One of the surprising things that I realized when reading this book is how students view reading. Throughout his years of being a teacher, the author discovered that students typically see reading as a chore. Sadly, one of the main reasons why this attitude occurs is due to reinforcement by the education system. I remember when teachers would start a book unit and I would receive a large packet about the book. Each page was a list of questions from each chapter that I had to answer for homework. Like Wilhelm discusses in his book, I was required by my teachers to answer the correct questions. I could relate to the student who commented that teachers only care about students getting it right. As a future educator, I want to encourage my students to view reading as more than simply answering a bunch of questions correctly. When the students are about to look deeper into the book, they will have a better understanding of the world around them.
Another thing I thought was interesting was learning more about the reader response theory. I first heard of this theory during my Reading in the Content Area class. Louise Rosenblatt, the creator of the reader response theory, believes that reading is a transaction where readers and text relates to each other. While reading, the personal background, mood and reading ability greatly impact how the reader sees the material. As I mentioned before, the information that I learned from this book connected with me on a deeper level because I was able to access prior knowledge from my own experiences and other classes. I feel that the reader response theory is a great tool to use while teaching.
When I become a teacher, one of the best suggestions I got from Wilhelm is to become a “teacher-researcher.” By investing time in the reading progress of students, teachers will be able to gain more knowledge about the strengths and needs of students. According to Wilhelm, the most important research tool is to have a teacher journal. This journal would serve as a way for teachers to record the developments of the students, share stories from the classroom and to suggest for adaptations in the future. This is a quick and easier way to jot down some notes from the lesson during recess, lunch or free periods. Another of the research tools to use literacy letters. The author and his students exchanged weekly letters where they discussed books read in class and outside of class. What is great about this tool is that a student is able to explain in his or her own words what he or she felt while reading.
I wonder how we might combine both New Critical and Reader Response approaches in our teaching--how we can get students to value the words themselves and dig "deeper" into texts, while making meaningful connections to the themes therein.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your idea about being a teacher researcher. It is definitely a concept I want to bring into my classroom. I feel the only way to really know how to effectively teach your students is to watch them. Every student and classroom will learn differently so the only way to teach the material most effectively is going to be to "research" my students.
ReplyDeleteI also can identify with the large packet method, when I was in school the large chapter by chapter packet use to scare me out of enjoying the book. Can anyone think of a way for us to teach content without the chapter by chapter question packet?
You wrote: " Like Wilhelm discusses in his book, I was required by my teachers to answer the correct questions. I could relate to the student who commented that teachers only care about students getting it right. As a future educator, I want to encourage my students to view reading as more than simply answering a bunch of questions correctly. When the students are about to look deeper into the book, they will have a better understanding of the world around them." I completely agree with you when you said about students only wanting to get things "right" and reading simply to find the answers to their questions. I, too, want my students to view reading as more than an way to find details and answer questions correctly. I believe that you will be able to find a way to do so!
ReplyDeleteLike you, I can relate to only reading a text in order to answer the question correctly. But what happpens afterward? We just forget what we learned because we knew we only had to commit it to short-term memory in order to receive a good mark. However, with the ideas coming from Rosenblatt and Wilhem, I think we would achieve more by having something useful to present to the students like the reader-response approach. The information they get out of the text would finally allow them to make a connection that could be vital to their own life and revise it for a better understanding that serves them. In that respect, I think we could appreciate the fact that a student learned something that they would carry on throughout the rest of their life, rather than making them take a meaningless test that would make our class and efforts distant memory to them in no time.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of using a journal in the classroom as well. It not only could help us learn from our mistakes in the classroom, but also serve as a reflective piece for us just as Wilhelm uses as he wrote YGBB.
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