Buehl, D. (n.d.). Developing
Readers in the Academic Disciplines (p. 31-46)
The question “What does it mean to
read, write, and think through a disciplinary lens?”
This chapter covers teaching
comprehension with complex texts, but if we think about it we arguably, have to
comprehend something almost every minute of our lives. What will I wear today
if it’s cold outside, when the light turns green that means? When we read it’s
no different we constantly need to assess the text in order to make sense of
what we are reading and thus be able to move forward in our journey of
discovery. We don’t merely want to be able to read the words off the pages flawlessly,
but to make a judgement of what we are digesting. We look at such a problem
earlier in this class with the Critique of Mosaic of Thought Excerpt, if you
can recall the boy who read the words off the pages with little effort but had
problems with his comprehensions. Deciding on our understanding of what we have
just read is a vital part of being able to grow as a person. We want our
students to engage in what we assign them to read not to just read to get the
work done. I think comprehension determines
this outcome for many students. Pseudoreading this is when a student reads, but
not for the sake of comprehension. Skimming for answer is another technique that
is sometimes used by students. There are seven fundamental comprehension
processes that can help us become better with comprehension.
1.
Make connections to prior knowledge
2.
Generate questions when you read
3.
Visualize and create sensory mental images
4.
Make inferences
5.
Determine importance
6.
Synthesize
7.
Monitor reading and apply fix-up strategies
We need to remember not to just
assign reading and to assess performance, but rather to teach comprehension
skills. I will continue on this subject matter in my next post.
I like your use of pseudoreading. I'd never heard this term before, but it's perfect. That's indeed what many students do. Skimming is another thing students do all the time, which I think is actually good, as long as they've read the text carefully through already!
ReplyDeleteYour blog made me connect with a situation that happened in high school! Dear lord which was 5 years ago for me...time goes by really fast! But in high school my english teacher taught us a trick for reading a sentence in a book. She always said if there was a word that we did not understand in a sentence that the definition is in the sentence either before or after the word. I do not know how i still remember this but i do! There were many other tricks that she had taught the class but i dont remember them! Looks like i need to go make a high school visit. The bullet points that you made are very important! because students need some kind of guideline to follow. I mean we all need instruction.....even as adults!
ReplyDeleteThis is something that I have always struggled with myself. I have always been able to read pretty well but my comprehension of the text has always been a weak point. I find myself rereading and rereading just to understand what is going on. I guess you could say my mind starts to think about other things like "I'm hungry and want to eat," and other things. Good suggestions.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry my initial comment went astray. It went to my blog. I'll never get this right. In any event, I regard skimming as a valuable tool when confronted with material that doesn't seem as engaging as I would like it to be. It's a fast flash into short-term memory, gets posted to whatever assignment and I'm off and running like a herd of turtles.
ReplyDeleteI think making inferences is super important. From a literary standpoint to be able to infer meaning helps when you are tying to guess what people are really saying, what a text is trying to convey implicitely and explicitly, and also when people are not telling you the whole story. Some of my favorite reads are when you have a biased and unreliable narrator, having to see the world through that lens and trying to understand the true meaning underneath it are some of my favorite books and I think it is a good tool to teach our students. Thanks for the list I need to focus on some of these for my students.
ReplyDelete