I was really inspired by the scenario in Tovani's Chapter 5 with Molly and her high school English class. In this example, teaching the book became more and more difficult for Molly because she was becoming an expert reader. Tovani explains that "this is a common problem for teachers. Many of us become experts on our content" (Tovani, p. 54). I have also noticed this problem when teaching mathematics. Sometimes the content I am presenting seems so simple; however, I forget that I am teaching students who are seeing the material for the first time. It is sometimes difficult to put myself in my students' shoes. The main point from this chapter was that students' should have a clear purpose when reading. In mathematics, students must also have a clear purpose when reading word problems, or even reading equations to be solved. Teaching students to identify this purpose can be challenging. The instructional focus guide helped me see how to plan a lesson involving reading with a clear purpose in mind. We are actually going to have a day next week dedicating to solely teaching students how to do word problems. I believe that planning this lesson would be a perfect opportunity to use the instructional focus guide.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Reflection #5: Purposeful Reading Comprehension Strategies
I was really inspired by the scenario in Tovani's Chapter 5 with Molly and her high school English class. In this example, teaching the book became more and more difficult for Molly because she was becoming an expert reader. Tovani explains that "this is a common problem for teachers. Many of us become experts on our content" (Tovani, p. 54). I have also noticed this problem when teaching mathematics. Sometimes the content I am presenting seems so simple; however, I forget that I am teaching students who are seeing the material for the first time. It is sometimes difficult to put myself in my students' shoes. The main point from this chapter was that students' should have a clear purpose when reading. In mathematics, students must also have a clear purpose when reading word problems, or even reading equations to be solved. Teaching students to identify this purpose can be challenging. The instructional focus guide helped me see how to plan a lesson involving reading with a clear purpose in mind. We are actually going to have a day next week dedicating to solely teaching students how to do word problems. I believe that planning this lesson would be a perfect opportunity to use the instructional focus guide.
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I love that you are going to use the instructional focus guide in practice in the coming weeks. I would be interested to know if it benefitted you in your planning and teaching of the word problems. I also like that you phrased the importance of purpose as "difficult to teach students to identify that purpose". Teaching them to identify purpose on their own is even a step further than giving them explicit purpose. That is exactly what we're looking for: educating independent and thinking students.
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