Chapter 5 of Subject Matters offers a wealth of strategies that can be used to serve as aids to help students build their reading comprehension skills. The chapter includes strategies that can be used before, during and after student reading. Before reading, a stage I feel is most vital to student success, it's important that students activate prior knowledge and build a base of understanding for what they are about to read. If they begin reading without doing this, then the subsequent strategies for during and after reading will prove to be unsuccessful. Teacher's must equip students with the "key," or information to unlock texts. Of the "before reading" strategies listed in the chapter, the easiest to incorporate, in my opinion, would be a classroom brainstorming session. While the ease in which this strategy can be incorporated into most any learning situation is important, brainstorming does two key things that are vital to the success of the students First, as the chapter mentions, by using this strategy, the teacher is able to gauge where his or her class is in regards to the objectives. This is a useful, non formal assessment that can make the lesson more successful. Another, less obvious benefit to using brainstorming is what it does for the students in terms of their willingness to share ideas. Brainstorming creates a comfortable classroom environment, where input is not judged. Students feel that they are able to share ideas without fear of being wrong, something that can add to the depth of class discussions in subsequent classes.
For a more in-depth look at brainstorming for teachers, check out this site: Brainstorming For Teachers - SDSU
For a more in-depth look at brainstorming for teachers, check out this site: Brainstorming For Teachers - SDSU
Activating Prior knowledge is definitely one of the most important things for reading comprehension. This way if there is anything that students don't know but need to know for the reading, the teacher can give the student all of the information that they need. Brainstorming is also a great tool because of the comfortable environment it creates.
ReplyDeleteBrainstorming for me is, as you said, like a safe zone. It allows students to openly express their opinions and thoughts without being told they are wrong or ridiculed. Also, if the students start saying things that aren't right, the teacher can immediately correct them by simply giving them their own opinion without making it seem like the student is wrong. A simple, "Well, I think that...." is better than, "No, actually". Another thing about brainstorming is that it should be utilized throughout a unit to really involve the students. It's more successful than just reading, taking a quiz, reading the next chapter, etc.
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