In the textbook Subjects Matter, Ch. 2 covers
the different reading lessons/strategies teachers need to be implemented and
become aware of how each student is affected by them. Of the five reading
lessons given in the first part of the chapter, the one that stuck in my mind
as the most effective is the last one: Reading is a staged and
recursive process. In short, this strategy deals with breaking the critical
reading process into three stages; in each stage there are several different
check points which need to be met in order to complete the stage and are able
to move on to the next stage. Yes, there will be some jumping around at times,
but the students need to be able to understand the different stages of critical
reading. This strategy is important for the English classroom due to the fact
that half of the content is reading different works from different authors
throughout time. Teaching the students how to properly use these different
stages in their reading will allow them to not end up reading the text the same
way that the authors of Subjects Matter made me feel with
their random excerpts.
English is different than the
other content areas in that one half to three quarters of the content deals
with reading; reading text written by other authors or reading your own
writing. Expert readers in English have certain criteria and have to ask
themselves questions that are not readily accessible to other content areas.
The expectations in English deal with looking for are whether the text deals
with politics, current events, or is simply a story just for the fun of reading
a story. The questions these experts have to ask themselves are 'What is the
author saying?' , and 'Why did the author describe the scene in the language
they did?' , and 'What prompted the author to speak out about this issue?'
As I was reading the last section of chapter two, I was wondering with Common Core taking a bow out of education, how would the Show Me Standards look like in the classroom? Would the CCSS and Show Me Standards look different or very similar? Are the suggestions and examples in the last section of the chapter close or would it be different?
Abby,
ReplyDeleteYou are actually the only one to choose this last reading aspect, but it is definitely very important in all areas, especially English!
I agree that the genre of reading, topic of writing, and structure of the text is essential for understanding when reading in English class.
What do you mean "Common Core taking a bow out of education?" I'm just not sure I totally understand this statement. Are you asking about the state of Missouri thinking about NOT implementing the CCSS verbatim in our state? The Show-Me Standards and CCSS are very similar with some differences. How they are played out in classrooms across the state would look similar with either set of standards.