This chapter consisted only of strategies to promote critical reading in the classroom. I had not heard of any of these strategies before, so this was all new to me. To be totally honest, I find the formatting in the BBR text to be a bit confusing to follow. It is really difficult for me to really envision what the activity or strategy is truly supposed to look like, even though it's presented visually with lots of check marks and bullet points and things. I also feel like the titles of these strategies get me confused. For example, in reading the Phony Document Strategy, I could not for the life of me figure out what about it was "phony" exactly. Nonetheless, I will comment on each of the four that were presented. I like the Polar Opposites strategy as a writing prompt or as a prompt for a small group discussion. It seems like a great way to let students express their opinions while also having them back up their ideas. I think some sort of assessment connected to this would be imperative in order to keep students accountable for how they rationalize their answers. At least that would be the case for my class. I struggled to grasp the concept of Opinion-Proof, but I also like how it emphasizes that students can have opinions but need to be able to rationalize and justify them from a text. (How delightfully "Core" of us!). To me, REAP seemed more like basic inductive study of a text, but simply put to a catchy acronym. This is the first strategy that I felt like I have and can really use in my class. When my Spanish II class was reading a simple novel, I often had them translate aloud and "encode" the passage by putting it into their own words, rephrasing it either in English or Spanish. This shows that whether or not students have a true grasp on the reading, if they can explain it again in their own words. I often have students write this down in some way before asking them the question aloud. Again, I honestly don't really get the Phony Document Strategy, and I don't particularly like it. I don't know that I would choose to use this in my classroom. It might work better in an English or a History class.
I agree, Hannah.... I don't necessarily like the format of the BBR book. These ideas were all new to me as well... The more I read about these strategies, though, I realize that we're already using a lot of these both in our UT classes and in our own classrooms.... well, modified versions, at least!
ReplyDeleteAh, common core... I thought the exact same thing when I was reading this chapter! As much as people complain about it, it has its good points that give students a foundation and help students learn to comprehend what they are reading and not just spout out answers.