How important is accessing prior knowledge for students? (Baseball study) How do you immerse students in background knowledge or text sets to facilitate activation?
Accessing prior knowledge is essential for students’ comprehension. As stated by Beers, : the more you have already learned about a topic, the easier it is to learn even more.” I have used anticipation guides to help students access information previously learned, yet the students were only required to answer true/false questions without the conversation. I have now learned it is more important to have students work in pairs to discuss the statements as it gets students to think more about the text they are about to read. The discussion after reading is beneficial to students because it helps them to revise their thinking. I have also shown video clips and pre taught vocabulary before reading. Another strategy that I have used before is the KWL chart. I had the same struggle that the author did. The students were eager to tell me what they knew about a topic, yet when I asked, “What do you want to learn?” Students looked at me as though I had 4 heads. I really like the suggestion from the author to connect the thinking from column 1 to column 2 by choosing a fact from column 1 to ask what you want to know more about a particular topic.
-Multiple exposures are important for retention and independence. How will you offer these opportunities?
Multiple exposures of text and strategies to understand text is essential to our young readers. First of all, it is important to have printed, digital, and audio text available in the classroom. Next, I would model the importance of rereading by reading the same text a number of times, modeling through Think Alouds what I am doing as a reader to understand the text. As Beers discussed, “Struggling readers only see the outward signs of comprehension-peers correctly answering questions. What they don’t observe are all the times skilled readers reread a passage, all the times they ask themselves, what is going on here? (p.103).
Think Alouds demonstrating many of the strategies in these chapters, allowing guided practice, and finally independent practice with all the strategies with repeated readings of the same text will help build confidence and comprehension in my readers.
-What strategies stuck out to you in this chapter and what ones and how will you bring them into your instruction?
I like KWL 2.0 strategy, specifically using the suggestion discussed in the book that provides students with a question about a fact that they provided for the Know column. I also like the Sketch to Stretch activity because many of my students are struggling readers and writers so being given the opportunity to sketch what they don’t understand may make them slow down to pay more attention to the details of the text and visualize what the author is trying to portray.
The Somebody Wanted But So chart also stuck out to me because I use a similar version of this in my classroom as a strategy to scaffold students on retelling the story. My version does not include sections for more than one character though and I really like the idea of students using the version displayed on page 138 and on Appendix L because it allows students to comprehend the book from multiple perspectives. I could provide the character names (one each day) and have students reread the text to complete the chart on consecutive days.
Another strategy that I will use in my classroom is the Three Big Questions. Students in my school district are taught through the Reading Workshop curriculum to Stop and Jot at different points during reading. This scaffold of Three Big Questions will provide students with a framework of what to write on the Post-It notes when they stop and jot. I work with readers who are below grade level and would use the three questions; “What surprised you?” “What confused you” and “What did you learn?” Students will be given templates to paste in their Reader’s notebook with a place for page numbers with three columns one for each question to Stop and Jot the answers to the questions above.
Finally, I am interested in utilizing the Semantic Differential Scales in my classroom to help students develop an awareness of when and how characters change throughout the story.