As a teacher, it is my job to educate students, but that does not mean that I should give them all of the answers. Instead, I should be capturing the attention of my students and encouraging them to research more about the topics we discuss in class. Students need to be taught how to find answers for themselves because "learning by doing and learning by reading" is the most effective way to sustain information in a student's mind. One way that I intend to incorporate research and reading of different interesting subjects that relate to art in my classroom is by using sketchbooks. Each student will have a sketchbook that they will either draw or write in everyday. At the beginning of class, while I am taking attendance, students will sit quietly at their seats and read an article about an artist, a specific work of art, or an instruction on how to create their own work of art from the projector. Students will take notes on the reading so that they will remember what they learned, be able to use it as a guide if they choose to further research the topic, and also to develop a habit of good note taking and writing skills. "Like weight management, we need to help out youth develop [healthy] habits." The sketchbook will grab the students attention each day with new information about art from around the world, different mediums to use, and fun facts. Finding information that students would actually care about is key. "Interest blossom into hobbies and career aspirations." By adding this into my classroom, I believe it will get the students excited about art and interesting in it more deeply, creating curious minds that will search for more understanding and inspirations. Although I might provide exciting information about art, some students will not be skilled enough to understand it fully. Finding information in many reading levels so that all students feel empowered is essential as well as teaching students how to comprehend the readings better. "Assessing students metacognitive awareness of reading strategies" is a tool to see where the students are at in their skill level. Having students answer questions like, "I take notes while reading to help me understand what I'm reading, I underline or circle information in the text to help me remember it, or When text becomes difficult, I reread to increase my understanding," will help me to know if they have comprehended what I have assigned to them. Informing students of these strategies and practicing them in class will increase their ability in becoming students who are skilled in understanding the reading, which ultimately will create long-lasting learners.
Thanks for writing, Amber. How would you as a students art teacher assess students metacognition in reading in your classroom? The authors suggest an "interactive, constructive nature of reading" to become "constructively responsive." What implications does this have for you in your classroom who often have expectations of just "doing art" in your classroom? How will you model such strategies to increase content area literacy?
Mokhtari and Reichard discuss their development of MARSI, a version of which we've presented to some of our students.
The first thing I want to discuss was my reaction to MARSI. Mokhtari and Reichard do list some caveats, echoing my concern that it's a self-reporting tool. Self-reporting tools are only as reliable as the individuals' level of self-awareness; another way in which such tools are weakened is by the degree to which individuals answer in ways meant to impress the test-giver rather than to honestly reflect on the test-taker's actual behaviors. I'm concerned that Mokhtari and Reichard underestimate this latter influence when it comes to teachers implementing this tool with their own students. This makes it crucial that teachers interpret the tool in the context of their other knowledge about individual students.
Another concern that I have, which I don't see mentioned explicitly in the article, is that some of these strategies are things that readers in the later stages of their development may do more robustly than truly expert readers. For instance, while expert readers still leverage typographical aids (22), which after all are part of the total communication from the writer or editor, and adjust their speed (13), I think that many expert readers are perhaps less likely than developing readers to take pains to discuss readings with others for the purpose of content verification (9) or read aloud (5). I am thus concerned that MARSI as is may communicate to students that all of these are strategies that they should retain throughout their lives or risk becoming mediocre readers.
Related to this point, while I agree with the premise of the article that there are strategies that can be taught and modeled that assist student comprehension, I'm wary of implying to students that there's a "one size fits all" approach. Certainly someone can become an expert reader without following all of the strategies on MARSI.
All that said, I do think that MARSI appears to be an excellent, comprehensive list of strategies. I could see it particularly being useful as a way to initiate a conversation among students as to what strategies they do use, which strategies from the list they'd like to add, and which they do feel aren't for them.
The first portion of the article discusses the importance of metacognition to developing effective reading, while noting by implication that expert readers implement many of these strategies automatically (and hence presumably with a lower degree of overt self-awareness). "Unskilled writers," write the authors (p. 249), "... are quite limited in their metacognitive knowledge about reading." This illustrates one of the key reasons for using a tool such as MARSI to generate the sort of conversation I describe above: Low-ability readers may not only lack self-awareness of their reading obstacles, they likewise may lack an understanding of what it is they don't know. If you're not even aware of the complexities that are possible in a task, you won't have a starting point for learning those complexities.
Washor, Mojkowski, and Foster discuss how the traditional methods of reading instruction in public education often serve to create barriers rather than to facilitate the creation of enthusiastic readers. Based on my own experience in high school reading classes, I'm inclined to agree with their position.
One memory that came to mind while reading this article was that my reading "choice" in high school literature courses often consisted of page long lists of novels with authors and titles. I found myself choosing somewhat randomly, rather than using the sort of strategies I use as a recreational reader (such as cover, synopsis, first page reading). When I selected a book based on this limited information that my teacher thought was atypical for my tastes, she expressed surprise but didn't seem to connect that the limited information had kept me from making an informed decision. Because she had information about the literature, she had apparently assumed we students were also familiar with what the books were about. This is something that all teachers should be mindful of when having students select readings, making sure to provide students with enough information that they can make a real choice, rather than a random one.
Another memory that came to mind while reading this selection was that I stopped reading recreationally for quite a few years after college because my literature courses had created, as the article describes, a scientific reader. I was spending so much effort focusing on the sorts of things my English teachers had told me to look for (particularly symbolism) that I couldn't read for the pleasure of it.
As a prospective English teacher myself, I am wary of my own experiences, and do want to find ways to create students as readers who select materials based on their own interests and who learn a balance between critical reading for content and reading for pleasure and personal development.
Thanks for sharing, Paul. According to the article, how will you create the "balance" as you described above given that reading strategies are critical for student understanding of content?
I really like some of your points in the first post especially some of your critical feedback. The points you raise with the MARSI tool are valid. Could so called "low-level readers" be proficient in some areas but not in others? What do you make of this idea that such work is "work intensive and time consuming" for both teachers and students alike? What implications does this have for your classroom and teaching for understanding?
An additional take away for me from the Washor et al article was the reinforcement of the idea that students will be more enthusiastic about reading if they can connect those readings to their interests and to things they already know. As we've discussed in class, most students do already read more than the critics give them credit for, but it's in the form of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the like. It is the challenge of the teacher to find readings that are compelling to the students but at the same time reflect a higher general quality (in both form and content) than those popular avenues.
Great point here, Paul. How do you provide high quality and interest based texts using reading strategies on standard topics such as the teaching of slope or binomials?
The authors define metacognition as a reader’s cognition about reading and the self-control mechanisms they exercise when monitoring and regulating text comprehension. The research shows that metacognition occurs in the following phases: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experiences, goals (or tasks) and actions (or strategies). Since metacognition can promote academic learning and motivation increased research has taken place to help promote awareness. Although, the research on metacognition is extensive there are few instruments available to measure metacognition awareness. So, the article describes the Metacognition Awareness of Reading Strategy Inventory (MARSI), which is designed to assess students’ awareness and use of reading strategies for grades six through twelve. The development and validation phases of the MARSI revealed that this is a reliable instrument to measure and assess students’ metacognition awareness. The MARSI is a tool that enables students to increase awareness of their own reading strategies while providing teachers with useful means of assessing, monitoring and documenting students’ reading strategies. Although, MARSI is a useful tool for helping students increase metacognitive awareness, teachers should consider it as a single source of information about his/her students’ reading abilities. Overall, the teacher will need to gain an understanding the thinking process of his/her students in order to increase student engagement while reading.
The research shows that students with rich academic vocabularies are likely to have success while learning content area subjects e.g. science and mathematics. The article provides teachers with instructional strategies to help promote and strengthen students’ academic vocabularies. There is a great body of evidence that shows the when students make the transition from reading stories or narrative text in primary grades there is a significant drop in achievement levels. Many researchers believe that students with limited vocabularies are the cause for such a decline in the achievement levels.
Some researchers believe that the process of learning words is also a contributing factor in the low achievement levels. Since words are learned in stages and when students progress through the different grades, there is a varying and complex level of words to acquire. The words associated with content learning are often referred to as academic vocabulary. The authors define academic vocabulary as the array of words that differ from everyday words that students would typically hear in ordinary conversations.
