Content Reading and Writing
Prereading and During Reading
Part I Timeline
As I mentioned before in previous discussions, I'm not much of a reader and never really enjoyed reading. My reading is more about skimming and has to be high interest for me. I'm not one to read a novel or for fun. I couldn't even tell you how I began to learn how to read in my elementary years. What I do remember is round robin reading out of our reading books. It just seemed like a chore to read. I don't recall reading for enjoyment. To add to my disinterest I remember not being very confident. Reading was done when I had to in order to do homework or to get information. Even up to this day, its difficult for me to comprehend long text. I comprehend better by skimming to find important information or I do have to go back to the text. My mind wonders off when I read unless again it is of high interest.
Part II
If it were not for my sixth grade teacher I may not have begun to enjoy writing. What I enjoyed about Ms. Jacobsen is that she made reading and writing enjoyable. I remember reading Of Mice and Men in her class and how involved we were in the book. Her ability to bring the interest into a book was amazing. She would introduce the book, allow us to read on our pace, and within our groups we would discuss our readings and make predictions on what would come next chapter.
Part III
Teachers absolutely have an impact on our students reading attitudes. If our teachers simply assign reading to our students then it becomes the chore that I have talked about. This creates a disinterest in reading. Just as any assignment, teachers have to create a purpose for the reading and create an environment where our students can have success and gain confidence to explore into higher level learning and reading. Our L1 need a push to get started and obviously more scaffolding. Once they get into an L2 it should get better as they have a bigger vocabulary so their comprehension may increase. They may also begin to understand words within context or if they don't then they can use context clues and other strategies for better understanding.