This chapter of Gibbons had a phenomenal amount of vital information for us to be exposed to as future teachers! I really feel like one of my biggest challenges ahead is going to be working with my students on literacy; not only reading texts thoroughly enough for comprehension’s sake, but the choices I make for class literature when students are not all at the same reading level, and even doing an adequate amount of pre and post-reading activities. The seemingly endless options for pre-reading activities that are offered in this chapter could almost leave a teacher with a new method to use for every single piece of literature throughout the course of a school year. A variety level this high is wonderful and will most likely keep students excited and engaged with each new text. Getting students excited about reading is a very important task to handle early on in the year, and is something that I’ve always thought I’d need help with because I remember always having a hard time getting excited about reading myself. Of all the ones mentioned, my favorite reading technique is probably “pausing and predicting” because it allows for group comprehension and small class discussions during the reading, as opposed to waiting until after, when it’s then revealed that several students had a hard time focusing on the text and missed out on what’s actually going on in the story.
When looking back over the chapter in its entirety, I feel slightly nervous, but more confidently challenged. I’m accepting of the fact that teaching literacy may not be the easiest subject that I’ll take on in the future. Gibbons shows that there are clearly many aspects of reading that can make it very challenging for students, and I would like to make it a personal goal of mine to master the skills needed to sufficiently and successfully instruct them in a way that will help them to become the very best readers they can be.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I can agree with you that teaching literacy is going to be one of the toughest challenges, because it is such an encompassing subject. Although it is challenging its wide scope makes it easy to find many different and effective ways to teach it. This chapter like you said lists several ways to effectively challenge students and provoke their interest and thoughts in literature. I absolutely loved this chapter and also thought the pause and predict strategy was very helpful. Like you said with so many different strategies listed in this chapter it would seem incredibly easy to keep student's attention and interest in reading. One of the strategies I thought students would enjoy was the inventing an alternate ending strategy. Some children might not like the stories you pick and its bound to happen, but giving them the option to rewrite the ending or part of the story will still capture that child's interest.
ReplyDelete