Gearing up to read and reading through my first readings for the class, I was thinking about how it is always beneficial to stretch ourselves as readers in order to put ourselves in the shoes of our students to then share how we approach texts with them. While before I had texts that were challenging, I think this is one of the first texts in a long time where I truly knew that no matter how many times I read it, I would not start to really understand it until I go to class next week. These will definitely be texts where I need scaffolding from my professor. Luckily, he mentioned to the class that we would feel this way at the start of the semester. We'll see if by the end of the semester I am able to be more independent following the gradual release of responsibility model or if the content is still too new to feel that sense of ease with the texts.
Last year I wrote about a writing to a prompt as a genre unit that I am doing again right now with my students. This year I am also going to do a short test reading genre study as well. It is still coming together in my mind exactly how I will map it out, but I know that I will focus on the importance of reader's/writer's purpose, making the connections between what we are highlighting for our writing to a prompt genre study and our test reading genre study. I will also be talking about how reader's adjust depending on the type of reading they will be doing.
While reading my statistics this week, I realized or had some thoughts reaffirmed that I can share with my students about difficult texts:
- It is important to think about level of familiarity with the content of a text before beginning in order to think about how to approach it. With my statistics readings, I know that I have very little background knowledge. That means that I will always need to read it (or at least ideally): when I am well rested, when there are no or very few distractions, and when I do not feel under pressure (such as a time crunch). I also need to go into it realizing that I will need to slow down, but at times, speed up when I realize that I am at sections that are still beyond my comprehension.
- Realistically with this text I was able to get some of the big ideas. Classmates who took the introductory statistics course said that even with high levels of confusion with the readings, it was still helpful to "prime the pump" for class instruction. Knowing that was the expectation, I was able to relax and clearly identify where I had some understanding and where I felt completely lost and knew that I would need to listen very closely to class discussions in order to fill in those gaps.
- It was also essential to try to sift through the information to try to categorize the priority level of the information. I watched for key words that pointed toward what would be major take-away points. For example, it talked about the purpose of certain distributions. I know that one of the program goals for students is to at minimum be able to understand the statistics that we read in research, even if we are not going to conduct quantitative research. Thus, knowing the purpose of each distribution will be key in being a strong consumer of research, so when I saw those key words, I knew to slow down and grasp on to anything I could.
I am glad that through statistics I will not only learn a whole new content area, but it will also provide me an opportunity to reflect on what I do as a reader, how I can piece together information as I navigate unfamiliar texts, and have to work hard to build background knowledge and then apply it to future readings. It is also valuable to share with students my own vulnerabilities as a reader and that it is more important to recognize confusion and seek strategies to patch up gaps in comprehension (either independently or with the assistance of someone else, depending on the situation), rather than being too proud to express confusion.
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