Monday, January 26, 2015
The one time that I can remember a teacher using the comphresion processes in the book and also encouraging me to think deeply about the text was way back in fifth grade. Unfortunatly, I do not remember the title of the book that we read but I do remember how many different activities we did to help us really comphrehend what we were reading. I remeber we had to read the book on our own, usually during class time, and then she had us illustrate the book. We made our own books about the parts of the book that we thought were very important to the story line. We had to draw pictures and color them and make them look really nice. We spent a lot of time working on our books and trying to portray what we saw in our minds. It was very interesting to see how each student depicted each scene in their book and also to see what they thought was important. Although everyone was reading the same book, our illustrations were all very different and we had a great time with the project. This teacher did a few things that were taught in the chapter such as giving us an opportunity to visualize and portray what we were reading. It allowed us to think about the storyline and determine what makes the story good and which parts of the story are most important. As I go into my classrooms I hope that I can understand as my teacher did that every student learns differently. Some students may enjoy reading alone but other may need to visualize the story in a different way in order to comphrehend. It is important to me that I give all of my students the best opportunity possible to be successful and that means giving them various ways to learn.
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Austin,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. I like the idea of having students create a project based on what they have read. The idea of having you re-create the story is a great way to get students to visualize what they are reading. I also find it interesting how many people can read the same book and all take something different away from the story.
I am going to try things like this in the history classroom. I like the idea of having students create newspapers and other text, after reading some documents from the time period.
I like that your teacher gave you the opportunity to visualize exactly what you were reading. I think that it helps when students are able to see exactly how a word is used to help describe what is going on in the scene. Also allowing the students to share what they specifically think about a topic is important to give those students a voice and to be heard by their peers.
ReplyDeleteHi Austin,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your posting. I liked your description of how the teacher applied comprehension processes. Although reading a narrative is very different than reading in mathematics, I think the comprehension strategy of "visualizing" can still be used in both cases. For instance, you can teach students how to draw pictures of word problems to help them figure them out, or even draw pictures of fractions or probability problems to help them figure them out. In chemistry, you might apply the strategy of "visualizing" by sharing a lot of experiments or demonstrations that are associated with the textbook reading. Or, for instance, you could ask them to draw their own pictures or make their own models. One common critique is that most textbook illustrations of atoms are entirely inaccurate in terms of how they portray scale and movement, so you could make another representation. For instance, I worked with a science teacher who did a scaled model (to distance) of the solar system, and her students went outside and were shocked how far the outer planets were from each other. I've heard of teachers who did representations like that with atoms as well to show how far apart the nucleus is from the electrons. That kind of physical, embodied representation would help students to visualize the atom.
Thanks again for your posting.
ReplyDeleteAustin, it is so nice to read your blog after seeing your awesome work on our conservation project last class. I am surprised that you were asked to think deeply at such a young age. I think that is how it should be I just don’t remember that being the case at my school. I really liked how descriptive your writing was. There was a clear image in my head of what you were describing.
I am a visual person and so I loved the idea mentioned about making a realistic illustration of an atom. I think that will really help kids to wrap their minds around how an atom functions. This will help all learners to gain a better understanding. You should totally incorporate that in your teaching style.
It is interesting to me that this was in the fifth grade since I am currently working with a student that age. Her teacher had the students do something similar when doing book reports. They did book reports in the form of a book cover like those which are designed for a publisher. They included cover art and a synopsis written to “sell” the book to prospective readers. Doing it that way helped students to immediately see book reports as something of value.
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