Beers letter to George in Chapter 4 really made me think about how important it is for us to teach struggling readers how to comprehend text. Even more important is the fact that we can teach these students how to comprehend text. As I read this chapter I tried to visualize in my mind some of the strategies that I used to comprehend text; Beers lists several specific strategies that good readers use to help them comprehend text. These are the strategies that we must teach our students…The challenge is how?
Beers stresses the importance of very direct and explicit instruction. We cannot expect our students to “just do it,” we have to show them how very explicitly and directly. Beers describes six instructional practices that have been successful for her and reminds us that by having a plan (direct and explicit), it takes the guesswork out of what we want our students to learn.
The analogy that Beers uses to make a connection between skill and strategy was really helpful to me; the strategy takes you (or prepares you) to the skill. That means that without a strategy, you will never acquire a skill. Preparing our students with strategies today will pay off later when they are more strategic readers. Her advice to teach comprehension strategies early in the school year makes perfect sense to me!
The progression of Kylene’s coaching with Kate was very educational for me. Seeing the development of Kate’s teaching style evolve as a result of Kylene’s coaching was enlightening. As with Kate, I find myself coaching to the answer instead of coaching to the strategy to find the answer.
Addressing the issue of a Workshop Approach made sense to me. I can’t imagine being a middle school student and sitting in a 45 minute lecture in English/language arts. The idea of introducing minilessons as a means of incorporating direct instruction into your lesson seems like a terrific idea. This would help break the pace of lecture, allow time to target one strategy “good readers use” and provides an opportunity for the students to actually use the strategy in this class time.
The goal of reading is to comprehend. Our job as teachers is to teach our students strategies that good readers use to increase their comprehension level. These strategies don’t come easy for some and require explicit and direct instruction by us. Our students deserve to have the tools they need to be successful, independent readers.
I agree that we need to teach our students strategies to comprehend texts, and that the challenge is how...I think that when we first start teaching, we will fall on our face a time or two ,but with practice, we will eventually be able to teach our students comprehension strategies with little difficulties.
ReplyDeleteI, too, gained from reading about Kate's growth in teaching. I can't say for certain how I would have taught the lesson, but I am fairly confident that I would have made the same mistake she did. I hope that I don't become a teacher who sticks to the IRE method. I want my students to feel like they are really having a class discussion instead of a question and answer session.
I am struggling in my placement currently because my teacher is trying to get through major lessons in a 45 minute session with a bunch of students that have a 15 minute attention span. To keep the going she threatends them "five more minutes! five more minutes" until we have done that for 20 additional minutes.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of minilessons and coming back to things later is so beneficial to children, and I really wish we did it more frequently!