To improve students’ academic vocabulary the author suggests that teachers develop a three-tier approach. The first tier consist of words that are used in everyday language, the second tier are words that not so common in everyday language and the third there are abstract words. Since vocabulary plays a major role in understanding text and content area material, the role of the teacher is to help students expand their academic vocabulary. As teachers, help students to increase their academic vocabularies, assessments to monitor progress are crucial. Teachers play an integral role in assessing students’ academic vocabulary and the authors offer a variety of assessment tools. The students also play a pivotal role in increasing their vocabulary through self-monitoring .
There any many approaches and strategies available to improve literacy but it is the teacher’s responsibility to chose the proper approach based on the learn style of the students.
I was thinking about how students can use life to text as a strategy, and as teachers we may just need to be concerned with at what point we are giving them materials. I think a lot of teachers tell their kids to go home and read the textbook between each concept they're working on, and that's where they lose them. At that point they haven't had a life experience with the material, and there's no one present to facilitate the text to life part. It seems intuitive for the teacher to open the concept with reading that is fun and interesting and to build up the reading/concepts from there, and that seems to fit in really well with this model. Once the students have had some experiences with the material that's when they'll want to read more, so it makes more sense to save more challenging reading for that point in their learning.
I agree with the main point of the metacognition article, that students have to be purposefully reading with an awareness of their understanding for true meaning to be taken from the text. I've had the experience myself where I've read something and then looked back and realized that I have no idea what I just read even though I looked at every word. I of course went back to read it again with a little more attention because I was aware that I didn't actually comprehend anything. There are a lot students however, who struggle so much just to figure out what the words are that they really don't seem able to think about comprehension at this point. I think the reading strategies are helpful, and that they should definitely be taught to the students to aid them in developing metacognitive strategies as they practice reading skills.
Thanks for writing. I would be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on both articles. How would integrate this idea of having students "do something" as it relates to the teaching of the Common Core in your math classroom? In other words, how do you take the content and engage youth in literacy experiences in your content area?
After our own self-examinations and the exploration/ discussion over the past couple of class periods, we are most definitely working on becoming more self-aware of what we are reading. Going over the Mokharti and Reichard article has me pulling out my own highlighter (#12 on MARSI) and then questioning on if I should pull out my statistics book again so that I can quickly reference what post hoc comparisons and Ryan-Einot-Gabriel-Welch multiple-range tests are. The development and investigations to create the MARSI is one that appears to be thorough, with all of the various reviews and analysis that they have done. I do worry though, that it is self-reported that students will just want to be done and say that they do something, to try and placate me as their teacher. The cautionary note that “it remains a self-report measure, and as such, it should be interpreted with vigilance” is definitely a cautionary note to keep in mind. If I am the observant and reflective educator though, I hope that I will notice how my students perform over time on an individual basis. As most everything in teaching, MARSI is another “tool” to add to our box that we can use to increase our awareness and understanding of student comprehension. I do believe that students can increase metacognition just by taking this inventory. I had a number of students take the inventory (bribed with 5 extra credit points) and their response ranges were so broad. The one that we narrowed down in class, 2, 17, and 20 were all rated low on the inventories that my students filled out. I did not stipulate though that this was to apply only to school text, though I am not sure that would have made any real difference in their responses.
It was interesting on page 249 of the article on how it is mentioned how limited in self-metacognition in relation to reading unskilled readers are and how they tend to focus more on the process of decoding. Thinking back on a recent article that I had my students read out loud as a class, we actually had to spend a good deal of time decoding- phrases, words, style- that were unfamiliar to them. If I had just let my students loose on their own with that article, they would have been lost, and I would have heard “Ms. Roy! Ms. Roy!” every 2 seconds... Finding those different strategies to quickly decode and organize and then working with students in applying those strategies in order to actually process and comprehend what they are reading is part of our teacher description. Enhance ability to gain knowledge through self-exploration in reading.
Washor, Mojkowski, and Fosters article was more relaxing to read after the previous; more relaxed and simpler language in my mind. The concept that experiences motivate reading is intriguing. I can see how this would work really well into the project-based method/ design of teaching that there is a larger movement towards that I know we are all trying to develop. If we allow our students to pick what they are interested in, then they are more likely to want to explore that topic and will read along the way- without realizing it as much. I was fortunate growing up, that I was introduced to reading, before formal schooling so I did not develop that reversed association of reading with schooling. Many of our current students though do not have those experiences growing up. I still question and have reservations on the “types” of reading that our students are currently immersed in- blogs, tweets, texts, etc. Trying to find current, relevant, engaging information for students to explore is key
Thanks for writing, Christine. I appreciated your insights here. Was the article you chose one that spoke to student interests? Do you agree that if we simply provided students the opportunity to read what they wanted in science that we would not have to concentrate so much on strategies?
I find it enlightening, but also painfully obvious that many students are not motivated to read in school. As a youngster myself, I can recall reading many things that in my adolescent mind had no relevance to me. I can recall reading to take test and really not reading for understanding. In the article “Living Literacy”, Washor, Mojkowski, and Foster interestingly points out that educators should use literacy more so to develop habits than to providing a monotonous experience of reading classical books. The authors also go on to say that students will be more susceptible to increasing literacy skills by reading the books that they enjoy. In doing this, literacy will be used as a means of changing habits. For example, the authors state that the students who read are more likely to “play sports, exercise, visit art museums, attend theatre, etc.” In the journal “Assessing Students’ Metacognition Awareness of Reading Strategies”, Mokhatari and Reichard stress the importance of making students aware of how they are as readers. The test that he uses, “MARCI scale”, is broken down into three factors: Global Reading Strategies, Problem-Solving Strategies, and Support Reading Strategies. The test can be given to students individually or as a group. For each of the 30 questions asked in the survey, the students are to give themselves a score from 0-4. I believe that this test is an important resource to perform self maintenance on your reading literacy. Some of the questions in general that interested me the most were “When text becomes more difficult. I begin to pay closer attention to what I’m reading” and “When test becomes difficult, I read aloud to help me understand what I’m reading.” I found these questions the most interesting because I admit that I do not perform these procedures when reading. According to the model, this informs me that I need to perform maintenance in my Problem Solving Strategy area in reading.
Of the two articles, I find “Living Literacy” a must read for teachers. “Living Literacy” not only stresses the importance of literacy in the classroom, but also the importance in life. Literacy is described as a means to learn anything, and as educators we want to instill in students the benefits of lifelong learning.
So I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts around how the teaching of reading strategies either works with or against the Living Literacy article. Should we be teaching reading strategies at all or should we simply provide students space and materials, specifically in your math class to read as they desire?
I think that teaching reading strategies work with what is stated in the "Living Literacy" article because if we find interesting content literary materials, the reading strategies will be inherent to the students. Naturally we become inquisitive if it is something that is interesting to us. In my math class, I want to have a math literary section with just fun math stuff. Some of the readings can relate to math humor, math in art, math in music, etc. Although it will be an assignment for the students to read and write a report on some of the materials, I think the students will find it interesting that math relates to so many things. Along with some of the outside knowledge learned from these materials, they will be able to tie it to our course material.
While reading the assigned texts for this blog I immediately noticed connections to what we have been discussing in class. In the first article, we are given the theory of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” The article discusses that research often lists that young people are less involved in the community around them when they do not read. This article, however, challenges this notion but pointing out the cyclical nature of this thought process. As students become interested in things within their community, they are more likely to read. In my own classroom, I have seen frequently that unless I tie what I’m teaching to something that matters then students will not be interested. That is why it is so important to always start planning with what you want to accomplish and why. This helps to align instruction so that students are able to learn the application of the information. This notion is especially critical for students with special needs. For students who are learning the English language it is important to tie in cultural references that they will be familiar with in order to help them make connections to foreign words. Students with special needs and those with low socioeconomic status will also benefit as they are seeing the immediate implications of their actions in the classroom. Instead of just learning the material, students are able to use their own interests to discover the science behind what they know.
