-How important is accessing prior knowledge for students? (Baseball study) How do you immerse students in background knowledge or text sets to facilitate activation?
Prior knowledge is important because as the author stated on Page 81 of the text, the more prior knowledge a reader has in connection with the text the more space they have in the short term memory to process the text. That makes sense and therefore it is our job to assist the students with accessing background knowledge of the text using scaffolding which was introduced to us in the text.
I was thinking a lot in this text in relation to text sets I use in my nonfiction studies. I focus more on the skills of getting the gist of the text and how a reader synthesized the text instead of setting success up with the use of scaffolding to activate prior knowledge. As a reading teacher I know that these skills are important but explicitly teaching them is not something that I have necessarily done. In the future I am going to be weaving in scaffolding to help the students understand how to access their own background knowledge.
-Multiple exposures are important for retention and independence. How will you offer these opportunities?
I have already offered multiple exposures using close reading, but now after reading the text we will use such strategies as annotating the text, and sketch to stretch (That is by far my favorite one) I would like to take the opportunity at the beginning of the year as we ramp up as readers to teach the students each of these strategies and that way as we go a long in our year they can choose which strategy is best for them to understand a text. I really do love the idea of voice and choice, and I hoping I can still honor that and teach these explicit reading strategies as well.
-What strategies stuck out to you in this chapter and what ones and how will you bring them into your instruction?
The idea that was my absolute favorite was on page 154. I do plan on using the semantic differential scale to create discussion surrounding how characters change over the course of a text. I also really liked the use of the retelling rubric because I do know that my students struggle with pulling ideas for a complete summary of the text. I would additionally like to add on to that with a telling of how the text affected their heart. I think this is the crossover to really enjoying reading when the text affects you on an emotional level. I know that when I can connect to the characters hearts I will really get invested in reading and understanding the book.