What made an impact on you in these chapters?
Something that impacted me in these chapters is how important prior knowledge and experience is to readers. Being from a small town in Northern New York, I haven’t had many experiences with a variety of different cultures or beliefs. Which has me believing that neither have our students. If I as an adult have not been able to expand my knowledge based on experiences rather than textbooks, articles etc then how can I expect my student to have. If they, like me, have not been able to experience life outside of Northern New York we owe it to them to at least teach it through the resources we have. Some examples may even be the difference between life in the city vs life in the country. It may be religious beliefs, cultures, and even traditions.
-How do you respond to students “who don’t get it”? After this reading how will that shift?
If I am being honest, when a student typically told me “I don’t get it” my instant response was always, “what don’t you get?”. After reading, I realized that not only was the student not being specific, but neither was I. What I took away from this was many techniques I can now use to help make that shift. Is it the language they are using that is the barrier? Is it the directions? Could it be a lack of background knowledge? These are many things I can be asking, to further assist with being told, “I don’t get it”.
-Comprehension, understanding, and change is the goal of any reading. What will you do differently in your teaching after reading this section?
I always try to use the “I do, we do, you do” way of modeling. However, I don’t think I spend enough time on inferencing. Even at the middle school level, my students struggle with this. I believe Figure 6.1 will be a wonderful resource for me this year!