For me, the during reading concept often seemed to be the trickiest of the before, during, and after reading options. With before reading, you’re setting up the reading and providing the background information needed to make sense of the text. After reading, you’re checking for what they understood. So what’s up with this during reading stuff? If you stop and have students do something while they’re reading, wouldn’t that technically be considered an after reading activity since they had to stop reading? It all eventually made sense to me…with during reading process, we’re responsible for teaching the students HOW to read the text. On page 137 Beers writes, “Students often don’t know how to do all this thinking. For too long we’ve told them to ‘think carefully’ about what they’ve read without showing them how to do that thinking.” When using during reading strategies, it’s more of a formative assessment, so we can see where student thinking breaks down. If students aren’t using good reading strategies, they’re going to have difficulty understanding what they’ve read. The problem is that many students don’t know what they should be doing as they read, so it’s our responsibility to show them. And of course this goes back to why all content area teachers are teachers of reading—most English teachers would not be very proficient at explaining what thoughts should be going through one’s mind when reading a lab report or a word problem, just as the math or science teacher would probably struggle to analyze a poem or piece of prose.
So…questions, questions, questions. Which of the during reading strategies from Beers and/or Daniels did you try? What material were you using as your anchor text? How did your students do with it? Do you think it was helpful? What would you do differently next time?
13 comments:
If I had a classroom I would try the logographic cues. I am a visual person as well as a lot of students I have taught in the past. These would be quick to do but yet great reminders for things you realized, learned, or questioned while reading. This would be good for students to use that struggle writing or don't like to write but yet they are thinking about what they are reading and making connections.
My class has begun reading a young adult fiction novel called “Breathing Underwater”. I am going to use the ABC’s of Comparing and Contrasting activity from Kylene Beers so that the kids can record information about the two main characters as they read. This organizer can be a bit tricky to use correctly, so I wanted to show them how to fill in a few letters/boxes for each character to get them started. Since the beginning of the book is almost completely about Nick, I decided to use Bookmarks to collect and hold character information until we were ready to transfer it to the ABC sheet. We wrote “Nick” on one side and “Caitlin” on the other. Now, as we read passages that show us personality traits, we are recording the page number, the situation, and the adjective on the appropriate side of the bookmark. It is working out amazingly well. It focuses their discussion as they try sum up their thoughts in order to write succinctly. And the bookmarks are so narrow, the kids aren’t feeling the threat of a whole sheet of paper to fill up so they aren’t complaining about stopping to write while they read. I really like both of these activities and will use them in lots of different ways. Bookmarks can be set up to record all kinds of information. The ABC sheets can also be set up to collect different types of information. The only problems I don’t have easy answers for are: How do kids use bookmarks when they are not the only class using a set of books? What is the easiest way to make sure that kids have the same two different-colored writing utensils every day for the ABC’s of Comparing and Contrasting? My solution is to use their writing folders (which are always on their desks) and keep the bookmarks and two colored pencils inside. It works, but I’m not completely satisfied. In a perfect world, every child would have their own book to take home and bring both a pencil and a pen to every class!
This week my students and I concluded our study of bias and propaganda. In order to wrap things up, we examined Barack Obama’s S.C. victory speech. I decided to have students use the logographic cues throughout the reading/listening of the text. They really loved it! And I thought it was really neat, too. I’ve had my students complete various strategies to “interact with the text” before, but I’ve never done this. I started off, just as Kylene Beers suggested, making connections between logographic cues and road signs. Ninth graders definitely relate to this since they’re all about getting their permits. We discussed how road signs help us know what’s happening on the roads. In addition, I allowed each class to make up its own separate set of logographic cues. In many ways this lesson was a reminder to me of how clever my kids really are. We made up symbols for agreeing and disagreeing with the text. We also made up symbols for questioning the text and being surprised by it. One student piped up, “Maybe we should make a symbol for when we make a connection with the text.” To an English teacher, that statement was exciting.
I really enjoyed using the logographic cues. I love how it made the students think. Students who I sometimes have to push to read along with the text were actively underlining and marking as I read to them. I definitely want to use this strategy again.
I should have been doing more of these strategies in class to promote discussion. I decided to use the "sticky note" strategy in two of my classes using some articles on acids and bases. I was thoroughly impressed how efficient my students were with this assignment. The articles have questions at the bottom. I told my students to disregard these questions and concentrate on reading the passage and coming up with 3 comments/questions. I think having them go beyond the articles' questions provided a very enriching discussion afterwards. I was very impressed with the level of questions and comments that my students brought to the discussion. I also cannot wait to implement some of the strategies we learned during the conference Saturday. I would really like to see my freshmen team try to do a community book club. I would really like to see my students discussing what they read. I also picked up a great strategy called "Give One; Get One." I really think this would work in my classroom to get my students talking to one another about topics they may or may not know a lot about.
