I try everyday in my classroom to use accessible text with my my students--and as a literacy teacher, I think it's a lot easier for me to do so, but I always love the idea of science and social studies teachers using book bags from the library (trade books on any given topic), but I can see the challenge in doing things this way. With the kids I teach, I DEFINITELY lean more toward shorter, high interest pieces, but I always have to wonder: am I setting them up for failure later when, all of a sudden, they have to read a huge, insanely hard novel? I'd like to think I'll be giving them at least the tools to wade their way (be it slowly) through it.
It is a daily goal of mine to give my students a purpose for reading and challenge them to come up with one for themselves if there seems to be none. As an adult, I don't often pick things up that I don't ACTUALLY want to read--however, we ask kids to do that all the time. Where will their focus and concentration go if we don't at least teach them how to give themselves a road map and a goal? Well, who knows, but not anywhere in the book/article, that I know for sure!
The frustration then, with the autonomy, becomes (as some of you have already mentioned), the kids who know what to do to comprehend BUT JUST DON'T DO IT--GRRRRRRRR!! WHY NOT? WHY DO YOU LIKE BEING CONFUSED??!!! Deeeeeep breath....allllll I can do it keep trying, right?!
I do not think you are setting your students up for failure at all by differentiating to meet their current needs. Like it was mentioned in chapter 4, you have to adjust the rigor in order to meet student needs and also keep the door open for achievement. Its called the Zone of Proximal Development - to maximize learning, a task should be a little beyond the learners current reach. With the amount of data that is available to you now, you are very aware of the literacy levels of all of your students. By choosing those high-interest/lower-level readings, you are allowing the students to be challenged to a point where they are made to think, but in a way that still allows them to accomplish the task successfully. This helps students make connections and gives them that "Aha!" moment where they brain will release chemicals to stimulate it's reward center. The more rewarding a student sees a task or topic (either emotionally, chemically or whatnot) the more that students will be motivated to keep learning. This could eventually garner interest in a topic that they currently do not like or struggle with (this happens a lot with math).
ReplyDeleteAs far as actually getting the students to use the strategies that will help them remember what they have learned, that's something that will come in time. I think that, at this age, our students are mostly concerned with themselves and doing things that they enjoy or that make them happy. They might see using these strategies as an attempt to turn reading into work (ridiculous isn't it?), when they see it as something recreational that they enjoy doing. The idea that they could use these strategies in the future with all different types of reading (most notably the readings that they will have to do even though they don't want to) is a concept that is too abstract for them right now. It's probably unrealistic to think that all of the students will eventually come around and use active reading strategies, but I do think that the majority of them will, especially as schools start to use more digital tools and texts that allow to you mark up without repercussions or extra fees from schools.....
I like what Tovani discusses in Chapter 5 on pages 62 & 63 about the voices that we have in our heads when we are reading: the reciting and conversational voice. I do an activity with my students that shows the difference between the two voices, but I like how she takes it a step further and shows how to help students learn to distinguish between those two different voices and how to turn the reciting voice off and the conversational voice on.
ReplyDeleteThe word that I would say stood out for me in this reading was “purpose. “ As teachers we all know that there is a purpose to every assignment, and many times we assume the students know what that purpose it. The same holds true for reading assignments. It was a good reminder for me to make sure I always give students a specific purpose for their reading, but more importantly, that I teach them how to determine the purpose for different type of text for when they are not reading a school assignment or when their teacher fails to tell them….which would never happen at my anonymous school!!!!