These readings helped me put a word to my
most used reading strategy, "monitoring." I am a good reader, I enjoy
reading when I have the time, and I like my books to make sense. There is
usually a point in time where I have lost focus and I realize I have no idea
what just happened in the last two pages. A this moment, I ask myself “What’s
happening?” and if I can’t answer that question, I go back to a spot in the
text where I know what is happening and then re-read.
There are also other strategies that I never
had specific words for that I know I employ. I am capable of activating
background knowledge and do so when I can. Recalling this previous knowledge
then allows me to make connections (self-to-text, text-to-text, text-to-world)
and build off of my schema. I use visualizing to a great extent and these
images will play out in my head until my monitoring begins and I realize I have
missed the last two pages due to my visualizing. I will use repairing when I search for a word
after I become stuck unfamiliar vocabulary and I cannot use context clues to
infer meaning. Lastly, I use summarizing when I speak to another person about
the book and provide my recommendation.
The “Profiles of Comprehension” was very
insightful on the behaviors of students. I have seen these profiles in the
classroom on a regular basis. The interventions suggested are very thoughtful
and I would like to use these suggestions in my future classroom. The
activities that are given to provide support for these profiles are easy to perform
and sound very beneficial. I believe the most important aspect of these
profiles, is that Applegate emphasizes that no student will always fit just one
profile. A student can go through multiple profiles during the course. Making
adjustments so students can view the material in new ways is critical for their
comprehension.
In my classroom, the two profiles I see the most are minimalists and fuzzy thinkers. I don't think the students in my class would be able to use some of the interventions Applegate mentions without much coaching and guiding, such as the Venn Diagrams. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but my MT is constantly so rushed that she can barely fit in the activities she has already taught them without adding new ones in. I do see some use of dialog/reading journals, which is nice, however either I don't see them being used consistently or they just aren't used consistently- we have a lot of students who struggle with writing.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few authors, but their stories seem to be left-fielder type stories, coming out of nowhere or only having vague connections to the text. Other "authors" will hear a story and start talking about something similar that happened to them. However, I'm almost tempted to think that the students who are demonstrating author type tendencies are doing so because they just want someone to care about their lives, as awful as that sounds. However, some of the interventions Applegate mentions I think would go over well with these students, things like the think-alouds, context clues, and story impressions. These are things that I think would be easy (relatively) to implement into classroom activities.
There are lots of great ideas in this article, however, that teachers can use to help their students become better readers and better students overall.
Monitoring is the strategy I use most of the time as well. I would love to read but somewhere mid page I am off daydreaming about what I have to do, laundry, or the book itself. In order for me to be enthralled in a reading, I have to skim and take notes, otherwise I will read a few pagers and then forget about what I just read.
ReplyDeleteThe profiles I see the most in my second grade classroom is fuzzy thinkers and left fielders. My students appear to enjoy literacy but many do not know how to identify the main idea and its supporting details. My MT often does most of the talking during discussion and students usually answer simple comprehension questions. My students often are assigned literacy tasks that requires them to connect self to text, which is good, but they have trouble with making other connections. The interventions are great ideas/ approaches to the issue at hand but my students need constant scaffolding throughout a lesson. Modeling and discussing would not be enough for my left fielders unless it is incorporated in each step of the literacy task.My fuzzy thinkers have used story maps before and there I see an issue with recalling/ identifying details. The Semantic Feature Analysis is something I want to incorporate in my lesson to see if it helps my students identify voices as well as make connections to self, world, and text. There are many ideas that could help my students but I am not sure which one they would benefit most from
I tend to be a literalist when I read. I was never the strongest or fastest reader, so I would tend to just skim the readings to find the answers. I have struggled when it comes to interpreting text since I skim most readings. I have also become a minimalist due to the lack of confidence in my reading, fluency and comprehension abilities.
ReplyDeleteMany students in my placement classroom have demonstrated a variety of tendencies. Most of my work I have done with my students in regards to Language Arts and reading comprehension have been focused on the retelling of stories. The majority of my students fall into the minimalists, authors and fuzzy thinkers. When students retell a story they read my mentor teacher focuses on the amount of words they use and the exact amount of words they use to retell the story. I think there is a lot of connection and focus on retelling the exact words, rather than being able to connect and develop new ideas and questions about the text. I think developing these new strategies (connecting in new ways and developing questions, ides, etc) will give students more opportunities to retell. Additionally, I think the story boards and group collections can be beneficial!