It is interesting to read the methodologies people use in their classrooms and realize you been doing those same things in your classroom for years. Too bad I didn't think about writing a book about them!
I have always used the post it notes concept. They especially work well in teaching AP as the textbook we use is a college textbook so there isn't any bold face words or concepts. Therefore, during discussion I have them to use their post-it notes to identify key concepts. It is a beig help as students write support/refute papers and to study for tests. In addition, I also use the compare contrast method and we use columns or a venn diagram to assist us with that methodology. One I like to use is when I discuss the similarities and difference between the two Great Awakenings in U. S. History. Students can remember quickly the events and the people associated with them.
It is interesting to read the methodologies people use in their classrooms and realize you been doing those same things in your classroom for years. Too bad I didn't think about writing a book about them!
I have always used the post it notes concept. They especially work well in teaching AP as the textbook we use is a college textbook so there isn't any bold face words or concepts. Therefore, during discussion I have them to use their post-it notes to identify key concepts. It is a big help as students write support/refute papers and to study for tests.
In addition, I also use the compare contrast method and we use columns or a venn diagram to assist us with that methodology. One I like to use is when I discuss the similarities and differences between the two Great Awakenings in U. S. History. Students can remember quickly the events and the people associated with them.
Ok, so I pulled a student moment (you know the moments where you do the things that your students do that really annoy you - just to keep you humble) and I misinterpreted the assignment. Now that I'm clear what the assignment is, it's perfectly obvious and I'm feeling fairly stupid. All that to say, I will give my students a reading assignment, have them practice one of those strategies, and will post a real post then.
My class did the Double-Entry Journals for the book we are reading, Hero. They had their papers labeled "What's in the book" and "my response." It worked really well for them. Some knew from memory what they read this past chapter and others looked back through the chapter. Once they picked out parts from the book, their responses were very in tune with what the story called for. Many of them can relate to "Hero," so they enjoy writing about the story and putting themselves into it.
I've tried the DEJs with my struggling reader students. I think it helps them to put the events of the novel into context and better understand them. Of course, I feel DEJs can be overused. In one of my graduate classes we did them the entire semester. It started to feel pointless.
I want to try the bookmark activity. It is a wonderful way to get students to interact with a text on a different level. This could be used with the Independent Reading my students are assigned. This would also be great for students to use with novels and plays read in class. What a great tool to get students thinking about texts in many different ways...furthermore, it gets students THINKING about many aspects of a book when they read.
My German 3/4s were reading a fairy tale from the Grimm Brothers - the Seven Ravens. It's a fairly interesting story. It was a bit tricky at first, however, so I had the students do a DEJ to help them sort their thoughts. On one side, they quoted a significant event from the text and then on the other side, they explained why that was significant.
I liked the idea, but looking over their journals, it seems to me that I should have chosen a strategy that helped them to focus on either the vocabulary or the grammar. There is one strategy, I don't remember which one, where you essentially map out the structure of a passage, and I think I need to learn more about how that one works and try that with my students. Right now, they're working a lot with simple past (not that simple...) and it would help them to be able to distinguish between present and the different past tenses.
I tried the logographic clues because they are in the textbook. The students seemed bored with it. They asked why don’t we just go in the lab and look at it like we usually do. I think maybe this was not the best choice for this class. If we were confined to the classroom this would be a good activity, however we are not. We may read a little then go out to the lab and look at it, touch it, take it apart. Then go back to the classroom and read or engage in another memory activity (kwl etc) then go back to the lab and identify components or assembly instructions, then attempt reassembly. I will try another one later and let you know how it turns out.
The strategy that I used was visualizing the text. I discussed with my students that there are lots of strategies that good readers follow while reading, and that we were going to use one of these strategies today. Too my delight, they were excited about the lesson. Since this is Black History Month, we used the article, “Civil Rights Act of 1964”. The materials used were construction paper, markers, crayons, and overhead. We folded the construction paper in half and the student placed their article on the left side and on the right side would be there drawings. We read each paragraph and drew a picture for each. I demonstrated and drew my picture on the overhead. Some of the students volunteered to draw on the overhead as well. For each paragraph, we used a different color marker to separate each one. I told the students that we didn’t have to be perfect artist to do this because I definitely can’t draw. However, if someone was to look at our picture they should be able to visualize what was happening in the article. So, we drew our stick men, and had a great lesson.
The strategy that I have used most frequently is double entry journals. I use double entry journals for a couple of purposes. The primary purpose is to get students to think about books that they are reading on their own. When reading independently, it is important that students pay attention to details and are prepared to ask questions about what they don't understand. Often, when students write down a question about the text, they can look back later on in the plot and discover that they have found the answer in chapters near the end of the text.
The second reason I use double entry journals is so that the students have a written copy of their ideas to help with discussions through Socratic seminars and book talks. Students can then direct group members or all of the students in the class back to a spot in the text so that they can all discuss it and share ideas. This seems to be really successful every time I use it.
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