How important is accessing prior knowledge for students? How do you immerse students in background knowledge or text sets to facilitate activation?
Students are way more successful at decoding and comprehending text when they have prior knowledge about what they are reading. The “Baseball Study” provides a perfect example of this where students with a greater knowledge of baseball before reading are able to recall information from the text at a higher level than students who have less knowledge about baseball.
In my classroom, I typically activate my students’ prior knowledge on a subject by introducing with a hook using technology, discussing important key terms with nonfiction text, or by having a class discussion before reading. I have noticed students with greater interest in the subject or students that have more background knowledge before reading to be more successful at reading and comprehending the text. For example, when reading about transportation vehicles, a student that has a high interest in trains and boats could recall these sections wonderfully.
Multiple exposures are important for retention and independence. How will you offer these opportunities?
Beyond rereading, I try to provide multiple exposures to text through a variety of methods in my classroom. We often use video clips and graphic organizers to supplement text we are reading. Additionally, I like to provide different ways for my students to access text such as listening to text through audio or by podcast, reading posters, and through newspapers and articles.
I would like to implement these strategies using paired passages to help my students see connections between two texts. Comparing and contrasting two passages is a skill my students do not enjoy, so I think implementing multimodal strategies for multiple exposures could help boost their stamina as well as their interest.
What strategies stuck out to you in this chapter and how will you bring them into your instruction?
Fix-Up Anchor Charts
I liked this idea because it provides students with more opportunities to be problem solvers when reading. Working with reluctant readers, I always find myself searching for ways to motivate my students to be independent readers at their level. To implement this strategy, I would first teach students each of the strategies for things they can do when a text is tough. We would make a “Fix-Up” anchor chart that states what they can do. They can then refer to the anchor chart for ideas to solve problems they come across when reading a tricky text.
Somebody Wanted But So
I hammer this strategy in my classroom. I find it is a great way to help my students summarize a text they have read (especially to facilitate a verbal summary). What stood out to me about this strategy shared in chapter 9 was the example provided on page 140 (Figure 9.4). The student used the strategy several times for a single text. I never thought to have my students do this and they sometimes can’t decide on one main character to base their summary on. I am definitely going to steal this template!
It Says, I Say, And So
I like this strategy because it provides a method for students to make inferences based on text they have read. After teaching students to use this strategy, I think it could be a great way to have them combine information about what they read in the text, what they know, and make an inference. I like how simple it is!