How do today's readings and discussion help you understand your own reading comprehension processes? What are you seeing in the field related to comprehension processes and literacy instruction? Make sure to reference the readings and our class discussions.
I definitely feel as if I can really see which reading comprehension profiles I matched with as a child. I do think that I was a literalist as Applegate explains-that all answers will be found in the text. I used to be certain that everything I could need to know about a book, came straight out of the book, however, I now know that is not necessarily the case. For example, when I am going to teach my ELA lesson, The Story of Ruby Bridges, not everything is clearly stated in this book. It never once says why people discriminate, and it never once goes into depth about the past ideas of segregation. My students will have to come to some conclusions on their own--why the people discriminated against Ruby, why schools were much different in the past. Coming from a literalist past, I will need to work with my students that display these same qualities, so they look much deeper and beyond the text. One way to go about this as Applegate explains, is to do pre-reading activities on the theme that one is about to explore. For example, if I was teaching The Story of Ruby Bridges to my classroom, I might consider teaching a unit on discrimination, or even racism, within my social studies lessons.
Another comprehension profile I felt like I could relate to was the dodger. Sometimes when I didn't like a question, I would think of something somewhat similar, but not exactly the same, in order to satisfy what I felt like was worth answering. When working with Dodgers, I can use strategies such as List-Group-Label, Teacher Predictions, etc.
Within my field I am seeing many different profiles in my students. There are plenty of literalists that look only at the text for answers, fuzzy thinkers that provide vague answers, left fielders that give ideas I, myself, have never considered, and dogders that dodge questions completely. In order to adapt to the many levels of thinkers, as well as their different profiles, it will be important for me in the future to implement a variety of different comprehension activities, so that students are looking deeper into their understandings, so that they can truly comprehend the texts.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Christina-
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that you identify as both a literalist and a dodger and you outlined ways that you would look out for these types of students and try to clarify their comprehension through certain strategies. Although this may not have been your intent, it made me think about the ways in which we teach relative to our own learning style. I know that, often, there is a concern that teachers teach to their own learning style preferences (which likely happens very often) but I thought that in this case, students with comprehension profiles like that of the teacher might be at a disadvantage. If students are being too literal in their thinking, for example, a teacher with literalist tendencies might not redirect a student as effectively as another teacher who does not rely as heavily on the literal text. Obviously, as teachers, we want to help all of our students improve their comprehension strategies, but I was curious if you thought it would be more difficult to look critically at your own comprehension profile, or to attempt to understand a profile that is unfamiliar to you?