I read a blog written by Bill Ferriter, a 6th grade science teacher. Clearly, he is also a reading teacher who believes in teaching active reading strategies. This blog is fairly short, and it's an activity for the classroom, but it points out some helpful reading strategies that are necessary for students in content area. He also aligns each strategy to the Common Core State Standards.
I downloaded some of the handouts he offered from this blog. They seem useful. My favorite handout is called "How Quotes Influence our Thinking." If forces students to look at quotes with a critical eye, and asks them to go deeper into their thinking.
What I liked most about his blog is how he breaks down the critical nonfiction reading strategies into student-friendly questions and statements like the one below. I think these could be easily tied to the content area teaching at HMS.
A question every reader should ask when they come across a quote from an expert is, "Who is this person and why should I believe them?"
This sounds awesome. I'd love to talk with you about it. Maybe I'll read the blog as well. I found that when we used science articles last year and applied the CCSS, the appeal of the content was lost because we analyzed them to death. If you want to give it a try, you are always welcome in my room.
ReplyDeleteHope we have time to talk on Saturday if not before!
Megan
Yes -- I agree. I've found that the key to teaching CCSS is finding a good balance of analyzing the text, while still reading for enjoyment and learning. It's a difficult thing to achieve, especially with middle school students. We have to teach these standards to our students without killing the excitement of the content.
ReplyDeleteI find the idea that we are all reading teachers to be true. I find it especially true for me in math and science where the skills that kids have developed thus far to read novels don't directly extend to non-fiction. They really don't know the function of the subtitles, bold print, and they don't have a strategy to read through and investigate and follow the examples. It takes a lot of instruction just to get them to notice the structure of the page and how the information is organized. I look forward to working with you to improve my instruction of informational texts.
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