What really struck home for me while reading the text was when the book gave us a "quiz" on our reading strategy. The passage that related to cricket was an absolute debauchery for me at first, but as the text began to elaborate on why they gave such an irrelevant passage, i began to understand. The way i read, interpret, analyze, and evaluate a text has become implicit to me. I don't think about the methods I deploy when breaking down a text to discover what it means and represents. However, after the text talked about the importance of surfacing reading strategies, I realize the benefits that the observance and exhibition of my reading strategies will have on my students.
This reminds me of our class conversation on understanding our pedagogical theory in order to properly develop and effectively exhibit them in a classroom setting. As teachers, we must showcase ALL of our knowledge and strategies to our students, in order to break down that barrier between us and the students; the barrier that gives a false perception that teacher knowledge is "magical" and "unattainable." We must instead show our students the what, how, and why of reading in order to build confidence in our students and elevate their awareness when reading. After all, we all want to desperately avoid that horrible situation that took place in the imaginary Mr. Cosgrove's class.
The second point that really stood out to me, and this in part goes back to the passages the book had us read and analyze, was the commentary on mental schemata. As the text states, "reading is not just "receiving a message," but actively building meaning upon prior knowledge using staged, strategic reading..." (Pg. 31). I like this quote because it states that students do possess the ability to comprehend complex readings, it is just a matter of developing methods that will bring it out of them.
Ryan, I loved many of the same things you did about these chapters. I noted in my reflection how I truly want to try these reading strategies and test them out. We get so used to just doing the reading without thinking about it. I wondered how much more I would get out of it if I employed these methods.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of building on prior knowledge reminded me of the quote we looked at the first week of class, the idea of successful teaching being about what is already in the student. It just reinforces the idea that these kids have knowledge, it just may take time and effort to see how to activate their schema.