The second article discussed the set up and though processes that went in to develop the reading inventory we worked with in class. The inventory was based on research and was strategized in order to assess many different facets of excellent reading behaviors. This ready inventory is important to not only reveal to students their weaknesses, but also to help show them practices they may already have that help them to be better readers. One of the important things in integrating metacognition is to model it in the class. I have done this several times in my own class when I show students how I work through problems or think through an answer and then coach them into the same process. I would like to develop these skills further in the future as the reading inventory was even eye opening to me as many of the reading strategies I use are second nature. This article and inventory helped me to see strategies that I not only use successfully, but also strategies I can model and teach to my students so they can also use them as a means to improve their reading. These strategies are even more important when considering students with special needs. To demonstrate though processes and have them reflect on their own work is especially important as it shows students that there aren’t just people who are born as “good readers.” Students need to see the thought process that goes behind good work so that it is not just an unachievable talent but actually the results of hard work and practice.
How can you help students explore their interests in your science classroom using reading strategies? What does it mean to you when the text article states that we need to "help youth develop habits and ingrained - both tacit and explicit - practices of literacy that will stay with them for the long haul?"
The “Life to Text” article talked about connecting reading to the interests of the students in order to encourage students to read. It also talks about how the schools make reading very academic and not something that can be enjoyed by the students because the schools don’t try to relate reading to their interests. The schools create a dynamic of reading just for the sake of literacy and not for enlightenment. Schools also have standards that are counter-productive to encourage reading like giving the students a long list of books to read that are not based on the students interest. A solution to this would be to have a book list that was based on the student’s interest in order to increase the quantity and depth of the reading. This will hopefully help the students establish the habit of reading to pursue their interest and to create a lifelong practice of reading. This can be also related to other subjects, if you create a connection of the topic to something that interest the children then there will be a natural curiosity and interest in what is being taught. That is why real life application to mathematics is so important. If you give meaning to content it becomes more relevant and therefore more meaningful to the lives of the students. Reading, math, science, etc. all need to be related to the students interest in some way. This will also be helpful to students that have learning disabilities to make connections with the lesson by relating it to something that their interested in. All students have interest - this technique is universal and can be applied to teach any student. The teacher just needs to find out what interests their students and use it to engage the class.
Thanks for writing, Nicole. I like your idea about book lists based on student interests. How would you incorporate such a strategy, say, in the teaching of binomials or prisms? How would you go about preparing such a list? What criteria would you use to assess high quality, interest-based math literature?
The Metacognition article started out defining that metacognition related to reading was the deliberate monitoring a reader does when reading a text. It was said that the higher skill level reader has better metacognition than the unskilled reader. Metacognition is important to students because it is thought to determine the level at which they can process information and problem solve. It has been researched that students metacognition can be improved through direct instructional activities but metacognition should be used as a tool for the students to encourage and manage their own learning process through text. There is a lot of research on metacognition and reading comprehension but there is not a lot of effective tools developed to measure and metacognition in students. This article suggests that the Metacognition Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) was the most comprehensive tools developed to assess metacognition in students in grades 6-12. MARSI was developed through extensive research and tested extensively and refined to provide an effective tool for evaluating metacognition and yielded three factors Global Reading Strategies, Problem Solving Strategies, and Support Reading Strategies. There were correlations drawn between the skill level of the reader and the scoring in the particular factor category which substantiated MARSI’s effectiveness as a tool for assessing reading skill level and metacognition. MARSI is a tool for assessment therefore the results can be used to increase the student’s awareness about their own metacognition and reading skill level, and for teachers to assess monitor and document the reading skill level of their students so that strategies can be implemented to increase metacognition, and it can be used as a tool to research teaching reading comprehension with varying factors related to the selected text such as length, subject, and complexity. In conclusion MARSI is a tool that is to be used to assess the student’s metacognition and skill level and the information extracted should be used to empower the students to improve their reading skills so that improvement can occur and hopefully an enjoyment for reading. I think that metacognition is critical when reading and it is naturally developed the more the students read. I never was specifically taught metacognition but it developed after a lifetime of reading. Since there is a deficit in the skill level and reading comprehension, specific strategies have to be taught to the stduents so that they can develop these skills which are critical to be successful in higher education. I think that the MARSI tool would be effective in evaluating the metacognition and the reading level of the students. Administering this tool, if nothing else, would bring self- awareness to the students of their reading skills and creating an avenue of discussion regarding reading. I administered the test before I read this article but I did notice that the avid readers had higher scores across all categories. I will re-score the evaluation to see if I see some of the correlations described in the article. I will also administer the test to the students that have learning disabilities. I am curious to see how they score on this test. The strategies that are used for the students with IEP’s will have to be modified to meet their skill level. Overall, I think that the MARSI evaluation will be a tool that I would consider using in the future to evaluate the reading level of the students which will help me plan activities that can increase metacognition which is essential for reading math text and also can be translated to the skill needed to solve word problems.
Do you see places in the MARSI tool for modification? In other words, does the tool adequately address the literacy skills needed for your math classroom for ELL and special need students? If so, what skills would you be looking for?
I found the Washor, Mojkowski, and Foster article on Living Literacy most enlightening. The article specifically shows how to “close the circuit” on reading as a constructive process by focusing on what interests the student. The student, driven by her own interest, will be motivated to persevere and develop a habit of reading over the course of a lifetime. The reason: to better be able to pursue things of personal interest and get better at them. This seems logical, since most people will generally do what they want to do more easily than what they feel obligated to do. I found the attribution of reading to more outside pursuits of sports, hobbies, and voting surprising. I wonder whether their reading is driving their experiences, or are their experiences driving their reading? This seems to be the classic, chicken or egg first argument. Yet, I tend to favor the experiences helping the drive to read. If a person has more background experience in the subject, they will have a greater working vocabulary associated with subject, and thus more apt to read literature in that subject area successfully. Here is where I think the article does not take into account other cultural histories. Being an African American, I come from a community that has a rich history that is more oriented in oral tradition and one on one transmission from elders to youth. Saying this, I think it is possible that a young person can be interested in and learn about a subject predominantly from experience and not be driven to read about it. I find it hard to believe that young boys in the “hood” will pick up a book about basketball to get better at the sport. They may pick up the sports page, but more than likely, they will look either at the internet or television to review outcomes from previous games and other events. Most enlightening was the fact that most schools do not take into account student interest when developing reading curriculum. When the fourth grader read the state standards and said that he would stop reading large books (2 inches thick) and switch to smaller ones that may not interest him as much so that he could meet the 40 books per year requirement, I thought about how we can miss the boat with standards. Why we do want the students to read should always be the question upon which we focus. What’s in it for them? (WIIFT)
I must confess that the Mokhtari, Reichard article about student assessment of metacognitive processes during reading was a difficult for me. I found that I had to more explicitly use the techniques noted in the survey to persevere and gain sufficient understanding to write this blog. I am, however, appreciative that there are researchers out there who are trying to quantify these areas so that you can have predictable and repeatable results when you implement the strategies with students. I wholeheartedly agree that you cannot be a successful reader and be passive in the process. You cannot simply let words run past your eyes and not do anything about them. I had to first overlook the article because the two columns per page and the spacing were intimidating. I then read the first sentence of every paragraph to get an overview, followed by a cursory review of the abstract. I then highlighted points of interest, key definitions and word sequences. In the interest of time, I did not spend too much time on the description of the statistics used to analyze the data. I could always come back to that if I were to repeat the study. The key point with metacognition here I believe is to get across to the student that you have to be conscious and present to what you are doing while you are reading. What you need to learn from what you read is not always going to jump out and grab you. You have to grasp it for yourself. You have to be willing to wrestle with different writing styles (here the passive voice made comprehension more difficult), unfamiliar vocabulary, and different sequencing of the information. It will not always be left to right. It may include top-down, right to left, and diagonally (graphs). The data seems to conclude that the most skilled readers used the Global followed by the Problem Solving strategies to read effectively. However, by it being a survey, there is no direct evidence that the students are using these strategies at the level they are indicating in the survey. Follow-up is necessary where you would look at students’ reading of several different types to verify strategies.
Thank you for writing, Damon. I appreciate your critical feedback about not including culture competencies when speaking about reading. I'd like to hear more about your thoughts and its implications for your classroom.
Or to your point (WIIFT), perhaps a more important and critical question maybe how will learning this information provide opportunities for me to transfer my learnings to new environments? How will your classroom reflect this effort through reading strategies?
The Life to Text article had a similar message to one of the conferences that we visited this past year, “you have to reach them to teach them.” So often we forget the power of choice and options and what that can do to help student achievement. In our summer course on urban education we talked about differentiated assessment and how important it is to have choices on how you assess what students have learned. The need for this stems from the fact that students learn different ways and show what they have learned in different ways. Just like assessment students need to be engaged in different ways. Some students have the discipline to sit down and read what is required of them but most of us have learned by reading for enjoyment and then reading what is required. Yes, it is important to integrate quality but to get to the point of quality we must reach the students and keep them engaged. This article was also relevant to the idea of transfer that has been brought up in class. The practice of allowing students to develop good habits by reading what interests them allows for the possibility of transfer to other types of text no matter what their level of ability or their interests. Encouraging students to read for pleasure can help them find the stamina and skills that they need to tackle texts that are complex and less enjoyable. It is traditional that school teaches students the skills that are required to read and comprehend but then they typically apply those skills to chosen educational texts that have no text to life connections. However, if we pushed students to read what they please (maybe by providing 15 minutes a day for them to read whatever they like) we may help students find text to life connections that will eventually help them conquer other types of literature. The relevance that this article has for my mathematics classroom is actually really inspiring and reminds me of a class that I observed during the school year. In one of the Spanish classes the teacher took time during a class period to discuss the Free Press article that came out about the murder rate in Detroit. While the text itself had little relevance to Spanish, the class took time to go through the article and hold a classroom discussion. The teacher took time to have the students read the article silently and then they tackled the text together. They dissected all of the numerical data and every diagram that was in the article as well. The students spoke with thought and conviction to what they thought about the article, but gave others the chance to portray conflicting feelings. In the end the teacher posed the question of how it was related to Spanish. To my surprise a couple of students were able to find connections that were somewhat relevant. While the mathematics portion was small it was there and it was relevant. It was a great experience and you could see the classroom culture building right in front of you. This was a text to life moment that showed me the importance of finding ways to reach students, make education relevant to their lives, and take time to give them that connection within reading and discussion. This is exactly the type of experience that I would like to provide for my students to help them see the bigger picture of what connections education can make in their lives inside educational materials and out.
The article on MARSI was interesting because I actually had to apply several of the 30 strategies to get through it myself. However, after dissecting the reading strategies in class it was interesting to read some more background information on them. The overall message that I took away from this article is that one should not use this as a way to measure how well students comprehend but as a way to help them increase their awareness of strategies they use when they read. This is important because to be a stronger reader students and teachers need to be able to pinpoint what is making any student a strong reader in the first place. On the sheet that we filled out in class I gave reading aloud a low number because thinking back I could not reference how many times I read aloud to help my understanding, then after about my second time of trying to reread the first paragraph I started reading aloud. I think it is important that students are aware of what is making them successful in reading so that they can apply those strategies anytime they are struggling with a text and idea. After all, how can we transfer what we cannot identify?
Thanks for writing. I am glad to hear that you are thinking about your thinking about student read-alouds. What would a read-aloud look like in your math classroom?
I found the article, “Assessing Students’ Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies” to be a well organized, and mathematically proof driven account of the best strategies for reading. I agree with some of the others’ posts about the cautions of using MARSI in the classroom. In my opinion it all boils down to the problem of self-reflection and helping student to honestly reflect upon their current skills, habits and learning process. MARSI is a great collection of reading strategies which can increase students’ metacognitive awareness of good reading habits, but just telling them about the strategies is not going to make them do it. So it is the teacher’s job to demonstrate and model these habits, whether or not they actually use all of them as they read. It seems that no matter how you implement the survey to a classroom of students, some of them will not make the distinction between being familiar with a strategy and actually using it as they read. Furthermore, some students who feel the need to always be correct and make the teacher happy will just say that they use the strategies when they really do not. This article provides several tools and strategies which could help ELLs and students with IEPs, but making these students aware of how they comprehend while reading can be a difficult task, given that just knowing all of the word is hard enough. I guess what I am getting at is that there is no single method which suits all students, and it is up to them to determine which strategies work best for them.
Thanks for writing, Mike. How do you model some of these MARSI strategies in your own classroom? I appreciate your final line about determining "which strategies work best for them." How would you help your students receive this level of metacognition?
Washor, Mojkowski, and Foster’s article, Living Literacy, was a great summary of factors which are contributing to Americans illiteracy. They concluded that at the heart of all learning is an infinite cycle of text to life and life to text, and the American approach to teaching reading, and using reading to learn other subject, is hindering not only are will to read but also our ability to read effectively. One part of the article that stuck with me was the statement about how students are coming to understand the broken cycle early on and are responding with ill informed decisions which make all educators cringe. Unfortunately this same problem is also reflected in the pacing guide and causes teacher to react in a similar manner. Just as the student said they would start reading many smaller books, so they could stay in line with the state standards, teachers are forced to skim, “cover”, or even skip some sections or chapters due to the sheer volume of information that the state mandates students are taught. I believe that rather than trying to teach 13 chapters in one school year, students would learn more effectively and retain more information, if the class were to focus one really mastering four or five chapters. This way come the next course, there will be less need for review and remediation, and the class can begin to master new concepts by relating them to the previously mastered ones. The other main idea of this article was that students must make the text to life connection in order to make learning effective and efficient. I believe this to be true to a certain extent, but just because we can make something relatable to our students’ lives, does not guarantee that they will learn it any better. It is our job as teacher to not only help student to make concepts relatable, but also to provide them with the skills to teach themselves. If we can help students understand that reading should not be looked at as a chore, but instead a way to learn about different concepts that interest us, it is hoped that students will conclude that they are in charge of their own education and that are free to learn about whatever they please. I can also get on board with the idea that increasing reading in the classroom will not have an immediately measureable effect, but instead the it is the sum of all of the tiny changes over months or even years, that add up to more effective reader and learners. The implications of this article for students with special needs or ELLs, is no different than that of other students. If teacher can help student become better readers and help make the text to life connections, then students’ achievements should increase with enough time and support.
As teachers, our goal is to teach our content at levels where students actually benefit. One way of doing so is by teaching content through literacy. In the current school system, we are very interested in short-term results. These results show student “growth” in content. What is really being taught in the classroom though? Review for the MEAP? Review for ACT or MME? Are true-to-life content and valuable skills being taught? Are life skills being taught? I don’t need to dwell on these questions, as we all know the answers to them. Both of the articles were very good as they discussed the reasons for literacy in the classroom, which is a valuable skill that should be taught interdisciplinary. Washor article: On the first page, the article stated, “…traditional literacy is declining as a result of the pervasive influence of the internet.” This basically hits home with the purpose of this article. This access to the Internet has strong implications for our teaching. The Internet allows for “search” via search engines. This search allows students to find information with little thought, where this thought is critically thinking, reasoning, or neither. Also, a lot of media is available on the Internet that students can basically “copy and paste”. This creates a lot of room for plagiarism. When I was in high school, many of the questions that the teachers asked on a story could be found online. Most of the time I just had to search the exact question I was asked and it (and the answer) would show up in search results. As teachers, we need to be aware of these things and form our questions such that they don’t appear in search engines, and actually require students to think critically and reason about the material being required of them. The article also mentions on the second page, “schools ignore the power of students’ interests to provide the motivation to read and fail to exploit the experience-to-reading-to-experience cycle. Schools reflect to the prescribed canon about what is important to read and when it must be read, thereby reducing the quest for literacy to the conquest of a reading list.” This hits home with me. As a student, every 9th grader read Romeo and Juliet. Every 10th grader read articles from American Literature. We were prescribed a set of readings. This did not help me as a student. I wasn’t interested in reading anyway, but I think I would have been more apt to read had my teacher given me an option. In my senior year of high school, I actually started to read a book that was on the reading list. However, as soon as my teacher discussed symbolism and all that, I became instantly annoyed. She ruined the book for me instantly and I wouldn’t even pick it up again. It would ruin reading “for the fun of it.” Schools need to do more than have students choose readings that are “interesting” to them. They need to restructure the curriculum as well. Of course, this needs to be done across many content areas, especially with the new push for “reasoning, critical thinking, and understanding of content.” This is said on the last page of the article when the author says, “literacy is much more about habits of mind than a reductionist approach to skills development.” This isn’t just literacy we’re talking about. It’s our entire curriculum. Everything is about “skills development.” Granted, skills are important and are vital in order to think critically and reason, but are we teaching the right skills?
Thanks for writing, Jordan. To your final point, we must go beyond even teaching the right "skills" and provide students with more authentic experiences in which they can transfer their knowledge particularly as it comes to comprehending text.
The Mokhtari article: There are many implications for students when trying to apply literacy strategies in content classes such as mathematics and sciences. We discussed many of these implications in class, so I won’t discuss them here. In the Mokhtari article, there is a “Reading Strategies Inventory” on page 5. Discussed on page 7 is the fact that the MARSI “enables students to increase awareness of their own reading strategies” if answered and taken seriously. In a sense, by having students answer the questions honestly, and after going over the results of this tool, students will begin so see where their learning is in terms of literacy. As teachers, we can use these results and scaffold literacy instruction in our classes to meet the needs of the students. This is great because not only will we differentiate and scaffold instruction in our content, but also in literacy. Students will become better readers and thinkers in our classroom context and outside of it. Also, as we discussed in class, we can have students take the inventory multiple times throughout the course to see how their view on their literacy has changed, and help us to accommodate any areas that still need work. In a sense, if students understand the changes occurring, they may value this aspect of their education more. The key, though, is if students answer the responses honestly, and if they understand what the responses are asking of them and if they realize that they actually engage in that particular item on MARSI. This means that MARSI should be a supplemental tool to measure literacy. This is also discussed in the article, but is a good start to establishing and understanding literacy, especially in a mathematics or science classroom. The biggest issue, however, is combating the reading issues that may arise when trying to integrate literacy strategies in the classroom. Page 1 of the article says, “…skilled readers approach the reading task with some general tendencies…they tend to be aware of what they are reading; they seem to know why they are reading; and they have a set of tentative plans or strategies for handling potential problems and for monitoring their comprehension of textual information.” These are all skills that students learn as they read and become more literate. Not only this, these are skills that students learn themselves. Over time, students learn what methods work best for them. When having students read in, say, a mathematics classroom, we have to tackle each of these skills and teach strategies to readers, on top of helping students translate mathematics to understandable and readable terms, all while teaching them content relative to our pacing guides. This seems like a daunting task, but one that is very much needed. In short, we have to teach students the proper literacy strategies, teach students how to use the internet as an educational tool, and help students to see where they are at and help them recognize where they need to be at – and show them how to get there. Both articles addressed tools in doing so and the implications in doing so. As teachers, it’s up to use to get our students to the next level. I will definitely be applying these tools in my courses next year. As far as metacognition, if we can get students to the point of “knowing about knowing” in terms of problem solving, they can use their literacy and content knowledge together and become successful. It’s not about facts, it’s about connecting these facts and learning how to do so, and doing it.
I appreciate your understanding of the habits of good readers, particularly those that set a purpose for reading as well as your description of translating math to "understandable and readable terms." How might this understanding drive your teaching goals?
There were so many things to think about after reading these two articles. First in the life to text article, I have to say that as a learner, I could truly relate. I always preferred reading about what I was interested in; but I was not the student who gained interest in reading because my teachers gave me more things to read that were tailored to my interest. Instead, I was that student who lost interest in reading anything because eventually the reading became a monumental task. Before school I was an avid reader and there was not much I was not interested in. After making the readings more plentiful and more difficult I became less and less interested in the entire process. I think that the same happens with our students except they often begin in a place where they are uninterested and are only reading for their homework. This leads me to believe that we as teachers have to find a delicate balance in what they read, how often, how difficult and how lengthy these readings should be; then temper it well with writing. I say temper it well because kids begin to hate writing when it is overused as well; no matter how much it can assist them with comprehending and retaining the information learned. It is already apparent to me that many of my students have been unsuccessful in these areas and therefore the anxiety to fail again keeps them dodging the entire process making balance even more crucial. Concerning the metacognitive awareness article, it is interesting that the authors stated that the tools employed were most effective in the elementary levels. Even by the definition the article gives, “knowledge about cognitive states and abilities that can be shared among individuals while at the same time expanding the construct to include affective and motivational characteristics of thinking” seems more advanced than an elementary student’s cognitive development so can they really understand what is being asked of them. In addition, the article stated students were “grade-equivalent” in their reading abilities when many of my students are not. The fact that I gave some of my students the survey and many were asking “is this what you mean” while completing the survey themselves makes me believe they are more like the skilled readers mentioned who are thinking about their reasoning. On the other hand, it makes me wonder if they are actually more like the unskilled readers who are so busy trying to make sense of the reading that they do not comprehend and aren’t even aware that they do not. Likewise, I was unsure if students were using 3s and 4s because they wanted to impress me or because they were being honest. I only say this because some who stated they utilize strategies such as note taking while reading are often the same students who cannot remember or explain concepts when the appropriate time arrives. It makes me believe my failure to provide them with the appropriate strategies to help them become independent, confident learners is just as likely as their failure to study. The authors stated, it is not possible to determine (based on the survey alone) where my student’s ability levels truly lie, and I agree. I also agree that it would take a great deal of time to help them become the type of “strategic readers” discussed. First because many, when they are overwhelmed (readings are too difficult or too long or just something they have absolutely no interest in) don’t comprehend well without repeatedly reading and second because unfortunately, many will not take the time to repeatedly read something they already do not feel confident and/or interested in reading. All in all, I am becoming me less and less a fan of the pacing chart mentality of school districts that say it is best to cover so much material before the standardized tests. Piling on more information and doing so faster does not learning make (or at least not always).
The article "Assessing Students' Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies" discusses the importance of building different techniques on how to monitor students comprehension. It also stresses a central role of the teacher on developing an environment aimed at measuring readers metacognition. The authors present multiple strategies that helps teachers to create the awareness about students needs when they read, so as teachers we should develop a technique to grasp students attention, and give them chances to practice and refine their learning skills. Next, usually great readers make it big in life, great readers become excellent writers, therefore, reading should be every students priority. "Skilled readers often engage in deliberate activities that require plan-ful thinking, flexible strategies, and periodic self-monitoring. They think about the topic, look forward and backward in the passage, and check their own understanding as they read" This shows me to develop a long term lesson plan that would allow my classroom environment to be a way to enhance my students reading skills, promote literacy and comprehension, be it in a regular classroom, bilingual or special ed. Further, skilled readers are much more aware of the world that they live in and are more flexible to deal with any obstacles. Perhaps, unskilled readers do not monitor the world around them in the same way, they cannot comprehend it equally. For example, skilled readers know what they read, they understand the material given and usually deal better with problems. While on the other hand unskilled readers make frequent word errors, they make mistakes and usually fall behind in classroom. At this time, maintain special attention, implement new learning procedures and ideas, as a teacher. In addition, as teachers it is our duty to help the unskilled readers to enhance their reading strategies, by helping them organize the material, reread materials and get the meaning for comprehension, and become independent learners. For me reading is a skill that enables me to see the world differently, even though reading is a complex process, reading comes naturally to me. I just love reading and usually I enforce it in my classroom. I make time for reading. Reading has the priority, and is above all other subjects in my classroom, at least most of the time. When I implement reading in my classroom I know my students gain different experiences, important knowledge and strengthen themselves for better future, they become better at their academic skills and personal skills. Perhaps, as teachers we should promote positive and healthy environment about reading into content area. We should motivate students so they can progress daily through direct interaction. While making sure to implement different reading strategies and help unskilled students practice reading, we should promote different reading techniques and schemes so they become better students, logically, academically and socially. On the other hand, "Living Literacy" tells us how reading in U.S is declining, therefore implementing and teaching new strategies is a must for each and every teacher. Reading should not be put on the side. Research outlines this essential strategy that guides teachers toward implementing content area reading into classrooms. "Perhaps it's equally true that those who vote inclined to read because they are eager to be more informed about what's at stake". This would be an outstanding implementation into a new classroom, as teachers I say it again we should use any technique to enhance reading so the students can become better independent learners academically, socially and personally.
Blog 2 Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies According to the article, monitoring of one’s comprehension processes is essential in determining their reading skill level. This awareness of one’s thinking processes is referred to as metacognition. The research states that there is a definite distinction between skilled and unskilled readers in their levels of reading comprehension and metacognitive awareness. For instance, skilled readers are more apt to be cognizant of what and why they are reading and monitors their comprehension and thought processes; whereas unskilled readers are less likely to have the same awareness. It was further emphasized that unskilled readers do not take an active role in resolving their lack of understanding of their reading. The article explains how MARSI (Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory) is a relevant tool that can assist in assessing students’ reading strategies. It aids someone to actually look at how they are reading and recognize there are specific measures that determine how they could actually comprehend and retain what they’ve read. Taking the MARSI inventory prior to giving it to my students enabled to see personally areas I could improve in to be a better skilled reader. It is my hope when given the opportunity in my own classroom to use the MARSI inventory to guide my students’ learning and literacy skills.
Living Literacy
The article shared some rather interesting information as it relates to how readers are more inclined to do more extra-curricular activities like playing sports, exercising or visiting the museum. This article emphasizes the importance of educators’ task to increase literacy practices that will be life-long goals for students. As an educator I want to motivate my students’ to read more as it relates to mathematics in the hopes to increase their literacy skills.
The thing about math "reading" is that students are using two languages interchangeably - English and "mathematics". So connecting life to ttext and text to life is even a three way relationship - connecting text to life, life to text and text to math, and finally mathnto life. Historically we have focused teaching processes, symbols and rules. the thing is, we don't reason in symbols. Symbols are "shortcuts" for expressing our mathematical reasoning. When we prepare students to complete worksheets and single problems tied to nothing "real", students lose the connection that reasoning must also be articulated. the very articulation assists us in our reasoning ( I know there are linguistic principles involved, but I do not have Paul's expertise).
So, as I said before, we have to start with student prior knowlede and experience and anchor new learning there. This is much more difficult to do than pages and pages of drill and practice.
I loved the metacognition article. teaching math is indeed teaching and reinforcing metacognitio. A student must interpret problem situations, then determine a process for solving the problem, solve the problem and then evaluate solutions within context. if that's not metacognition i don't know what is.
However, I had not thoght about using something like the MARSI scale ina math class to help students think about how to read math texts. It strilkes me that this is one reason why working in pairs or groups can help reinforce good reading strategies.
As a teacher, it is my job to educate students, but that does not mean that I should give them all of the answers. Instead, I should be capturing the attention of my students and encouraging them to research more about the topics we discuss in class. Students need to be taught how to find answers for themselves because "learning by doing and learning by reading" is the most effective way to sustain information in a student's mind.
ReplyDeleteOne way that I intend to incorporate research and reading of different interesting subjects that relate to art in my classroom is by using sketchbooks. Each student will have a sketchbook that they will either draw or write in everyday. At the beginning of class, while I am taking attendance, students will sit quietly at their seats and read an article about an artist, a specific work of art, or an instruction on how to create their own work of art from the projector. Students will take notes on the reading so that they will remember what they learned, be able to use it as a guide if they choose to further research the topic, and also to develop a habit of good note taking and writing skills. "Like weight management, we need to help out youth develop [healthy] habits."
The sketchbook will grab the students attention each day with new information about art from around the world, different mediums to use, and fun facts. Finding information that students would actually care about is key. "Interest blossom into hobbies and career aspirations." By adding this into my classroom, I believe it will get the students excited about art and interesting in it more deeply, creating curious minds that will search for more understanding and inspirations.
Although I might provide exciting information about art, some students will not be skilled enough to understand it fully. Finding information in many reading levels so that all students feel empowered is essential as well as teaching students how to comprehend the readings better. "Assessing students metacognitive awareness of reading strategies" is a tool to see where the students are at in their skill level. Having students answer questions like, "I take notes while reading to help me understand what I'm reading, I underline or circle information in the text to help me remember it, or When text becomes difficult, I reread to increase my understanding," will help me to know if they have comprehended what I have assigned to them. Informing students of these strategies and practicing them in class will increase their ability in becoming students who are skilled in understanding the reading, which ultimately will create long-lasting learners.
Thanks for writing, Amber. How would you as a students art teacher assess students metacognition in reading in your classroom? The authors suggest an "interactive, constructive nature of reading" to become "constructively responsive." What implications does this have for you in your classroom who often have expectations of just "doing art" in your classroom? How will you model such strategies to increase content area literacy?
DeleteMokhtari and Reichard discuss their development of MARSI, a version of which we've presented to some of our students.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I want to discuss was my reaction to MARSI. Mokhtari and Reichard do list some caveats, echoing my concern that it's a self-reporting tool. Self-reporting tools are only as reliable as the individuals' level of self-awareness; another way in which such tools are weakened is by the degree to which individuals answer in ways meant to impress the test-giver rather than to honestly reflect on the test-taker's actual behaviors. I'm concerned that Mokhtari and Reichard underestimate this latter influence when it comes to teachers implementing this tool with their own students. This makes it crucial that teachers interpret the tool in the context of their other knowledge about individual students.
Another concern that I have, which I don't see mentioned explicitly in the article, is that some of these strategies are things that readers in the later stages of their development may do more robustly than truly expert readers. For instance, while expert readers still leverage typographical aids (22), which after all are part of the total communication from the writer or editor, and adjust their speed (13), I think that many expert readers are perhaps less likely than developing readers to take pains to discuss readings with others for the purpose of content verification (9) or read aloud (5). I am thus concerned that MARSI as is may communicate to students that all of these are strategies that they should retain throughout their lives or risk becoming mediocre readers.
Related to this point, while I agree with the premise of the article that there are strategies that can be taught and modeled that assist student comprehension, I'm wary of implying to students that there's a "one size fits all" approach. Certainly someone can become an expert reader without following all of the strategies on MARSI.
All that said, I do think that MARSI appears to be an excellent, comprehensive list of strategies. I could see it particularly being useful as a way to initiate a conversation among students as to what strategies they do use, which strategies from the list they'd like to add, and which they do feel aren't for them.
The first portion of the article discusses the importance of metacognition to developing effective reading, while noting by implication that expert readers implement many of these strategies automatically (and hence presumably with a lower degree of overt self-awareness). "Unskilled writers," write the authors (p. 249), "... are quite limited in their metacognitive knowledge about reading." This illustrates one of the key reasons for using a tool such as MARSI to generate the sort of conversation I describe above: Low-ability readers may not only lack self-awareness of their reading obstacles, they likewise may lack an understanding of what it is they don't know. If you're not even aware of the complexities that are possible in a task, you won't have a starting point for learning those complexities.
Washor, Mojkowski, and Foster discuss how the traditional methods of reading instruction in public education often serve to create barriers rather than to facilitate the creation of enthusiastic readers. Based on my own experience in high school reading classes, I'm inclined to agree with their position.
DeleteOne memory that came to mind while reading this article was that my reading "choice" in high school literature courses often consisted of page long lists of novels with authors and titles. I found myself choosing somewhat randomly, rather than using the sort of strategies I use as a recreational reader (such as cover, synopsis, first page reading). When I selected a book based on this limited information that my teacher thought was atypical for my tastes, she expressed surprise but didn't seem to connect that the limited information had kept me from making an informed decision. Because she had information about the literature, she had apparently assumed we students were also familiar with what the books were about. This is something that all teachers should be mindful of when having students select readings, making sure to provide students with enough information that they can make a real choice, rather than a random one.
Another memory that came to mind while reading this selection was that I stopped reading recreationally for quite a few years after college because my literature courses had created, as the article describes, a scientific reader. I was spending so much effort focusing on the sorts of things my English teachers had told me to look for (particularly symbolism) that I couldn't read for the pleasure of it.
As a prospective English teacher myself, I am wary of my own experiences, and do want to find ways to create students as readers who select materials based on their own interests and who learn a balance between critical reading for content and reading for pleasure and personal development.
Thanks for sharing, Paul. According to the article, how will you create the "balance" as you described above given that reading strategies are critical for student understanding of content?
DeleteI really like some of your points in the first post especially some of your critical feedback. The points you raise with the MARSI tool are valid. Could so called "low-level readers" be proficient in some areas but not in others? What do you make of this idea that such work is "work intensive and time consuming" for both teachers and students alike? What implications does this have for your classroom and teaching for understanding?
DeleteAn additional take away for me from the Washor et al article was the reinforcement of the idea that students will be more enthusiastic about reading if they can connect those readings to their interests and to things they already know. As we've discussed in class, most students do already read more than the critics give them credit for, but it's in the form of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the like. It is the challenge of the teacher to find readings that are compelling to the students but at the same time reflect a higher general quality (in both form and content) than those popular avenues.
ReplyDeleteGreat point here, Paul. How do you provide high quality and interest based texts using reading strategies on standard topics such as the teaching of slope or binomials?
DeleteThe authors define metacognition as a reader’s cognition about reading and the self-control mechanisms they exercise when monitoring and regulating text comprehension. The research shows that metacognition occurs in the following phases: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experiences, goals (or tasks) and actions (or strategies). Since metacognition can promote academic learning and motivation increased research has taken place to help promote awareness. Although, the research on metacognition is extensive there are few instruments available to measure metacognition awareness. So, the article describes the Metacognition Awareness of Reading Strategy Inventory (MARSI), which is designed to assess students’ awareness and use of reading strategies for grades six through twelve. The development and validation phases of the MARSI revealed that this is a reliable instrument to measure and assess students’ metacognition awareness. The MARSI is a tool that enables students to increase awareness of their own reading strategies while providing teachers with useful means of assessing, monitoring and documenting students’ reading strategies. Although, MARSI is a useful tool for helping students increase metacognitive awareness, teachers should consider it as a single source of information about his/her students’ reading abilities. Overall, the teacher will need to gain an understanding the thinking process of his/her students in order to increase student engagement while reading.
ReplyDeleteNote: Below is my post for Blog 3.
DeleteThe research shows that students with rich academic vocabularies are likely to have success while learning content area subjects e.g. science and mathematics. The article provides teachers with instructional strategies to help promote and strengthen students’ academic vocabularies. There is a great body of evidence that shows the when students make the transition from reading stories or narrative text in primary grades there is a significant drop in achievement levels. Many researchers believe that students with limited vocabularies are the cause for such a decline in the achievement levels.
Some researchers believe that the process of learning words is also a contributing factor in the low achievement levels. Since words are learned in stages and when students progress through the different grades, there is a varying and complex level of words to acquire. The words associated with content learning are often referred to as academic vocabulary. The authors define academic vocabulary as the array of words that differ from everyday words that students would typically hear in ordinary conversations.
To improve students’ academic vocabulary the author suggests that teachers develop a three-tier approach. The first tier consist of words that are used in everyday language, the second tier are words that not so common in everyday language and the third there are abstract words. Since vocabulary plays a major role in understanding text and content area material, the role of the teacher is to help students expand their academic vocabulary. As teachers, help students to increase their academic vocabularies, assessments to monitor progress are crucial. Teachers play an integral role in assessing students’ academic vocabulary and the authors offer a variety of assessment tools. The students also play a pivotal role in increasing their vocabulary through self-monitoring .
Thanks for writing, Tamara. Do you have any further insights or takeaways from either of the articles?
DeleteThere any many approaches and strategies available to improve literacy but it is the teacher’s responsibility to chose the proper approach based on the learn style of the students.
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DeleteI was thinking about how students can use life to text as a strategy, and as teachers we may just need to be concerned with at what point we are giving them materials. I think a lot of teachers tell their kids to go home and read the textbook between each concept they're working on, and that's where they lose them. At that point they haven't had a life experience with the material, and there's no one present to facilitate the text to life part. It seems intuitive for the teacher to open the concept with reading that is fun and interesting and to build up the reading/concepts from there, and that seems to fit in really well with this model. Once the students have had some experiences with the material that's when they'll want to read more, so it makes more sense to save more challenging reading for that point in their learning.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the main point of the metacognition article, that students have to be purposefully reading with an awareness of their understanding for true meaning to be taken from the text. I've had the experience myself where I've read something and then looked back and realized that I have no idea what I just read even though I looked at every word. I of course went back to read it again with a little more attention because I was aware that I didn't actually comprehend anything. There are a lot students however, who struggle so much just to figure out what the words are that they really don't seem able to think about comprehension at this point. I think the reading strategies are helpful, and that they should definitely be taught to the students to aid them in developing metacognitive strategies as they practice reading skills.
Thanks for writing. I would be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on both articles. How would integrate this idea of having students "do something" as it relates to the teaching of the Common Core in your math classroom? In other words, how do you take the content and engage youth in literacy experiences in your content area?
DeleteAfter our own self-examinations and the exploration/ discussion over the past couple of class periods, we are most definitely working on becoming more self-aware of what we are reading. Going over the Mokharti and Reichard article has me pulling out my own highlighter (#12 on MARSI) and then questioning on if I should pull out my statistics book again so that I can quickly reference what post hoc comparisons and Ryan-Einot-Gabriel-Welch multiple-range tests are.
ReplyDeleteThe development and investigations to create the MARSI is one that appears to be thorough, with all of the various reviews and analysis that they have done. I do worry though, that it is self-reported that students will just want to be done and say that they do something, to try and placate me as their teacher. The cautionary note that “it remains a self-report measure, and as such, it should be interpreted with vigilance” is definitely a cautionary note to keep in mind. If I am the observant and reflective educator though, I hope that I will notice how my students perform over time on an individual basis. As most everything in teaching, MARSI is another “tool” to add to our box that we can use to increase our awareness and understanding of student comprehension. I do believe that students can increase metacognition just by taking this inventory. I had a number of students take the inventory (bribed with 5 extra credit points) and their response ranges were so broad. The one that we narrowed down in class, 2, 17, and 20 were all rated low on the inventories that my students filled out. I did not stipulate though that this was to apply only to school text, though I am not sure that would have made any real difference in their responses.
It was interesting on page 249 of the article on how it is mentioned how limited in self-metacognition in relation to reading unskilled readers are and how they tend to focus more on the process of decoding. Thinking back on a recent article that I had my students read out loud as a class, we actually had to spend a good deal of time decoding- phrases, words, style- that were unfamiliar to them. If I had just let my students loose on their own with that article, they would have been lost, and I would have heard “Ms. Roy! Ms. Roy!” every 2 seconds... Finding those different strategies to quickly decode and organize and then working with students in applying those strategies in order to actually process and comprehend what they are reading is part of our teacher description. Enhance ability to gain knowledge through self-exploration in reading.
Washor, Mojkowski, and Fosters article was more relaxing to read after the previous; more relaxed and simpler language in my mind. The concept that experiences motivate reading is intriguing. I can see how this would work really well into the project-based method/ design of teaching that there is a larger movement towards that I know we are all trying to develop. If we allow our students to pick what they are interested in, then they are more likely to want to explore that topic and will read along the way- without realizing it as much. I was fortunate growing up, that I was introduced to reading, before formal schooling so I did not develop that reversed association of reading with schooling. Many of our current students though do not have those experiences growing up. I still question and have reservations on the “types” of reading that our students are currently immersed in- blogs, tweets, texts, etc. Trying to find current, relevant, engaging information for students to explore is key
Thanks for writing, Christine. I appreciated your insights here. Was the article you chose one that spoke to student interests? Do you agree that if we simply provided students the opportunity to read what they wanted in science that we would not have to concentrate so much on strategies?
DeleteI find it enlightening, but also painfully obvious that many students are not motivated to read in school. As a youngster myself, I can recall reading many things that in my adolescent mind had no relevance to me. I can recall reading to take test and really not reading for understanding. In the article “Living Literacy”, Washor, Mojkowski, and Foster interestingly points out that educators should use literacy more so to develop habits than to providing a monotonous experience of reading classical books. The authors also go on to say that students will be more susceptible to increasing literacy skills by reading the books that they enjoy. In doing this, literacy will be used as a means of changing habits. For example, the authors state that the students who read are more likely to “play sports, exercise, visit art museums, attend theatre, etc.”
