Learning Log Ch. 3

If teachers instruct students to respond to whole stories using important textual information and their own prior knowledge, students will actually become comprehenders who flexibly shift between reader-based and text-based knowledge.

Some teachers tend to focus on fact based questioning in an effort to make sure that students are comprehending what they have read. This seems to make sense if all the teacher is looking to do is check for comprehension but after reading this chapter and more specifically this section, I have discovered that that should not be all that we are looking for. We should be taking the time to model our responses to whole stories so that students can see how it is done time and time again so that they may learn to do it on their own.

Even though research supports the premise that skill knowledge is best mastered during contextual reading, it appears that remedial instruction in both classrooms and clinics continues to focus on the parts rather than the whole act of reading.

This statement puzzles me. I can see why a classroom teacher who does not have an extensive literacy background may not know the best practices in literacy education as supported by research but I would think that reading specialists and those working in clinics would. They should be the experts that the classroom teachers can go to for guidance and advice. Maybe this is like other things in education though, a cyclical pattern. What is best practices and current for now may not be what will be the best practices in ten years. I feel that I was confident with my statement at first but the more I am working through it, the more I am unsure. Maybe they don't use contextual reading because their is not enough information on it or it is not widely viewed as the most effective method. I am looking forward to hearing more about this in class tomorrow.

Success is a powerful motivating factor.

This statement is short and sweet and straight to the point. If people can do things and be successful at it, they will have more of a tendency to do it again. This also applies to children and reading. If children can feel successful in their reading, they will want to do it again as well. If a child struggles every time they try to read, they will then begin to avoid reading. This is not how we want our students to view reading. We want them to feel the success and pride that comes with being able to read and this will motivate them to read again.

The students marked whether their retelling included main characters, setting, problem, major events, and problem resolution. Using this check-sheet, the students and teacher assess literacy and discuss students success.

I had a great a-ha moment when I read this section. I never thought about the fact that maybe students needed some help doing their self-assessment when they are decided whether or not they are a successful reader. This makes a lot of sense though. Sometimes students need to be shown very explicitly how to do things and so assessing themselves as readers should be no different. I actually have to admit that I thought I was a good reader but I never could explain specifically why until I read the first few chapters of this book. If I do not understand something, I go back and reread it until I do. If I don't know what a word means, I keep reading and try to use context clues to help. These are just some of the strategies that I use to now define myself as a good ready. Sometimes it is not enough to know you are good, but to have specific examples of why you are good.

Teaching as mediating means that the teacher phases in and out of the reading event in order both to encourage active reading and to assess learning as she teaches.

I never really thought about teaching reading in terms of moving in and out of the reading event. I always just thought that you were involved like during guided reading or shared reading or you were not directly involved like when the students read independently. This is obviously not the case and it makes a lot of sense. Teachers should be interjecting into a student's reading to make sure that they are getting everything out of it. I feel like I have already learned so much about reading and the reading process and we are only going into week 3 of the class. I can not even imagine the wealth of information that we will take with us when we leave this class!