Post #9

Buehl, D. (n.d.). Developing Readers in the Academic Disciplines (p. 216-263) Question: How Can instruction scaffold the reading of complex disciplinary texts? What will our students do when they have to read a complex text and can’t avoid reading very word to try and find the deeper understanding on their own? Take a moment to ponder this question and how you attacked a similar task. Did you apply any of the information we talked about in earlier posts regarding the book suggestions? Your answer might be yes, and you could have done these helpful suggestions without even knowing it. This is because we learn to read in a formal setting in school, then we take it home and we naturally read more exploratory. We call this studying. A reformulation of study skills is basically any strategies used under the umbrella of self-learning including reading and writing. What makes ones persons study habits different from and others? Well part of it has to do with how we identify the habits of our mind. Are you the type of person who wants to learn new information when you find something to be interesting to you? Or are you the type of person who is good with only the information that is presented to you? How you answer these question might give you some insight to how, or to what level your study skill might be at. As a teacher we hope to motivate our students to hunger for more information beyond the information we present to them in the classroom. Here are some personality variables that affect performance, including the following: (p.220) • Resisting impulsivity • Managing stress and frustration • Handling failure • Showing persistence • Maintaining a positive outlook • Collaborating effectively • Delaying gratification These listed traits are linked to internal drive. Unfortunately too many students today show little in the area of internal drive. How can we as teachers show our students the importance of good study-skills and how they are associated to our individual success in the real world? We can start by teaching our students to make the connections from their previous knowledge to the new material they are receiving. Also we can teach our students to look for implications of things that are not directly stated to them. There are more suggestions out there it’s up to the instructor to find them and match them to the students’ personalities. On my next post we will look at customizing literacy practices.