Guiding Questions:
· How do we transfer content from professional text to our own classroom contexts?
· How do we apply instructional practices and theory learned from professional texts to our own practice?
Reflection: After each session, complete a 1-2 page reflection on new learnings, ideas for application, your personal reading strategies used while reading, the discussion protocol, etc. Your professional book study group will develop an online blog where you can post your reflections and the summaries of the key findings. The blog post is due the following day.
Posting Format:
- Your Name
- Book Title
- Page #s
- Your response...
Cheryl De Roia
ReplyDeleteReading Reflection 6/23
Subjects Matter- Every Teacher’s Guide to Content-Area Reading by Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman
Chapter 1-3 (pages 1-48)
When reading over the first three chapters, I found myself doing something that I do with almost every text and that is visualizing. A dear friend once remarked that I have highly skilled visualizing skills. While reading a novel I will create my own little movie in my mind, pausing to “see” the streets or house or the interaction between characters. While reading a textbook, such as Subjects Matter, I will visualize my classroom, my students, and my preparation as a teacher. In the second chapter, most of what was discussed was what makes a “smart reader.” While reading this section I “saw” myself reading and compared my active reading processes from those in the book to my reading of novels and assigned classroom readings. Through visualization I was able to determine my skill level and my most used reading processes. Another large strategy I used was to question the text to see if it fit my known beliefs about reading so that I could determine the level of authority I felt the text would deserve ~ so far so good!
The first three chapters covered a wide range of topics. The three that most stood out were how “smart readers” read, the “superficial” nature of textbooks and why we should only use textbooks as reference guides, and the importance of background knowledge.
The largest part of the text that spoke to me was about background knowledge. Something I felt I spent an adequate time doing, but know after reading chapter 2 I feel I have done so sparingly compared to how much more my students probably need. Daniels and Zemelman stated “the only way we can learn new information is by attaching it, connecting it, and integrating it with information we already have” (27), and “cognitive researchers have found that we human being store our knowledge in mental patterns called schemata” (26). If, in order to learn, we need to attach new information to information we already have, the discussion of background knowledge should be on the forefront of every discussion of every teacher as we plan our lessons. Though we may not actively recognize our mental patterns or schemata for any particular topic, the schemata are still there. If we as teachers can tap into our student’s schemata when we present new information, it is my belief that our students will show higher levels of learning with a greater level of application. I am looking forward to reading what the authors have to share about a variety of ways to activate that background knowledge.
My group used the “Text Rendering Experience.” We built our discussion on sharing a word, phrase and then sentence that spoke to us as we read the first three chapters. I liked this process because we had so much material to cover and this process allowed us to move among the material with ease. We started small and grew to larger more overarching concepts. This process could also be done in reverse, starting broad and narrowing down to a specific word that encompasses the text. Picking out specific words, phrases, and sentences (we did not get to talk about the passage we chose) forced us to read and re-read the text. Sure, students can just pick the first thing they see, but with effective modeling and monitoring, teachers can keep the integrity of the assignment. With reading and re-reading, I feel student comprehension and ability to manipulate the text into both broader and narrower concepts increases drastically- as long as the text is at the appropriate level for the student.
I would totally agree that building background knowledge for kids is huge. I can remember back to my high school days and wondering how things linked up but never getting an answer. If we build those links for kids, the knowledge would probably become that 40 year knowledge instead of 40 minutes. This book seems interesting from the conversations you've had about it. Do the authors provide strategies for building background knowledge?
ReplyDeleteCheryl, I am really glad that you brought up the topic of schemata, we are going to be talking more about that...I think tomorrow. Thanks.
ReplyDelete