Teacher Education Programs

[Michele]

I would like to have feedback on best ways to prepare University students for 21st Century teaching. I would like the discussion to focus on the TEACHING OF READING STRATEGIES to students in grades 1-8. I am a retired classroom teacher who is now an adjunct at the local university. When I was in my elementary classroom, I used the world as my resource. I taught them to read, by reading emails and collaborative work from penpals world wide. We worked on collaborative projects more times than I can remember. Math, Science and Social studies were the taught the same way....though world wide collaborations and interactions with other teachers and their students. Now that I am at the University level....I want to do the same thing, even better. Suggestions for teaching" reading strategies" to undergrads while making use of web 2.0 tools ? Collaboration at the university level suggestions needed as well.

[Dan McGuire]

As a current 4th grade teacher my first suggestion would be to lose the term 'strategy/strategies.' Its usefulness in the teaching of reading is very limited and becoming less useful every day. Too many people who don't actually teach reading are using the term for a variety of purposes not related to teaching reading.

Teach kids how to read using the tools that they will be using. Teach teachers how to use the tools that kids will be using to read. Books and magazines are on the list, but where on the list is open to debate.

I'm finding that Moodle is a fabulous tool to teach reading and writing. I think its initial use as a college level tool was only a beginning. I don't want to ask a 9 year old boy or girl to rewrite another paper or correct the scribbles that they've struggled to get on paper if I can help it. I'll use the computer to teach them how to write and read. I'll still teach cursive and neatness in penmanship, but it will be appropriate to the uses of this century, not the last one.

Here's a link to a colleague of mine in the Minneapolis Public Schools, Brock Dubbels, http://brockdubbels.efoliomn2.com/ who's using games to teach reading. I've yet to delve too deeply into games; I'm a recovering pinball addict, so I'm cautious about such things. Focus on what the students need and you'll not go wrong.

[Michele]

Thanks for the suggestions!
Michele

[brock dubbels]

Hi,

Dan introduced me to your group. Here is something I would add from a paper published last year:

Strategies instruction may condition students to look outside of themselves for answers, rather than using the knowledge they have in a methodical way—the key is in helping the readers to become strategic, rather than consumers of strategies.

Comprehension monitoring, making graphic organizers, creating questions to answer, answering questions, summarization, making predictions, working in groups to discuss what has been experienced, as well as look for secondary sources to support their understanding. These evidence supported reading behaviors come from the findings of the National Reading Panel’s report from 2000.
One of the essential ideas here is that we are using the term behavior rather than strategies. The strategies that we traditionally have used like QAR and SQ3R and others like SPAWN, though efficacious in some instances, do not meet the needs of a reader in all reading conditions. According to researchers (Magliano, Trabasso, and Graesser, 1999; Narvaez van den Broek, and Ruiz, 1999) strategies that are often taught to students are not equally applicable to every text that they read. Some texts are fictional, some expository, and some are detailed, some of multiple plot lines, and some organized a single character’s experience. Research has shown that asking readers to use different strategies can lead them to make different inferences (Narveaz et al, 1999)-- different strategies on the same text was found to lead to different understanding!
The key is providing a variety of literate experiences that scaffold the reader to integrate a variety of strategies where they build a repertoire of tools for interpreting and organizing texts into a coherent model in their minds of what is happening in the text.


By having some background in a plotline, as well as familiarity with the setting, characters, or even the era, one may have a better understanding of what will happen in the narrative. Further, if one understands how the system delivering the information is composed and how elements of delivery effect the information being delivered. The key then is the more familiarity one has with a thing; the more likely the individual will have success understanding what they read, view, and experience. This becomes clear as readers begin to make comparisons between a text they are familiar with to one that is novel.
This familiarity and comparison allows the reader to have the ability to make and verify predictions, which is a strategy of successful reading. This idea of prior knowledge is categorized in a psycholinguistics literature as a situation model. Attributes of a situation model include prior knowledge of two types:
• General world knowledge (pan-situational knowledge about concept types, e.g., scripts, schemas, categories, etc.)
• Referent specific knowledge (pan-situational knowledge about specific entities).
These two categories represent experience in the world and literary elements used in defining genre and style. The theory posits that if a reader has more experience with the world that can be tapped into, and also knowledge and experience about the structure of stories, they are more likely to have a deeper understanding of a narrative or expository passage through the ability to relate to it from their own knowledge and experience. The key factor seems to be prior experience and the ability to make connections.

[Michele]

Thank you so much!
Michele