Week 12 Reflections
1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
As shown in Demonstration 9.1, How Other Processes Contribute to Language, it is pretty evident that Language uses all the other processes we have learned so far. Visual and auditory recognition are used to read and hear words. “Eye movement is the second perceptual process that is central to reading” – so saccadic eye movement is a biggy. Working memory helps us process and interpret the letters, phonemes and words. Long term memory is especially helpful in making inferences and obtaining metacomprehension from the text. Metacomprehension allows us to think about our thinking of the reading and decide whether we have an understanding of the text. Spatial cognition helps us to create visuals in our mind for what we are reading. Semantic memory helps us with the meaning of words and concepts.
Another thought occurred to me when I read about Negatives. When I read about it being harder for us to process sentences with negatives I thought of the Pollyanna Effect. But then I read on and it also mentioned Theme 3 – “Our cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
Last week I was confused about a lot of stuff. This week it all seemed to make sense to me. Although, it does blow my mind to think about Artificial Intelligence. I can’t imagine the amount of work it would take to get a computer to have language comprehension.
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
Well, since we are teaching children how to read and comprehend in second grade, this is a very applicable chapter. 75% of my class came in reading below grade level, with 50% of the class reading at a beginning first grade level.
Many of my children read aloud when they are reading a story. I guess this makes sense after reading Chapter 9, which says that people use the indirect-access hypothesis when they “translate the ink marks on the page into some form of sound before we can locate information about a word’s meaning.”
It is also encouraging to read that “children with high phonological awareness have superior reading skills” because I do a phonemic awareness program with my children.
As far as the whole-word approach verses the phonics approach argument, I believe doing a little of both is the best way to teach language. Children need the phonics skills in order to be able to decode new words, but they also need a base of words which they can recognize immediately (including the words that do not follow the phonetic rules).
One thing that bothered me was what they said about drawing inferences. The author stated that you would better at drawing inferences if you had background information or expertise on a topic. Unfortunately, my impoverished children do not have a lot of either, so as their teacher, it is my job to help build up those areas.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Jill,
ReplyDeleteI think that your last comment about drawing inferences is a battle that we all face. If only I could level the playing field so that all of my students have the same background, then they would be able to make those inferences. Our communities are rural and ofent low-income. These don't always provide the best situations for our students. I know that it is almost next to impossible for many of my children to understand what it will be like to go on a field trip when so many have not even left the town. In my class I have a huge distinction between the haves and the havenots. A few of my children fly to Florida for long weekends, while the majority of them only go to Wal-mart on Saturday. It is hard to build a solid background with such a wide variety of experiences.
I made the same comment, Jill about making inferences and background knowledge. We try to increase background knowledge in so many ways through reading different kinds of books and field trips but there is always going to be that gap between those students that have families that are able to provide opportunities to see and do and those who have families with limited choices. We can only do what we can do in the short period of time that we have them in our classroom.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am glad that phonemic awareness is on the "upswing" of that pendulum swinging because most students do benefit from it.
I found, this year, because of our new reading progam the more the students are exposed to the strategies the more they remember and use them. Our school teaches, through reading classes, different strategies for non-fiction text. Inferencing is one of them. When I first started this strategy with my 7th graders they weren't able to pull that information out and connect it to what they already knew. Now that I am in the 4th quarter of teaching these strategies, I see students using it in my S.S. as well as my reading classes. This is without my prompting them to do so. Our goal is make sure the students have these strategies available during 6th, 7th, and 8th grade to help them comprehend what they are reading and why. We have about 5-6 we are working on now and hopefully we can add more in the future. We are going to see how this goes for at least the next two-three years.
ReplyDelete