I’m sure all of us have had that moment where you end up
reading an entire page out of a book, newspaper, or magazine and as you’re
moving on you stop and think “Wait, what did I just read?” It’s a very common occurrence,
we get distracted while we are reading or start to space out. Well, for many
students it’s not that they just that they space out, it’s that they don’t
possess the tools to properly comprehend what was going on in the text. One of
the articles cited that 70% of students struggle with reading in some way or
another, and the article emphasized comprehension was one of the key issues. From
a personal experience, I remember being in high school and my friends and I made
it through secondary school without reading a single book. As a kid I thought
it was amazing that I was able to get away with using spark notes and copying
other people’s packets. Now as an aspiring educator, I see now that it is absurd
that I was able to do that. The article also
stated that about 50% of college bound students end up taking remedial English classes
in college since they struggle with reading. I saw friends who thrived in high
school end up dropping out of college since they could not keep up with the
work load of a lot of their gen eds. Now from my experience in college a lot of
general education courses can be reading intensive. So, one can speculate that
they didn’t develop the reading skills they needed in high school to be able to
take on this reading intensive work load. The point I’m trying to make is that
even though many of us see our friends thriving in college around us here at
UIC, I want to make it very clear that this issue of a lack of reading ability
is very real. So then what do we do about this? The article laid out a few possibilities
and I would like to talk a little about my favorite ones. The article talked
about a cooperative learning. I’m personally a huge fan of cooperative learning
in the classroom. In gives each student to share their ideas and opinions in
small groups, so every student gets a voice. When it comes to reading cooperatively,
students of all different reading abilities should be able to be able to talk
with someone whose reading ability is above, below, and similar to their
ability. Each scenario offers a different benefit. When a student shares with
students below their own reading ability, if they are able to articulate their
thought in a way the other can comprehend it, it solidifies their own
comprehension. When a student talks with another student whose reading
comprehension is above their own, they are able to hear a thought that is most
likely formulated at a deeper level of comprehension then their own. When
students who are at the same level share ideas, they are able to build their
understanding together at a fair pace for all participants. Building on cooperative
education, the article brought up a point on teachers between different
departments cooperating to build on students reading comprehension. I
understand that this may be very hard for many teachers since most teachers
need to follow a district program and each department has a strict set of
things that need to be covered. Even though it may be hard I feel it isn’t impossible.
This would require an entire reconstruction of the school so essentially it
would require all teachers in the school or even district to be on board. There’s
so much more that goes in to helping students reading comprehension but
personally I am a huge fan of this cooperative approach.
Hello Ryan,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post. Your meme caught my eye first because I have experienced that first hand. There were many times in high school and even college where I read something, and at the end of the passage, I thought to myself, "What did I just read?" Another question that I would ask would be, "What was I supposed to get out of that?"
I think that as future educators, we are surprised that others have that same experience having an issue comprehending material. When in reality, a large amount of students in general have this issue.
I really enjoyed your discussion on cooperative learning. You are absolutely right that each scenario does have benefits. You made great points and really showed that students will be able to benefit from working with students with multiple reading abilities.
Teachers being able to work with each other and cooperate on helping build students reading comprehension is great, but I am sure it would be hard to implement like you stated. Maybe if it was implemented slowly, they may see changes in students reading comprehension.
The use of memes i actually gog from a teacher i observed. In all her notes she included memes to get her students attention. I'm glad it worked here!
DeleteI agree with you on how it is absurd that students, including myself, have been able to do well in classes and on papers without doing some if any of the reading. I have seen time and time again, students who struggle in classes because of the reading and workload. They were not taught to read with depth and comprehension and it led to them struggling to understand the work in their classes. Teachers do it too. As future teachers we should be reading everything carefully and comprehending it at an advanced level, but as Buehl says, "...it can become easy for students, and sometimes for their teachers to lose sight of comprehension as the central purpose of reading." (Buehl, 2011). How many of us just look at the words, skim, or simply look for certain parts of a text to get a basic understanding of what the author is saying? We need to teach students how to reach at a more comprehensive level and I definitely agree with your take on cooperative learning. I think it would really benefit teachers and students to do this because it gives students the chance to work on their reading skills and figure out their thoughts and ideas on topics and give them a voice. It also gives teachers the chance to see where their students are at in terms of reading level and comprehension and what needs to be done in class to help the students progress and be ready for the future.
