Chapters 1 and 2 of Daniels and Zemelman’s Subjects Matter gave me a different
perspective on reading and how to teach reading. I found it interesting that
Chapter 1 mentions how the Common Core State Standards for the 6-12th
grades are divided into two sections, one concerning the English Language Arts,
and the second concerning History, Science, and other technical subjects. This
shows how critical is it for students to not only read but also comprehend what
they’re reading. I think Chapter 1 tried to advise future teachers to not focus word for word on the CCSS instruction of reading across the curriculum because, for one of many reasons, the CCSS have a “new criticism” type of outlook towards reading, meaning that
it expects students to read a text and join together to find a single and
unified meaning. Chapter 1, however, makes sure it goes beyond that to instruct
future teachers that we can’t just have a student dive into complex reading and
expect them to critically think and analyze difficult texts as the CCSS seem to expect adolescent students to do.
Chapter 2 extends
on Chapter 1 by noting that even though the CCSS can be helpful in many areas,
it is important as future educators to adolescents to keep in mind that not
many student’s will have a pre-knowledge on the content one may be teaching. If
we expect a student to independently read about certain content, we must
provide them with preparatory work in order to ensure that they have all the
vocabulary and key concepts in order to comprehend these “complex” texts. It’s
not just about activating schemata, as this chapter emphasizes, but it's about
providing our students with background knowledge to make sure that the student has an
understanding of content before our expectations of activating a student’s
schemata that might have not been earlier developed.
All in all, these
two chapters really reached out to me because it didn’t believe in teaching to
the text book, it revealed a genuine care for getting students to engage in
reading across the curriculum by helping the students to learn how to read- as opposed to focusing
solely on getting the students to read. It’s about engaging the students and
helping with their developmental skills in order to sharpen their reading strategies, these chapters recognize that reading and its comprehension do not just simply happen with any content. These two chapters reveal to be sensitive to the student's needs in learning how to get to a point that, well, satisfies the standards as well as getting a student to the point where they will feel inspired to develop a love for at least one content area as well as a growing desire to explore and research in order to learn more.
Caroline, I think it's funny that you mention that the CCSS are broken into two categories, one for ELA and one for everything else. I feel like if these were really to be COMMON/CORE standards on teaching reading that there should be no division between subjects. Maybe that's just being picky, but I think that it would probably be even more effective to streamline the standards and have them apply to every subject. If the idea is to promote literacy and more meaningful reading, aren't their simple things that apply across all disciplines?
ReplyDeleteHey, Caroline!
ReplyDeleteSo I read your chapter review and you basically talked about all of the points I talked about! I thought what was most important to take from these chapters was that teaching by the book is an issue prominent to today's classrooms and that reading should be taught as a process and not a product. We cannot simply expect students to fully engage with a complicated text. We have to first teach them how to read the text. We oftentimes as teachers take things like reading for granted because we are particularly strong at it. We forget that not all students are at the same reading level and need help when approaching harder texts.
Caroline,
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you said in your post. This chapter really made everything click in my mind as far as realizing how to use common core as a useful tool rather than a dreadful list of rules. I also connected with these chapters because they went into how to teach out of the text book instead of solely using the textbook to teach. Through reading these chapters I have realized that yes, we need to re-teach somethings that maybe students have forgotten,