America is said to be behind other countries when it comes to education. Many factors contribute to this depressing realization. The old techniques were not effective so more has to be done. Effective content area literacy instruction drives students to becoming better learners. Showing and teaching students how to read and understand the world around them very early on is the central idea. It recognizes the need to provide elem. school students with instruction in reading to learn. It address all the literacies in the students lives. Right now our elementary classrooms have the basic basal readers and not doing much with them but reading it and not even much is done with comprehension. Giving the students exposure, early on, to more expository text and shown how to navigate through it, the slump between third and forth grade would decrease. The students should be given that direction, verbatim, on how to navigate any text. I was glad to hear that a study presented findings that a 1st grader was able to retell a informational text just as well as a narrative text. Informational texts actually motivate children to read and give them more access to literature as a whole. Giving them this exposure to read and retell this literature, will improve their writing abilities later on. Effectively instructing students on how to navigate content topics will increase new knowledge domains. They will not only be able to understand the information they are reading but they will also be able to evaluate it themselves. This requires long term immersion in the topic. It can enhance vocabulary understanding and comprehension, and comprehension is definitely a piece that has been missing in the past. As a supporter of this strategy, I understand the concept and importance of children learning to read the same time they begin to read to learn. Learning logs we introduced to me in my intro block and I will always be a fan. It is exciting to think of the possibilities of integrating them into any topic or content area. I know the textbook will be a guide but I really want to leave the learning up to the learner. I want to introduce them to all kinds of texts like websites or even how to pay attention to the bold print in textbooks. Students who learn to use their organization and structure of informational texts are better able to read and comprehend them. Opening the stage for retellings, dramatic activities, or any other experiences that will allow them the opportunity to use these structure in their own writing. A perfect classroom has the students so interested in something they ask questions and go find the answers and just want to know more and more about all there is to know about that one topic. Before long they have a desire to Read the World.
I think it is important to start early teaching children and motivating children to try to read everything around them with purpose and conviction. Everything matters and providing them with the avenue that leads to success due to their own curiosity is a great achievement for a teacher.
A lil classroom Mgt
This can quietly let students know your expectations...
I definitely agree with you, Isha. I really like what you have to say about using textbooks as a guide for learning but leaving the learning up to the reader. You have lots of good ideas about how to let students make the knowledge that is gained from informational texts their own. The idea to use learning logs was really good. I also think that it was a really fun idea to use dramatic activities to make learning from informational texts more exciting for students. I think that some students dread using textbooks so much that if teachers want students to get anything out of it, they really should try to find ways to make it more interesting for students.
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