This is exactly what I've been thinking for a while. My students hear me say (all the time), if you're not thinking, you're not reading.
I've also thought that when we teach reading strategies, these are simply to show the kids how to "do" reading, when you don't really have a personal stake in it. Because when you're into it, you are thinking and not really having any problems because you want to do the "thinking work" to understand. But when you have to read something for a teacher or to pass a test or to read research, there are some "tricks" to help you comprehend and stay in the reading. If they can read a cheat book for a Wii game and have no comprehension problems, or they can read a book on baseball because they're totally into it, then they obviously can read. They just need to be shown that when it's something we are not invested in, we can use strategies to help us understand. I also think we should spend more time teaching about the world, because students with more background knowledge make better readers. I'm very excited about hearing what others have to say. Mindy On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Heather Green <[email protected]> wrote: > An earlier post really got me thinking about this. Do we REALLY need to > teach explicit strategies? The quote someone posted earlier from a book-- > something like-- we use these strategies when reading materials high above > our reading levels like highly technical reading-- got to me. That these > are more study skills... I realized I couldn't agree more. Do you think > it > would be enough to just get our kids to be voracious readers? (I teach 1st > grade). Do you think it would be enough to teach just ONE strategy which > would be Readers think while they read. You could MODEL the different ways > readers do this-- by using their schema, making predictions, and connecting > the text to themselves and other texts, but do we really need to go further > than that? Could we ask students to do all these things by just having book > club discussions where students, even 1st graders, get to talk about the > books they're reading? My head is full of new questions.... > > _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
