I first want to say that I actually laughed out loud when I read the sentence in the first paragraph stating, "the first is how easy it is to be seduced by new methods, especially when they arrive wrapped in research." Isn't that irony right there?!?!?
Anyway...I brought out of this chapter a couple of things - how important it is to model and then have kids make those three very important linkages to the text...text to one-self, text-to-another-text, and text-to world. I believe this is important - one of the reasons I said about an earlier chapter that I didn't agree with not doing double sided journal entries or dialectic journals - these kinds of linkages are promoted through these strategies!
The next thing that struck me is the idea of giving kids the tasks through independent reading time actually takes them out of the zone...I agree whole-heartedly...I've stopped doing this!
I may tell them to see if they can, through their independent reading book, use some sort of skill or identify a skill we have studied - but not as an assignment on sticky notes! We are always talking about what strategies they need to use during reading - the independent reading time can be a time for that if it "fits" for the student - but is not mandatory. To go along with that ... Atwell's friend that told her once kids master and assimilate the strategies, they would become automatic...I agreed with.
I also believe that Atwell's statement about understanding the meaning of about 90% of the words in a book - proves that it's important for us to continue to do vocab in some way...kids are losing out on some important stuff that we learned as kids and were just fine learning! Helping students find their "just right" books is also important for this purpose.
It amazes me that so much seems to have needed to change for kids to learn...but we all learned just fine...didn't we??? Were our teachers so bad?!?!?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment