Transcript Critical Reading for Content Areas

Critical Reading for
Content Areas
Teach your students how to
learn your content
Why teach reading strategies?
• Research has shown that
students can make
significant improvement in
reading comprehension
when they are given
instruction in strategies.
Where do I begin?
• Understanding Metacognition
– Metacognition
• Definition: awareness and
understanding one's thinking and
cognitive processes; thinking about
thinking
– Students must be taught and
reminded to think about and
monitor their thinking and
learning processes.
What next?
BE THE BRIDGE!
Another old theory?
• Schema Theory is a theory
of learning. Schema are
organized, structured,
clustered and abstract
bodies of information that
are generally
conceptualized as networks
of information in which the
relationships among facts
and actions are specified.
Why is schema important?
• The theory hypothesizes
that the schema a person
uses during learning will
determine how the learner
interprets the task to be
learned, how the learner
understands the
information, and what
knowledge the learner
acquires.
Why is schema important?
• Schema theory describes
the process by which
readers combine their own
background knowledge
with the information in a
text to comprehend that
text. All readers carry
different schemata
(background information)
and these are also often
culture-specific.
What does this mean for me?
• Schema-theoretic research
highlights reader problems
related to absent or
alternate (often culturespecific) schemata, as well
as non-activation of
schemata, and even
overuse of background
knowledge.
What’s the “global” implication?
• All human beings possess
categorical rules or scripts
that they use to interpret
the world. New information
is processed according to
how it fits into these rules,
called schema. These
schema can be used not
only to interpret but also to
predict situations occurring
in our environment.
What’s the “global” implication?
• Think, for example, of a situation
where you were able to finish
another person’s thoughts, or when
someone asked you to pass that
"thingamabob." Schema theorists
suggest that you used your schema
to predict what your conversation
partner was going to say and to
correctly interpret "thingamabob"
as the hammer needed to nail
something into the wall.
I got it. Now what?
• Several instructional strategies
logically follow from schema
theory. The most important
implication of schema theory is
the role of prior knowledge in
processing. In order for learners
to be able to effectively
process information, their
existing schemas related to the
new content need to be
activated.
A Simple Example…
• Suppose you overheard
the following conversation
between roommates:
• Did you order it?
Yeah, it will be here in
about 45 minutes.
Oh... Well, I've got to leave
before then. But save me a
couple of slices, okay?
You’re Probably Correct!
• Do you know what the
roommates are talking about?
Chances are, you're pretty sure
they are discussing a pizza they
have ordered. But how can you
know this? You've never heard
this exact conversation, so
you're not recalling it from
memory. And none of the
defining qualities of pizza are
represented here, except that it
is usually served in slices, which
is also true of many other things.
Another One…
• The girl sat looking at her piggy
bank. "Old friend," she thought,
"this hurts me." A tear rolled
down her cheek. She hesitated,
then picked up her tap shoe by
the toe and raised her arm.
Crash! Pieces of Piggo--that
was its name--rained in all
directions. She closed her eyes
for a moment to block out the
sight. Then she began to do
what she had to do.
Showing our age??
• If you have a well-developed
schema for "piggy banks", this
story should be readily
comprehensible. You would
understand that traditional piggy
banks were usually made of
some fragile, brittle material, that
they contained a slot for inserting
and saving coins, and that the
money could only be removed
by breaking them.
• On the other hand, if you have
no schema for piggy bank, the
story probably makes little sense.
More Depth to Schema Theory
• D. Rumelhart & D. Norman (1978)
proposed that there are three
modes of learning: accretion,
structuring and tuning.
– Accretion is the addition of new
knowledge to existing memory.
Accretion is the most common form
of learning.
– Structuring involves the formation of
new conceptual structures or
schema. Structuring occurs much
less frequently and requires
considerable effort
– Tuning is the adjustment of
knowledge to a specific task usually
through practice. Tuning is the
slowest form of learning and
accounts for expert performance.
An Example of the Three Modes
• On learning Morse code:
Initial learning of the code is
the process of accretion.
Learning to recognize
sequences or full words
represents restructuring. The
gradual increase in
translation or transmission
speed indicates the process
of tuning.
So what’s my role?
• Since prior knowledge is
essential for the
comprehension of new
information, teachers
either need to
– help students build the
prerequisite knowledge, or
– remind them of what they
already know before
introducing new material.
Assess & Activate Schema
• Teach text structure
– Preview reading
• Teach word analysis
– Focus on roots and affixes
specific to your content
• Pull out and teach
important/difficult
vocabulary
• Use analogies and
comparisons
• Ask for text-based predictions
Vocabulary and Content
• Optic information and
ALIKE BUT DIFFERENT
BEFORE: Anticipation Guide
• Part of the allure of manga is
the right to left orientation.
• Kids and female consumers
have been drawn in by
manga more so than other
similar formats.
• Manga sales have remained
predominately static over the
last 4 years.
• Manga is derived from
anime.
What the heck is MANGA?
DURING: REAP
• Manga Mania
– R = read on your own
– E = encode the text by putting the
gist in your own words
– A = annotate by writing down the
main idea and the author’s
message
– P = ponder what you read by
thinking and talking with others in
order to make connections,
develop questions about the
topic, and/or connect new
information to prior knowledge
AFTER: Anticipation Guide
• Part of the allure of manga is
the right to left orientation.
• Kids and female consumers
have been drawn in by
manga more so than other
similar formats.
• Manga sales have remained
predominately static over
the last 4 years.
• Manga is derived from
anime.
AFTER: Exit Slips
• Respond to one of the
following:
– One new thing I learned
today.
– What questions do I still
have?
– Within the first few weeks of
school, I will try ___ with my
students.