student may be a genius at math problems, they can understand complex theories and be the best critical thinker, yet they may struggle to read a chapter book. Throughout chapter 2 and 4, I saw identified with two themes the most. One, the teaching of reading should be taught throughout college, teaching students how to read must never stop. Two, reading must be personal to one's identity. A few weeks ago, we talked about engagement. One of the readings pointed out that the students who most need to be engaged, suffer the most when they are not engaged. It is the same way with reading and literacy. We know that the ability to read and literacy are the two most important skills in our society if you are illiterate, your career options and quality of life drop dramatically. For our students who come from high need schools and impoverished situations, it becomes even more important for them to be literate because in many cases, they are starting from an already disadvantaged point. Yet, our school system consistently fails students of color and high need students. Here, I'd like to share a TED talk by Alvin Irby, an elementary school teacher, who emphasizes the importance of being aware of a students identity when teaching them about reading.
Lastly, in order to combine metacognition with literacy (while making it relevant and personal), I've compiled a list of activities from other classes, the internet, and the book, that can be useful to help students. Many of these activities can be used across content with a little adaption and allow students to talk about themselves, activating your awareness of identity, plus, everyone loves to talk about themselves!
- writing word problems for math
- read a lab/scientific theory and re-write a better lab/design your own lab
- read a primary source and rewrite it as a narrative
- perform word problems/theories/historical events
- class "book clubs"
- current events
- socratic seminars
- write your own primary source/scientific law
- research something that interests you and write something/create a presentation on how you use your content area for this
- identify important vocabulary and create your own city that functions based off of that vocabulary
- student designs a lesson plan
- take sections from class material, jumble the sentences, the students must unscramble it and identify what it is saying
There are so many ways to incorporate literacy into any classroom. What strategies/activities do you like to use to incorporate literacy and metacognition in your classroom? Why is it important for you to incorporate literacy into your subject area and do you have any unique lesson plans/ideas on how to do this?
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ReplyDeleteHi Destiny. Thank you for ideas and useful strategies. It is thought-provoking what Alvin Irby said that identity shapes learning, and we should make students think they are reader. As for the strategies you mentioned, I’d like to use the strategies that read a primary source and rewrite it as a narrative in my English classroom, but maybe I’ll turn it into read a primary source and retell it as a narrative, because I guess it save time in classroom teaching. I think it is the way to check whether readers really understand the text or not. If so, one can decode the source text, which after reading and analyzing, and output his or her own words.
ReplyDeleteDestiny, I definitely agree! "Learning to read" is not a specific moment in a students life, rather it is a culmination of their educational career, even past that! I think in terms of schooling, teachers are not focusing enough on fluency. When I say fluency I mean the "larger language units" (19) that students should be understanding, rather than just reading the words and not understanding the main concepts. Students are probably so focus on getting assignments done that they speed through chapters in a text and do not gain anything that benefits their fluency.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of my classroom, I would definitely incorporate many different application problems. Offering application problems does not only reinforce a students literacy, it actually is proven to help them with the mathematical concepts. Given a word problem, students cannot focus on doing the problem as a "procedure," instead they have to think critically and dissect the mathematical concepts to understand what the problem is asking them to do.
Learning how to read is a lifelong study concept. It should not just happen in the classrooms or in schools. I think parents or guardians should take part in it. So, the cooperation of the schools and families takes an important role in helping kids learn better. In the classroom, students' diversity background make the teaching strategies have different results individually. I also think it is the consequence of individual metacognition. Base on that, I will say providing more relative information on the reading materials such as the author's background, will contribute to understand. Imagination and connection are also should be introduced depending on different subject areas.
ReplyDeleteI really like your ideas. I think the Ted Talk you posted was really interesting as well. Addressing students' identities in reading needs to happen or you can often not address their problems learning-wise. I also really appreciated that you said reading is a continuing study. I personally am always learning how to read. There is never really a point where I somehow just knew how to read but this also doesn't take into account how to read a wider range of texts. I do not know how to read tax code or real estate law, but these skills might need to become more important later in life so my future reading skills will need to further expand. We are all always learning how to read.
ReplyDeleteDestiny,
ReplyDeleteSome of the TED talk reminded me about my ESL English class where I had to read Shakespeare. Had I not read the books in Spanish, I would have been more lost. It was hard for me to be engaged, and I constantly trying to see if the rest of the classmates understood. I was afraid to make a mistake or look dumb.
It is very important that, we, as educators, offer students the definition of reading and comprehension and how to obtain skills that could be applied across all the disciplines.