ReplyDeleteYour blog really caught my attention. I also believe many people space out and forget what they are reading, I myself included. Why does this happen? I could be reading something that I am interested in, but then like you stated a page goes by and I have no idea what it was about. This is why when I am teaching, I am continuously stopping and asking comprehension questions. If we just read through the story/novel without talking about it some students would be lost and not understand what is happening in the story. I also like how you brought up how it is important to work in small groups and talk with peers. I try to do this often in my class. For example, when learning new vocabulary words, I have the students talk about the words in small groups at their tables and try and figure out if they have heard the word or have an educated guess on what it means. This helps students work together and learn from one another. This also allows for the students that are to timid to answer in whole group, have an opportunity share their thoughts. Seeing students build off each other shows that the cooperative approach works.
ReplyDeleteI am not going to lie, one of the reasons why i stopped too read your post was because of the picture and how much i was able to relate to it, and im sure im not the only one as you pointed out so well in your blog. I still struggle today with being able to read text assigned to me and being able to understand what it is trying to say to me. Being in the education program i see how heavy it is in reading and continue to practice when ever i have to read. Now when it coms to your post i couldnt agree more when you mentioned the cooperative work and how it can help students. I feel like students do seem to learn better when they talk to their own peers because it takes off the preasure of talking to a teacher directly, even though thats what we would like thm to do. But by keeping them in these groups i feel like better understanding would be able to work through all contents if teaching was modeled inn a cooperative style. As teachers we should work more with one another in order to allow students to practice this cooperative learning so that it becomes a routine they can style their own understanding too and take with them for as long as they wish to learn.
ReplyDeleteRyan,
ReplyDeleteYour insights about cooperative learning as a solution to readers who perform only surface level decoding, or any of the other disengaged forms of reading that Buehl identifies in chapter 2, is great. I would add the caveat that the collaborative discussion - the dialogue - that we encourage as an alternative must be focused intensely on the texts, and the mechanics of the discipline. I am thinking back to my undergraduate experience as an English major, and how so many people would (pardon the diction) bullshit their way through discussion sections, or just parrot, superficially, the themes that the professor identified in the larger lecture while responding to someone else's contributions.
I think focused discussion around concepts that students can use moving forward is a better approach. For example: "discuss within your small group how we might identify the stories of Gatsby and Nick as parallel. What do the different choices they make while following similar paths reveal about their characters?"
This sort of exercise forces students to return to the text, but in a way where they cannot just skim to find an answer. They have to draw upon their synthesis of what they read and form an argument. Buehl identifies synthesis as one of the core components of reading, and when we structure activities to address both a core element of literacy and a core concept of the discipline, we can both teach a usable component of our field and assess where students might need additional scaffolding during similar activities in the future.
As a side note, I am not sure whether the activity I described would fall under "text-based collaborative learning" from Reading Next or not. I tend to start with a strategy from the reading and then go completely off the rails as I try to make it relatable to literary texts.
Your blog post and the picture really caught my attention. I really enjoyed reading your post, and yes, I have that moment of asking myself “What did I just read?” I think the reason for this moment as Lee & Spartly pointed out in the Reading in the Discipline article could be the vocabulary knowledge and general knowledge of topic and text. For me, it was the vocabulary knowledge. I face this problem when reading literature text that has many difficult vocabularies. Sometimes, I can understand the main idea of that text without knowing the meaning of some words, but I often have to use the dictionary for every single word that I don’t understand to be able to comprehend that text deeply. This process is time consuming, and sometimes it could be a struggle for me. If I didn’t have enough time, I will just skip that difficult reading. For other students, the reason could be that they just don’t have the literacy tool required to comprehend such text. Here comes the role of teachers to teach the students literacy practices along the content knowledge. As you suggested cooperative learning could be beneficial in such situation. From my experience as an English language learner student, I have benefited from working with other students with different reading abilities.
ReplyDeleteI have the same issue with vocabulary too. I normally try to determine the meaning from context normally. But you're right my post focused a lot on comprehension and that isn't the only issue when it comes to students literacy
DeleteRyan,
ReplyDeleteYou made a lot of interesting points in your post. I was definitely one of those students in middle school and high school that read the minimum amount to get by. As discussed by Buehl in Chapter 2, I "skimmed for answers" and "surface processed" many reading assignments (Buehl, 33). Many times when I was given an assignment with questions I would look for key words in the text to find the answers without actually reading. Other times I would read a page and think to myself "what did I just read." At the time this was the "easiest" way to finish the assignment but later along in my academic career I payed for it. I found my self having to go back and learn concepts that I should have mastered years before.
