The other chapter that I chose to read was chapter 14 of Strategies that Work. I thought that it would go along well with chapter 10, which was all about nonfiction. Almost every student that I knew in high school hated reading out of a textbook. When I got into college nothing changed. I still did not like it and I think it is because no one ever taught me how to read from a text book. I am a visual learner and so when I would read a text book I felt like I was not learning anything unless there was a picture by it. I tend to zone out when I read textbooks and often have had to go back and reread whole chapters because I had no idea what I had just read. When teaching a student how to read a textbook we are using their comprehension skills, so we do not want to overwhelm them with information otherwise they will become frustrated and not learn anything. Instead of trying to cover whole chapters it is important to just go through the chapters and pick out the information you want them to learn (page 236). This is a good time to teach students how to take notes and paraphrase information so it is easier to understand. It is also important to make sure that before the students go through the textbook that they know the special vocabulary that will take place in the chapter. Not only will that clear up confusion for them when they get to those words in the text but it may give them a heads up on what the lesson will be about, based on the vocabulary words. Learning how to read a textbook will be challenging for students, but it helps them with their fluency and comprehension skills that they can take with them all the way to college.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Big Ideas of the Readings
I chose to read chapter ten from Strategies that Work as my first chapter. The big idea of this chapter was about using nonfiction in the classroom. In the first page of this chapter there was a sentence that I thought was great to know for using nonfiction: "We remember facts and details better when we link them to larger concepts" (page 155). I think that this method was not used a lot when I was in elementary school because I remember having to read chapters out of a text book and then we would go over what we read. It was very boring and I usually would not remember it. Nowadays we know about such methods as connecting text to self or text to text and text to the world. When reading nonfiction it is important to let students what to look for in the article/text book. Instead of just giving them a book to read for facts they need to have a purpose for reading that text. Having the students focus on a particular aspect of the nonfiction text will help them get more information and retain it. When my students do their weekly reader (with a Scholastic magazine or something like that) we always focus on one part of the magazine. They have looked at the titles, bolded words, and this week we are focusing on why authors may change the color of the text to catch the readers attention. In third grade it is important to teach the students on how to read nonfiction text rather than have them read it, that way when they continue their education and get more into reading nonfiction than fiction they will have a better idea on how to study for exams and how to gain as much information as they can out of what they are reading.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I often think back to my schooling and the different things that we did and wonder how I ever learned anything at all. I remember standing at a chalk board in 1st grade writing letters over and over again. Now Kindergarteners are learning their letters through movement and different sensory activities because research has shown that involving movement and the senses increases our ability to learn. We were just talking about teaching students how to read nonfiction this afternoon in our professional development. With the new Core standards, half of what students are tested on is nonfiction. The 3rd and 4th grade teachers in our building feel that they are lacking severely in this area of instruction and are frustrated because they dont even know where to begin to look. What do they do in your classroom with nonfiction texts? I also think about these connections and different comprehension strategies that we teach students and wonder how I was taught it. I don't remember explicit instruction like we are doing now but we had to have been taught it somehow... I wish I could go back and talk to my old teachers sometimes to see what they did!
ReplyDeleteIn my guided reading group right now we are reading about Mount Rushmore. Before I read the chapters I started this but now I see how teaching students to navigate nonfiction is so important. I have taught them to look at headlines and bolded words, to read captions and timelines, and to go to the index or glossary for more information.
I think we all feel the same way about textbook reading and while I am also a visual person so it is hard for me to focus I think the other half of this has to do with motivation. Whenever I am reading textbooks it is assigned reading that is not chosen by me. This creates a lack of motivation which in turn leads me to not focus and care about what I am reading. This was especially terrible in basic classes not related to my major that I cared nothing about!
There are so many things we can teach students about reading nonfiction that I really think I want to talk to my MT about starting. Kids need to learn these strategies not only for grade school but as tools to use for the rest of their lives.
After reading these chapters I thought about my own school experiences as well as what I see in my field placement. Most teachers say that boys love to read non-fiction, and how important it is to have non-fiction texts in the classroom. However, non-fiction is not always readably available for students in elementary school. We do take the time to go over how to use our math text books. For example, we had a lesson on where to find a definition, where to find the table of contents, where to find the index, and what you can find in all of these sections. I have heard students use words such as, table of context and glossary since then.
ReplyDeleteChapter 12 of "Strategies That Work" talk about how there are so many opportunities to bring informational texts into the classroom that the students will be interested in. I went to look in our book room to find non-fiction texts that are something other than textbooks. However, there were not many options. They had many racks of non-fiction books, but they are the type of book that does not have an inviting cover or layout. Many of them were titled what the subject of the book was about. The layout included paragraphs of information about these animals, countries, food, etc. I did find a large amount of Magic School Bus books. I personally find these interesting and educational. There are many facts involved. The students need to understand that the story part of Ms. Frizzle taking her kids into place (i.e. into the Earth) is fictional, but the facts given are truthful. Have you ever seen a Magic School Bus book used in teaching a non-fiction lesson?