How Smart Readers Read and Become a Community of Learners

How Smart Readers Read and Become a Community of Learners

In my classroom it will be my duty to teach students how to be smart readers.  Being a good reader is a skill that takes practice and I will need to present students with engaging texts which will help them improve their reading skills and comprehension.  I feel students will develop their own preferences as to how they read best, but as their instructor it will be necessary to expose them to different strategies.  For instance, I plan on encouraging students to read with a pen and notebook at all times.  Although students will not always be able to mark up the text they are reading, keeping notes in a chronological order with page numbers allows students to stop and realize what they are reading and refer back to key concepts when needed.  I will also ask them to use those handy smartphones of theirs as dictionaries.  There is nothing more frustrating than reading a passage and not understanding a certain word.  Although the context may help in determining meaning, knowing the actual definition is extremely helpful.  Therefore, I plan of having students create their own vocabulary lists.  They will keep track of all the words they come across that they do not know and put them on the wall with a brief definition and how it was used where they found it.  This way the students are leading their own vocabulary lists and what they are learning is relevant and frequently revisited, which will also help retain content knowledge as well.

Using different strategies, as the book suggests, will also help students with comprehension and producing artifacts that demonstrate their learned skills and understanding of concepts.  I particularly like many forms of Directed Reading and Thinking Activities.  Just like any lesson, a clear objective assists any student in accomplishing what is being asked of them.  So why would a reading assignment be any different?  Clear guiding questions and assigned roles give students something to search for within the text, and it almost becomes sort of an adventure rather than a task.  And there are many different ways to present these sorts of activities.

Through teaching students how to become smart readers, I am creating a community of learners. And being their adviser, life coach, and concerned role model, I need to convince students that whether they like it or not they are lifelong learners.   I also need to establish a risk taking climate that accepts mistakes under the basis that errors produce teachable moments, because we all remember the times we mess up.

Strategically and Sparingly

Blog 6

Brian Flamand

Strategically and Sparingly

Growing up and going through grade school, I did not particularly care for reading textbooks.  However, one thing I was really good at was extracting key vocabulary words from them in order to study for tests.  Sometimes this was easy because they were in bold print along the margins, and other times it was not as easy.  Looking back at the experience now one thing seemed consistent, the books were too long and they did not dive into deep thought or analysis.  However, simply because I passed my classes by memorizing vocabulary does not mean other students will be able to do the same, and it more importantly means that merely memorizing facts is not the approach we should be taking with instruction.

As our “textbook” argues, I too believe textbooks should be used strategically and sparingly.  Similarly to how we discussed earlier in the semester, students need a balanced diet of reading.  Especially within my content of history or social studies, I will need to supply different types of texts to expose students to multiple writing styles and different points of view.  These are aspects of history or current events that a single text cannot cover. 

Our book argues that textbooks will always be needed and are useful references, and I understand that.  However, they are not going to be the basis of reading material in my classroom.  I can recall how bored and unengaged I was with my school textbooks, and I feel it would be unfair and hypocritical if I were to continue the process.  I understand their usefulness, and they will probably make great guides for curriculum, but my students will be exposed to much more reading material than just one text. 

It all sounds good, but....

It all sounds good, but……

There is solid advice in this recent ELL brief that we read and there is little that I would disagree with.  In fact, many of the strategies suggested are not only good ELL instruction tactics, but they are great methods to ensure that every student grasps all language and content concepts, ELL student or not.  Also, using multiple forms of differentiation combined with well-defined and coherent instruction is probably the best approach to education, as the brief suggests.  However, the most common issue I hear among current teachers is the unfair methods of assessment in which ELL students are subjected to. 

The brief claims that steps should be taken in order to assure fair assessment of ELLs, but in reality it seems little has happened.  Until fair assessment is arranged for ELLs, it does not seem logical to hold them to standards that are unrealistic for them to meet.  But an even greater problem is establishing what a fair assessment might be.  ELL students are entering schools with vast discrepancies in English language abilities, which creates an almost impossible task of establishing a standard assessment.  It is also argued among some educational leaders that there is not yet enough research to refer to and establish any sort of norms for such a varied field.  Therefore, ELL instructors are somewhat limited to their best efforts through differentiated and high quality instruction.     

I have read other articles that address the difficulties that ELL instruction faces and most of the articles seem to ask more questions than they appear to answer.  Especially when one considers the many types of ELL instruction that students can receive such as bilingual instruction, sheltered instruction, or English emersion, it is difficult to set benchmarks for students with varied abilities to reach.  A particular method of instruction might suit one student, while another student learns more effectively through another.  And there is a high probability that students’ learning preferences and efficacy evolve and adapt through improving language skills, with no clear indication of when this process occurs.  Therefore, establishing a standardized method of assessment might never prove useful. 

Here are some articles by Claude Goldenberg.  He is one of the leading researchers in the field of ELL.  I suggest you read what he has to say.  Although most of his content elaborates the general message of the ELL brief, he also offers further insight to instructional techniques and the current state of ELL research.  Check it out….

http://www.aft.org//sites/default/files/periodicals/Goldenberg.pdf

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/summer2013/Saunders_Goldenberg_Marcelletti.pdf

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/summer2008/goldenberg.pdf