I really liked the points that the article made about incorporating literacy into lower grades. Comprehension is so important and I feel that if we start out earlier in teaching students how to comprehend, it will help them in later years. Comprehension is needed in all elements of education, if students do not comprehend what is being taught they will continuously have trouble in the future. We need to get students to reading more advanced things. Teachers seem to push AR a little much at students though. If teachers or administrators would back away from making students read book after book to get more and more points and actually allow the student’s time to take in what they are reading, it could help them tremendously.
The reason why I bought up AR was because I was forced to read so many books in school and I stopped reading for enjoyment purposes. I remembered the things in the books that I thought would be on the test and hurried to take the test, not worrying about what I actually comprehended. The teachers pretty well forced me to do that. I remember taking home three books a night and reading them so that I could take a test on them the next day. When children are reading that quickly, they do not actually comprehend what the book is talking about and as the students get older and AR is not as forced, students do not know how to read literature for comprehension. Teachers need to focus on putting more advanced literature materials in front of the students and giving them time to actually comprehend what they are reading.
1) How will teachers know what is important literature for the students to read that will benefit them most if the Core Curriculum continuously changes?
2) With technology continuously changing, how can teachers continuously keep up?
I also mentioned AR in my post. I agree that students are not actually reading these books and comprehending the part of the book they actually do read. They simply pick a book and take a test to get the teacher off of their back. AR also does not allow the students to read what they are interested in. They are stuck with choosing books on their lexile level.
ReplyDeleteReflecting on your question about how the teacher knows what literature would be best, I think that the best way the teacher can do this is to provide a wide variety of literature on the topic. The teacher can look at the standard and find magazines, books, websites, etc. that are appealing to students and allow them time to explore these books.
I totally agree with the AR thing. I think it's crazy to force the children to read certain books and then take tests on them. They are limited to their choices and they know what to expect from the questions. They aren't really learning anything except how to memorize some of the information to take that test.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ashley about the question. I think that it is important for the teacher to learn the students' interests and have a wide variety of text for them to read from. :) Great job!