The Personal and Social Dimensions
The Social Dimension
The authors believed that active participation was essential for their program to work. They needed to create a classroom community that allowed students the freedom to talk about their confusion. They started out offering extra credit to those who did and encouraged them to be as specific as possible as to where and why they were having difficulty. To drive home the point that anyone can have problems with different kinds of texts, they asked the students to bring in something that they understood, but they thought would confuse the teachers. Then the teachers modeled the thought process they used when trying to make sense of the text. Not only did it make the point that different people struggle with different types of texts, it gave the students confidence knowing that they were experts at some kinds of texts. I believe that this also introduced the idea of genre theory and the idea that different texts had different conventions based on things like intended audience and purpose for the writing (Technical Communication Body of Knowledge) . They presented reading as problem-solving, and if students were open and honest about their reading processes, then as a community they would be able to discover the tools necessary for problem-solving.
The Personal Dimension
The personal dimension worked on developing each student’s unique reader identity. They selected texts from diverse authors who discussed the importance of reading in their own lives. They wanted the students to see people they identified with talk about reading. Then they asked the students to think about how an author would answer the question “why read?” The authors who they read and discussed included Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Rudolpho Anaya, and Malcolm X.
The authors talked to students about reading as a continuum, or an ongoing process, rather than as a static success-or-fail skill. As they roleplayed giving advice to a struggling reader and learned that, “all readers’ abilities vary with the text” (Schoenbach, Greenleaf, Cziko, & Hurwitz, 1999, p. 63) , they became more confident about their ability to improve their reading, and began internalizing a view of themselves as a reader. This brings to mind Rosenblatt’s idea that all students interact and make meaning from a text based on their own experience and knowledge, and that each transaction between the reader and the text is unique and valid (Ruddell, Ruddell, & Singer, 1994) .
To help students think of themselves as readers, the authors helped them discover where to find and choose books that they would like. They wanted to get students reading for pleasure, which many of them had never really done. They gave students the opportunity to read their chosen books in periods of silent sustained reading. The students kept a log of their reading, noting the book, the time spent reading, and the pages read. The authors also included prompts to get students writing about their reading processes, such as “I got confused when…,” “Some words I didn’t know were…,” and “I first thought… but then I realized…” (Schoenbach, et al., 1999, p. 68). They kept the silent sustained reading sessions short at first, but gradually lengthened them to help students build stamina and concentration.
The Metacognitive Conversations
The authors first had to get the students to understand and get comfortable thinking about thinking. They did this as they role-played and looked for analogies that would help them clarify the concept of metacognition. Then they started asking students to start thinking about their reading processes. With the silent sustained reading logs, they continued to focus on metacognition by getting students to write about how they read versus what they read. They also talked about the different things that students concentrate on as channels, with a channel for school, a channel for friends, etc. The students begin to notice what channel they are on, and they realize that they can control which channel they pay attention to.
I think this chapter speaks to the question of what conditions promote literacy development. It involves looking at the whole student and the classroom environment. It involves creating confidence through small successes that gradually become more complex. And it involves giving students the tools so that they can think about what they are doing, evaluate whether or not it is working for them, and how they can change their behavior to be more successful.
References
Ruddell, R., Ruddell, M., & Singer, H. (. (1994). Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading. International Reading Association.
Schoenbach, R., Greenleaf, C., Cziko, C., & Hurwitz. (1999). Reading for understanding: A guide for improving reading in middle and high school classrooms. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Technical Communication Body of Knowledge. (n.d.). Genre Theory.
Margaret – First I would like to thank you for dividing your post into clean, cohesive sections, because this makes a blog much easier to read and understand. Secondly, I would like to talk a little bit more about both the personal and social dimensions that you mentioned from your text. In regards to the social dimension, I do like the idea of challenging the students to stump the teacher. Not only does this help the students gain confidence in themselves, but it also encourages them to continue to recognize that there is not a single person that knows everything. This is very helpful in a classroom setting because oftentimes kids view the teacher as the “knower of all.” The problem with this is that it discourages kids from attempting to speak up and bring their own knowledge and experiences into the classroom because they’re afraid to be told they’re wrong. It is crucial that students learn that the dynamic in a classroom is not one expert to a bunch of learners, but that we are all both experts in our own unique categories, as well as learners too. I am not sure how I feel about giving extra credit to those who speak up to explain their confusion. I think that by simply exemplifying that even the teacher struggles to grasp certain concepts, it can encourage kids to talk about and explain their confusion, without giving unnecessary extra credit points (although I am up for debate about this). In talking about the personal dimension, I also really liked the idea about allowing students to read books that they may actually enjoy, and then writing not about plot, but about the actual text itself and their reaction to it. This can help us answer the question, why read, which is absolutely pertinent for students to begin to understand because as you said, reading is not either pass or fail, but something that continues throughout life. I look forward to reading more about your text!
ReplyDeleteGreetings Margaret -- I appreciate you sharing some of the strategies from this text to help students become more fluent readers -- in particular the log, and the prompts. I really liked hearing that students have time for silent sustained reading. I like to do that for my students too -- often we also write letters to each other. I think the biggest frustration that happens for me is my constraints of time, I spend 2.5 hours per week with my students for 16 weeks. There is a lot more that can happen with their learning in a system where they spend time daily for an academic year.
ReplyDeleteThe social dimension is a strong belief held by many researchers and educators. Active participation is mentioned by many as a key proponent of a full education. Just like in any relationship, there needs to be communication and so it makes sense that having students speak freely about their confusions is tremendously helpful. It is awesome that it gave students a confidence boost from knowing they were experts for certain texts but it was probably also nice to know that other students were struggling with similar texts. The personal dimension seems difficult to implement for large classrooms. This dimension does follow Rosenblatt's theory strongly with each readers' experience being unique and their own. The prompts remind me of the templates I have in my text. They help the student to come up with writing ideas but are meant to get the mind flowing. The metacognitive conversation section reminds me of Discourses from Gee because of the channels. The students go into different zones when they are on different channels. This follows the concept of different "identity kits" that the students must align themselves with. Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteI really like this idea of the students bringing in texts they are "experts" in. For the personal dimension, I like the question of why the writer produced the book. It nicely ties in with the writer's intent and that relationship between the writer and reader that we've discussed through the theory. The book I am working with also mentions this as a question to ask before diving into the text. A great before-reading tool. I also like how your book is highlighting the importance of meta cognition. A difficult subject initially but this concept seems to really help with improving literacy, especially when texts get complicated. What are ways you would try to promote meta cognitive conversations in your classroom?
ReplyDeleteAgain, I really think this whole project is fantastic. Front-loading the skills that students are working on and supporting their metacognition gives these students a new perspective on their own learning. I like the idea of the channels - it speaks to Gee's "Discourses" - because it lets students know that they are in charge of their attention and have the choice to focus on one thing versus another. This minimizes the blame of something being "boring" or kids being "distracted - it's not my fault." Instead they have the responsibility to stay on track (this is not speaking to students with attention issues, of course). And students being able to become experts on certain situations and find things that may confuse teachers is great because it can shift the balance between a view of teacher as all knowing and all powerful, to a more collaborative situation in which everyone truly is learning from one another. I really like the strategies in this book!
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