Chapter 9-Select one of the following questions to respond to on the blog.
1.Discuss the importance of content reading for struggling learners.
2. What kind of reading instruction might good readers need?
3. Complete survey monkey for this book study.
Good readers need to be reminded of their specific strategies that they already use and maybe have reinforcement of those skills. Until I read this book, I really didn't have a name to give to the strategies that I teach over and over with my students, but now I do. Good readers need to be taught to ask questions as they read and to infer.
ReplyDeleteContent reading becomes more important when students reach middle school because now they have classes like science and social studies every day. The vocabulary is more challenging, the concepts are often new, and the students have little if any background knowledge to draw from. Students need to know how to make sense of unfamiliar words using context clues, make predictions that check for understanding, use text features to enhance meaning, know when they are not understanding something, and know what to do to correct it. There is so much involved in reading content related material and usually it is pretty specific so content changes from class to class. For example the word "states" mean different things in different classes. In science it can mean a state of matter and in social studies it can mean states of our country. The same word has different meanings depending on the content it is related to. Students need to be able to figure all of this out- WOW! And every year it all gets a little more difficult. It is so worth it when you see their light bulb come on above their heads when they finally get something! This has been a great book study. I definatly learned a lot and have some new tools to use in the future!
ReplyDeleteTo me good readers already have correct strategies or they would not already be good readers. I do think that good readers need to be reminded of all the different strategies that they can use to comprehend text. One strategy might work for one story, but another strategy might work better for a different story. Good readers need to be reminded to make inferences when they read a story. They also need extra time time to make connections to the stories then students who are just reading the words. Good readers have all the strategies they need, they just need to be reminded of all the different ones that they can use and get use to using all of them. Again one strategy may work well with one story, but another strategy might work even better for a different story, so teaching them how to use these different strategies can help them even more in the long run.
ReplyDeleteWhere do we find the survey monkey for this book?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Carol. Content reading is especially important when students reach middle school. Before middle school, they don't have a lot of practice reading expository texts, and students struggle. There are big words and specialized vocabulary in content area reading. Students must learn to use reading strategies to help them understand what they are reading. They should be learning strategies such as using context clues, using background knowledge, using text features, and making inferences. Students with good reading strategies will become better readers, and therefor become better students when it comes to subject areas with a lot of content-area reading.
ReplyDeleteI visited with Gail the other morning and we discussed what we as teachers do as good readers. I said I looked over all the questions and reread each question as I read the chapters.
ReplyDeleteI agree with April. The middle school kids are lost as the cross the road as I say. They haven't been exposed to the types of text they are asked to read in Middle school
This has been an awesome book to read and to refocus on teaching reading. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteMany good readers don't know how they do it because they have incorporated all of the good strategies and do them automatically. In one of my reading classes 20 years ago, one gal didn't ever remember learning phonics. She was old enough to be in that generation that would have learned them well. I told her it's like riding a bike, she had learned her phonics so well that she uses them automatically. Good readers use those strategies they have learned and use them well. The struggling readers have kept missing those strategies as they were being taught over and over again until they are as frustrated as the teacher. The ticket is trying to find the key that is missing in the struggling reader to make learning/reading exciting again. Time!!!