Cris Tovani discusses why what we are teaching as teachers should be important to our students. This comes to the ultimate question of, “So what?” Well, this question just does not apply to only the students. As teachers, we should ask ourselves as educators of why am I teaching this and is this beneficial to my students? I remember growing up in the public schoodistrict in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and hating school. I hated school for the simple fact that nothing that was being taught was not relevant to me even though I was told that I need to know this and plus, school was not very easy to me.
Another thing that Tovani mentions is that not one comprehension strategy is better than the other. I have always thought of what every educational professor has told me over the years that education is, “about the individual student.” As teachers, we need to remember that students all learn differently and we need to not do what is easier for us but what is easier for our students. Have the students work smarter and not harder. It is important that we teach our students to ask questions about the text, try to determine what is important and what is not. Students need to learn how to infer and visualize to make understanding the text easier. Students could learn to make questions to help them be guided through the text.
Another important point that Tovani brings up is that we should be careful not to give our students busy work such as chapter assessment questions and worksheets. Students can see right through this. One strategies that is good to help students be guided through a reading of a textbook is to have the student read the assessment questions before reading the text. Students could also approach a section with KWL. Instead of just reading the sections, students, being coached by the class could plan out the chapter and decide as a class what is important not because the textbook says so but because the students find it relevant.
We should not make reading strategies monotonous and isolated. We should not plan out our lesson plans by one day doing one strategy and then next day doing another strategy. We should always be coming back to the different strategies and keep incorporating them into our lessons so that our students can get use to them and will start to use them on their own.
In this section of the book, Tovani stresses that we, as educators need to make the text relevant to the students. Students need to know know how the text is important to them by relating the text to their life experience and not merely for the fact that we tell them this is important. We need to remember that students bring a lot to the table and each of our students are experts in their life's experience and this needs to be utilized.
I have to agree with you, the students are not the only ones that should act like they care about school teachers should act the same way, afterall they did choose that career. I have had too many teachers that just don't care, they have already passed the class and whether you do or don't is only your problem. Teachers who care about their students make a big difference in education.
ReplyDeleteOmar- You are correct when stating we need to help students connect what they are learning now to what they already know. This leads to the subject that teachers need to have conversations with prior teachers and teachers in the next grade level so we know what has already been covered and what they need to know in order to be successful in the next grade level. As we continue to introduce new strategies to help our students we need to ask them as well what works for them. Many times they know what helps them learn and what does not.
ReplyDeleteI remember in 9th grade I was in an honors history class that had chapter reading assignments due every week. We even had to do three chapter in the summer! I never wanted to do the assignments because I did not feel I was learning anything from the book's questions. And what I realized was that my teacher didn't either, it was all just busy work for us. So I like the idea of having a discussion so that the students can figure out what they feel is important in the text. Us as teachers can help guide them by asking them a few leading questions as they come up with what they feel is important. This will engage them in the text and make them more likely to read than when you just have them doing busy work. Awesome post!
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