Reading Part 1: LE 3
Comprehension/Instructional Strategies and Differentiation
Inclusion and Differentiated Instruction: Teachers in the Movies do it Too
Key Ideas from the Guides to Effective Instruction in Literacy
Yes, there is a lot of "good stuff" in these guides! What you said. . .
- I found both documents are trying to support teachers in helping students understand reading is more than reading words on a page, students need to comprehend what they are reading.
- Reading comprehension is a process of using background knowledge in combination with new knowledge gained through reading and to construct meaning from it. The comprehension strategies need to be explicitly taught and include: making connections, activating background knowledge, visualizing, questioning, inferring, synthesizing and monitoring understanding.
- It's important to activate prior knowledge before, during and after reading. Often times, I think of it as being most important to activate prior knowledge before reading a text so that students have a context for what we are about to look at. I should give students the opportunity to confirm their background knowledge as we make our way through the text, and they should have the opportunity to discuss what was added to their knowledge when we are done reading.
- The document had so many good instructional tools and graphic organizers to support students in thinking about what they are reading: 3R response, mind maps and I like the chart 8.3 that lists the features of the different types of texts and genres to support a student’s understanding of the purpose of the text.
- The charts outlining different questions to support comprehension, questions about fictional and factual texts, and questions based on Blooms Taxonomy were also great one-stop-shopping for questions to guide Journal responses or to be used to kickstart a discussion among your students.
- Metacognition plays a huge part of reading comprehension because students need to understand what they know, and how they know it.
- Another point I read that was new to me, but definitely makes sense, is that vocabulary must be taught directly and indirectly. If a student has to constantly stop reading to look up a word’s meaning, they will lose the interest in the text. Which highlights the importance of picking “just right” books
- Critical reading is what makes us love a book, it challenges us to think. Instead of reading how to help my environment books, I could read about someone polluting and really engage the readers/listeners in their thinking.
Differentiating Instruction for Reading
Classroom Management in a Differentiated Classroom
Muddy Points about Boys' Literacy
These are a few of the muddy points you shared along with some suggestions.
Question: How do you foster some of our reluctant male readers to be confident in reading?
- For the student who would rather be playing games, maybe it could start by having him reading reviews of different gaming systems, or maybe there is a book related to the game that he enjoys (I know there's a couple of minecraft books that have been very popular)
- I had students complete a reading survey to gather more information regarding their attitudes towards reading. I also had the students share their favourite books so I could buy some resources for the classroom with my Scholastic Book Rewards!
- At the school I was working at last year, the librarian invited some authors to our school and I think that really pulled students interests in some genre's of books they may not have considered. I think when they put a face to a book and hear the author's experiences from writing the books it generates greater interests.
- The articles also suggest giving boys shorter tasks and lots of feedback during reading and writing tasks. Maybe chunking reading selections, so some boys aren't overwhelmed by the quantity of reading will help them focus on comprehension.
- Something I plan to do with my grade 6 students this year is create a blog. It would be shared with my students and their parents, and each week I would choose one student to do a sort of "weekly round-up" to give an overview of what we have done that week. This could be a good opportunity to have that student do a book review as well. They could do a pod-cast for the blog, summarizing what they read, and their opinion on the text
Male Role Models
I wonder if there were more male elementary teachers, would more boys take an interest in reading?
Games & Role Play
I do believe that games and role playing do support reading but more so for girls so how do we get the boys engaged so they can benefit as well?
Social Norms
It really makes me think, did we create a social norm that books are for girls and not for boys and in turn we caused boys early development in reading to flop?
I am wondering though how to keep them motivated during texts that they have to read for certain subjects (ie- texts for social studies, science, etc.)
- For literature circles, where there are different groups reading different texts, give students a say in their book/group. Although you need to keep reading levels in mind, allowing students to choose their books/group will help keep them engaged. The teacher did a book pass – giving each student time to explore the books that would be used for literature circles and having them rank their choices. This way, they had the opportunity to see what interested them most. The teacher kept their choices in mind when making groupings.
- I have used the Arts as a way to get them motivated. Art, like drawing is a passion of mine and I encourage my students to draw and create works of art as much as possible. I also find that boys in particular do like to act out stories or create their own story in groups. Perhaps, you can try to get the boys in your class to act out new stories where they can take on and become the characters, like Readers Theatre.
- If we show interest and try our best to make it exciting then the students will have a better chance of understanding and being interested in it as well. Also we need to provide as many hands on experiences as possible to make it real and entice all students to do their independent readings and to participate in class discussions.
- I take my class to the library and we go through books about the subject topic. It's interesting hearing their ideas about which books we should sign out for the class. It's also amazing to see what they remember reading before about the topic and knowing where to find it in the library.
Here's a question that came up in many discussions:
Is it really beneficial to have a boys only book corner? What's this telling girls and boys?
Consensus about Boys' Literacy?
It appears as though the best approach may be to get to know the interests of all of our students, not just the boys, and to offer a variety of texts and activities so that everyone in our class has a fair chance to succeed and enjoy reading
Interestingly enough, in both sections, there was that question about should we be looking at boys specifically? With many of you questioning that approach--love the critical literacy!, I stole the above quotation from Jessica B, because there were so many of you who were on the same wavelength.
Diverse Resources
Here are all the wonderful resources you shared. . .
Brother Eagle Sister Sky
Same Same But Different