One solution to this problem could be to use an instructional purpose sheet to determine what the most important concept is for your students to learn. There are five questions that the teacher answers which helps to determine what he or she will teach to their students. These questions are as follows:
- Instructional Purpose (What is essential for students to know?)
- What two places may cause students difficulty?
- What will you model that will help students negotiate the difficult parts?
- What do they need to do with the information they are reading?
- How will they hold their thinking while they are reading?
Tovani mentions history teachers again. They have so much to teach in their content field that they could feel pressured to rush through everything without checking for understanding. As a health educator in the making, I have certain benchmarks and standards that I need to go through in one semester. That is a lot of information to teach in one semester with all of the interuptions we face on a daily basis. It would be easy to rush through, give tests, and move on. For this reason, Tovani stresses the importance of clear instructional purposes. Tovani says, "when we share a clear instructional purpose, we give our students a lens through which to read the piece, (pg. 59)." For example, you could say, "By the time you finish reading tonight, I want you to be able to discuss three causes of the civil war, (pg. 59)." These techniques help students to hold their thinking, as well as the double entry journal discussed in the previous blogs.
One last thing I wanted to touch on is the use of voice, specifically two different voices used in reading. These voices are your reciting voice and your conversation voice. Tovani says, "Recognizing that readers have different voices when they read is a powerful monitoring device. If students learn to recognize the difference between their reciting voice and their conversation voice, they will know when they are no longer making sense of the text, (pg. 62)." So what is the difference between the two voices? Your conversation voice is the one you use when you are actively participating in the text. This means, as the reader, you are asking questions as you read, disagreeing with the text, and forming your own opinions about what is happening. Your reciting voice is when you are no longer paying attention. This happens when you are just going through the motions, only reading the words on the page. When this happens, typically you have to re-read a couple times to fully understand what is going on in the text. To solve this, give students a clear instructional purpose for reading and relate the reading to their lives. Help students to connect with the text and become an active participant in their education.
So... here is what works:
- Be SELECTIVE about what you have your students read, make it important!
- Develop a clear instructional PURPOSE for reading.
- Give students an opportunity to USE what they are reading.
I love the idea of being crystal clear with our students about the learning objective for the reading they are completing. I never thought about the objective giving the students a lens to read the information, but you're right, it absolutely would. I'm going to think on this a bit more, and try to implement something like this in my class next year. Maybe write the objective on the board for all of us to see so we are all on the same page. Hmm.. food for thought.
ReplyDeleteI think that posting the objective is a great practice. I found that it was a really helpful check for me as to whether or not I had thought through exactly what I wanted students to be able to accomplish. If I struggled to articulate what I wanted them to be able to do, they certainly weren't going to be clear on it. It was also helpful in making sure I always told students what we were working on and why and it allowed me to hold students to organizing their notes with the objective listed in the table of contents. Lastly, as an administrator I really appreciated when teachers posted their objective because it made it that much easier for me to be able to pop into their classroom and understand what was happening.
DeleteI completely agree with both of you ladies. As a health educator, we have certain standards and benchmarks that we need to go through by the end of the semester. In one of my classes at UNM, we were told, as the teachers, to post the standards and benchmarks on the walls as well as the objectives for the day. This will not only let the students know what we will be covering at all times, but it will help you as the teacher stay focused and on task in your teaching.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed how she explained the 2 voices. I have always had them but rarely ever thought about it much. It helps me to know the 2 voices as well.
ReplyDeletePurposeful reading is the best kind. Many times I relate what we are reading or studying back to their personal lives because sometimes it might be challenging for my six year old to make this connection and I want the reading to be as meaningful as possible for them.
ReplyDeleteIt is so true that oftentimes people confuse fluency with comprehension and think that because a student can read a text perfectly he/she gets it. I think one way to make sure a student is understanding a text is to have them use various forms of literacy to describe it (i.e. write it down, draw it out, talk about it). I found it helpful to do this in this course with Gee's article.
ReplyDeleteI also like how the author explains the two different voices used in reading. When you are using the conversation voice, you are doing active reading and interacting with the text. Your comprehension maximizes in that situation. Unfortunately, students tend to use the reciting voice more often especially with less interesting texts. I also found myself using the reciting voice more than using the conversation voice. I can really understand the differences between the two voices.
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