Sunday, September 15, 2013

Weekly Reading: Sept. 16th

Tovani Ch 3-4
1. What was the chapter about?
Chapter 3 talked about modeling reading strategies that you use with the type of reading in your content area to teach students how to read those types of texts. As the resident expert, the reading which they are doing is probably very easy for you, so you need to find a text which challenges you and use that to demonstrate the reading techniques to children.

Chapter 4 talked about the difference between academic rigor and individual text difficulty. Text A may be assigned by the county, but if it is too hard for your students to read, then they will not learn anything from it. Text B may be much easier to read, but if it teaches the students how to read and something about the content, then it may be rigorous for them.

2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?
Model for your kids! Just because reading is instinctive for you, does not mean that it is instinctive for them. They may have never seen this sort of reading before and have no clue how to approach it. Also, have many options for texts which they can read, both background and direct. Ex: Latin culture books and Latin translation books.

3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
So much yes. I was actually planning to work on translation with my students this week (now that they have enough Latin skills to approach a basic translation), so this reading came at the perfect time. I’ve been having trouble remembering that Latin I is still HARD to these kids, even though—for me—it’s at the level of “so instinctive it’s boring.” I need to remember that I still have to model for these kids what to do, since they may have never had to work through skills like this.

Bakken & Whedon
1. What was the chapter about?
This was about reading academic, informational texts.

2. What does this chapter tell you about teaching students?
Different types of reading need different types of reading strategies and different types of note-taking.

3. Can this chapter be applied in your content area?
When we get into studying culture, yes. Many days, I lecture to my students or have them play games instead of reading a text, but when we study culture, I can do reading activities which will require these skills. Depending on what sort of translation text they are reading, they may need these skills as well.

1 comment:

  1. You seemed to really tap into the core of the arguments in both the chapters and the article. I like that you are thinking about using the skills taught in the article to help when teaching culture. It provides a lot of great ways to guide the way the students approach and digest a passage.

    I also liked that you are big on modeling too. We have to be able to show the students how to translate, not simply assume then understand what we have worked for so long to learn. Modelling and Scaffolding for students is essential and it is the most effective way to help students learn the skills they need to succeed.

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