You mention that one way to build reading comprehension is for teachers across different disciplines to work together. I completely agree but do not necessarily think that it would require an entire reconstruction of the school. So many of our subjects are already connected that I think it would be easy for teachers to work together. For instance in Lee article this week, it is mentioned that "comprehension of science texts often requires mathematical literacy (Lee, 4). As a future science teacher I am definitely going to try and work with math teachers to further literacy in both of our subjects. I think that showing teachers how much of a positive impact working together can have on students' comprehension may encourage them to work together more. Also it can be implemented over a few years and teachers can be encouraged to work with only one or two teachers initially and build from there.
Again, great post!
You make a good point about the collaborative work between teachers. Honestly i wasnt sure of a very strong approach, i was just spitballing here.
DeleteIn my intermediate classroom, I use cooperative learning to organizing reading groups. In these groups students will be paired based on ability and will work within these groups to accomplish reading tasks. The students develop a sense of voice and confidence in these groups because they are allowed to bounce ideas off of one another and truly form their own opinion. These groups provide students with an opportunity to view others' thinking and process of comprehension; as a student myself, I find this cooperative time extremely beneficial for developing and strengthening my own comprehension of a text.
ReplyDeleteIn the groups are students reading different texts or is everyone reading the same book? If everyone is reading the same book i feel like you guys probably have not only good small group discussions, but good class discussion
DeleteRyan,
ReplyDeleteI can not even list the number of times I read something and had to go back and re-read because I completely spaced out for a solid 10 minutes. In order to combat this constant struggle of mine, I usually like to stop and make sure I understand what's going on. I think implementing this strategy in a secondary learning environment could be extremely beneficial for reading comprehension.
I also had a lot of friends in high school who thought they could skate by if they only used spark notes or copied other students' work. They never truly understood the material, let alone gain the ability to analyze or find deeper meaning in the work for a discussion. This kind of surface level learning is too prominent in today's classrooms. I love your preposition of "cooperative learning". This allows for students to still work together but build their own knowledge as well.
You make a good point highliting that the understanding is surface level. You need to read the material yourself to develop the proper skills
DeleteEven though I'm not officially a teacher yet, I've seen very good outcomes with the employment of a cooperative learning strategy. I've recently begun my second year coordinating a research program with high school students at Argonne National Laboratory. Even though these students are coming into the program with experience in Advanced Placement courses, it's still a bit of a challenge to transition from reading an AP textbook to making sense of scientific journal articles. With this in mind, I've been sure to have these students cooperatively engage with these daunting texts, and I've been glad to see that this sort of group discussion does a great deal to allow each person to more deeply comprehend them. As such, I believe that this style of engaging with text is particularly valuable given the current epidemic of a lack of reading ability.
ReplyDeleteFor your reseaech how do you engage students in a group discussion? What techniques do you find usefull?
DeleteHaha, yes, piggybacking on Bess right and you all really that it is absurd that we were able to get through high school by Spark Noting. Comprehension is a real issue, in that comprehension issues lead to reading taking an inordinate amount of time, especially in disciplinary literacy. It is still pretty hard for me to read a math textbook and learn from it, at times, and I am being trained to do so. Because comprehension is an issue (particularly wide-angled comprehension), cooperative learning is super neat. I think in terms of strict comprehension, it helps all students to hear from confident voices what they "should have" taken from a reading. And then the added reverse of that is that even students who did not understand or attach meaning to everything they read can also contribute value to a reading discussion. Nice post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment about reading math text. Reading a math textbook is a skill i just recently developed within the past few years.
DeleteUriel Rosales
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate this article because I often find myself finishing a whole chapter but not getting anything of sustence out of the text that I can turn into an original work. Daydreaming is a great tool to inspire unique works but overcoming the challenge of using it efficiently to improve oneself.
Uriel Rosales
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate this article because I often find myself finishing a whole chapter but not getting anything of sustence out of the text that I can turn into an original work. Daydreaming is a great tool to inspire unique works but overcoming the challenge of using it efficiently to improve oneself.