I really agree with trying to get the students input in those activities. Getting input in what students want to read. My love of reading was found outside of the classroom, and it fueled by my own interests long before I actually read a book for school. Your suggestions for engaging the student look fantastic and I am glad you shared them.
ReplyDeleteHi Destiny. I like and totally agree with your opinions that “the best way for students to encounter difficult material is for the teacher to humanize learning and normalize mistakes”. it is necessary to provide students reading materials they are interested in and reading atmosphere they exactly need in order to engage them in reading, which emphasizes respect. Students are expected to express their views on texts in the classroom, while teachers are required to create a safe place for students to make them feel comfortable expressing their opinions and thoughts, including “confusion, disagreement, and even disengagement with texts” (27). This is what mentioned in Chapter two defined as “social dimension” of Reading Apprenticeship Classroom. I think it is the premise of implementing any teaching strategy or approach to engage students in reading, which means to respect all the students and create a comfortable community in the classroom for them basing on their races and individual interests, then let them be willing to read.
ReplyDeleteYour post made me think about how literacy can affect so much of a student's schoolwork and life. In my opinion, this means that not only should reading skills be taught throughout all of schooling, but also in many different classrooms because reading science is entirely different than reading in an English classroom. I absolutely agree with you that teachers should be normalizing mistakes, especially because students who struggle with reading and writing can be ashamed of this fact.
ReplyDeleteHi Destiny! Thanks for sharing. I agree with you that individuals have their own interests and specialties. As for me, I have little aptitude for math, but I do much better in Chinese than most students. I really appreciate your words that teachers should “humanize learning and normalize mistakes”. Truly, reading is what we do to make sense of things, we read to understand. As educators, our responsibility is to help students understanding and overcome mistakes in the process of forming cognition. According to your questions, I think to address students' identities in reading as well as writing needs first to have a deep understanding of all the student's aptitude. Then, recommend books based on students' interests, so that students are more selective and more likely to engage. I think it will probably promote the development of literacy metacognition.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you had to say how reading needs to be personal in order to connect to it. I also agree that reading needs to be taught all the way up and throughout college. The problem that I can easily see arising is that students will not be as engaged with reading as they were when they were younger. I found that I was more interested in reading when I was younger because I generally got to read what interested me. But in middle school and definitely high school, we were assigned readings and novels that may not have appealed to everyone. If we can find appropriate readings for students that match what they are interested in, then students will be more engaged with the material. And great job on the blog post.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that reading should always be taught. As the student advance grade levels, the readings get harder for the students. So the teacher needs to set aside a couple of reading assignments to teach their students what the teacher is look for in them and what the student should be looking for while reading the text.
ReplyDeleteAlso I just wanted to say this is a really interesting blog post and it shows that you really did your research. Great job!
I like your idea of continuing on "learning how to read," even through out college. My question is, what type of class would do that? If not a specific class then how do we ensure that learning to read happens in a college class?
ReplyDelete-Kiley
DeleteI completely agree that reading should be more personal for the students. I can not tell you how many times I was assigned a book to read in high school and I just spark noted the entire thing, while in elementary and middle school I had so much freedom to read what I wanted and it encouraged me to read more. ALso, learning how to read throughout all of the subjects is immensely important and it helps us to grow intellectually. Readings are getting harder and harder and the last time I learned how to read was in middle school. Most likely we have all had to adapt on our own to the increase in difficulty in school readings and it would be helpful if we were taught how to read in a way that matches the difficulty of the subjects we are in.
ReplyDeleteConsidering the effort by providing strategies and adding the Ted talk regarding motivation in reading for students, its fantastic that you acknowledge the comprehension of reading as it can be complex with different students especially with an example from a personal experience. As I was reading, I felt that summary of meta-cognition through the picture that you shared does a good job get started to think about reading comprehension.
ReplyDeleteDestiny,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog! I agree that our school system can fail students of color. When watching your TED talk by Alvin Irby, I agreed with his theory that many colored students have a low literacy problem and that's because they are not addressing the issue of identity. I loved how he is having books at the barber shop because this shows to young colored children that reading is positive because other colored people can read as well. Many of these children in school, just try to rush an assignment so they can get the perfect score and many school systems emphasize the importance of scores instead of understanding the reading.
A theory I would use in my classroom is that I would have my student read primary and secondary sources and have them retell it as an anecdote. By doing this, I will be able to hear their perspectives and they can hear their peers perspective as well.