ReplyDeleteIn the journal “Assessing Students’ Metacognition Awareness of Reading Strategies”, Mokhatari and Reichard stress the importance of making students aware of how they are as readers. The test that he uses, “MARCI scale”, is broken down into three factors: Global Reading Strategies, Problem-Solving Strategies, and Support Reading Strategies. The test can be given to students individually or as a group. For each of the 30 questions asked in the survey, the students are to give themselves a score from 0-4. I believe that this test is an important resource to perform self maintenance on your reading literacy. Some of the questions in general that interested me the most were “When text becomes more difficult. I begin to pay closer attention to what I’m reading” and “When test becomes difficult, I read aloud to help me understand what I’m reading.” I found these questions the most interesting because I admit that I do not perform these procedures when reading. According to the model, this informs me that I need to perform maintenance in my Problem Solving Strategy area in reading.
Of the two articles, I find “Living Literacy” a must read for teachers. “Living Literacy” not only stresses the importance of literacy in the classroom, but also the importance in life. Literacy is described as a means to learn anything, and as educators we want to instill in students the benefits of lifelong learning.
DeleteSo I would be interested to hear more of your thoughts around how the teaching of reading strategies either works with or against the Living Literacy article. Should we be teaching reading strategies at all or should we simply provide students space and materials, specifically in your math class to read as they desire?
DeleteI think that teaching reading strategies work with what is stated in the "Living Literacy" article because if we find interesting content literary materials, the reading strategies will be inherent to the students. Naturally we become inquisitive if it is something that is interesting to us. In my math class, I want to have a math literary section with just fun math stuff. Some of the readings can relate to math humor, math in art, math in music, etc. Although it will be an assignment for the students to read and write a report on some of the materials, I think the students will find it interesting that math relates to so many things. Along with some of the outside knowledge learned from these materials, they will be able to tie it to our course material.
DeleteWhile reading the assigned texts for this blog I immediately noticed connections to what we have been discussing in class. In the first article, we are given the theory of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” The article discusses that research often lists that young people are less involved in the community around them when they do not read. This article, however, challenges this notion but pointing out the cyclical nature of this thought process. As students become interested in things within their community, they are more likely to read. In my own classroom, I have seen frequently that unless I tie what I’m teaching to something that matters then students will not be interested. That is why it is so important to always start planning with what you want to accomplish and why. This helps to align instruction so that students are able to learn the application of the information. This notion is especially critical for students with special needs. For students who are learning the English language it is important to tie in cultural references that they will be familiar with in order to help them make connections to foreign words. Students with special needs and those with low socioeconomic status will also benefit as they are seeing the immediate implications of their actions in the classroom. Instead of just learning the material, students are able to use their own interests to discover the science behind what they know.
ReplyDeleteThe second article discussed the set up and though processes that went in to develop the reading inventory we worked with in class. The inventory was based on research and was strategized in order to assess many different facets of excellent reading behaviors. This ready inventory is important to not only reveal to students their weaknesses, but also to help show them practices they may already have that help them to be better readers. One of the important things in integrating metacognition is to model it in the class. I have done this several times in my own class when I show students how I work through problems or think through an answer and then coach them into the same process. I would like to develop these skills further in the future as the reading inventory was even eye opening to me as many of the reading strategies I use are second nature. This article and inventory helped me to see strategies that I not only use successfully, but also strategies I can model and teach to my students so they can also use them as a means to improve their reading. These strategies are even more important when considering students with special needs. To demonstrate though processes and have them reflect on their own work is especially important as it shows students that there aren’t just people who are born as “good readers.” Students need to see the thought process that goes behind good work so that it is not just an unachievable talent but actually the results of hard work and practice.
How can you help students explore their interests in your science classroom using reading strategies? What does it mean to you when the text article states that we need to "help youth develop habits and ingrained - both tacit and explicit - practices of literacy that will stay with them for the long haul?"
DeleteThe “Life to Text” article talked about connecting reading to the interests of the students in order to encourage students to read. It also talks about how the schools make reading very academic and not something that can be enjoyed by the students because the schools don’t try to relate reading to their interests. The schools create a dynamic of reading just for the sake of literacy and not for enlightenment. Schools also have standards that are counter-productive to encourage reading like giving the students a long list of books to read that are not based on the students interest. A solution to this would be to have a book list that was based on the student’s interest in order to increase the quantity and depth of the reading. This will hopefully help the students establish the habit of reading to pursue their interest and to create a lifelong practice of reading. This can be also related to other subjects, if you create a connection of the topic to something that interest the children then there will be a natural curiosity and interest in what is being taught. That is why real life application to mathematics is so important. If you give meaning to content it becomes more relevant and therefore more meaningful to the lives of the students. Reading, math, science, etc. all need to be related to the students interest in some way. This will also be helpful to students that have learning disabilities to make connections with the lesson by relating it to something that their interested in. All students have interest - this technique is universal and can be applied to teach any student. The teacher just needs to find out what interests their students and use it to engage the class.
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing, Nicole. I like your idea about book lists based on student interests. How would you incorporate such a strategy, say, in the teaching of binomials or prisms? How would you go about preparing such a list? What criteria would you use to assess high quality, interest-based math literature?
DeleteThe Metacognition article started out defining that metacognition related to reading was the deliberate monitoring a reader does when reading a text. It was said that the higher skill level reader has better metacognition than the unskilled reader. Metacognition is important to students because it is thought to determine the level at which they can process information and problem solve. It has been researched that students metacognition can be improved through direct instructional activities but metacognition should be used as a tool for the students to encourage and manage their own learning process through text. There is a lot of research on metacognition and reading comprehension but there is not a lot of effective tools developed to measure and metacognition in students. This article suggests that the Metacognition Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) was the most comprehensive tools developed to assess metacognition in students in grades 6-12. MARSI was developed through extensive research and tested extensively and refined to provide an effective tool for evaluating metacognition and yielded three factors Global Reading Strategies, Problem Solving Strategies, and Support Reading Strategies. There were correlations drawn between the skill level of the reader and the scoring in the particular factor category which substantiated MARSI’s effectiveness as a tool for assessing reading skill level and metacognition. MARSI is a tool for assessment therefore the results can be used to increase the student’s awareness about their own metacognition and reading skill level, and for teachers to assess monitor and document the reading skill level of their students so that strategies can be implemented to increase metacognition, and it can be used as a tool to research teaching reading comprehension with varying factors related to the selected text such as length, subject, and complexity. In conclusion MARSI is a tool that is to be used to assess the student’s metacognition and skill level and the information extracted should be used to empower the students to improve their reading skills so that improvement can occur and hopefully an enjoyment for reading.
ReplyDeleteI think that metacognition is critical when reading and it is naturally developed the more the students read. I never was specifically taught metacognition but it developed after a lifetime of reading. Since there is a deficit in the skill level and reading comprehension, specific strategies have to be taught to the stduents so that they can develop these skills which are critical to be successful in higher education. I think that the MARSI tool would be effective in evaluating the metacognition and the reading level of the students. Administering this tool, if nothing else, would bring self- awareness to the students of their reading skills and creating an avenue of discussion regarding reading.
I administered the test before I read this article but I did notice that the avid readers had higher scores across all categories. I will re-score the evaluation to see if I see some of the correlations described in the article. I will also administer the test to the students that have learning disabilities. I am curious to see how they score on this test. The strategies that are used for the students with IEP’s will have to be modified to meet their skill level.
Overall, I think that the MARSI evaluation will be a tool that I would consider using in the future to evaluate the reading level of the students which will help me plan activities that can increase metacognition which is essential for reading math text and also can be translated to the skill needed to solve word problems.
Do you see places in the MARSI tool for modification? In other words, does the tool adequately address the literacy skills needed for your math classroom for ELL and special need students? If so, what skills would you be looking for?
DeleteI found the Washor, Mojkowski, and Foster article on Living Literacy most enlightening. The article specifically shows how to “close the circuit” on reading as a constructive process by focusing on what interests the student. The student, driven by her own interest, will be motivated to persevere and develop a habit of reading over the course of a lifetime. The reason: to better be able to pursue things of personal interest and get better at them. This seems logical, since most people will generally do what they want to do more easily than what they feel obligated to do.
ReplyDeleteI found the attribution of reading to more outside pursuits of sports, hobbies, and voting surprising. I wonder whether their reading is driving their experiences, or are their experiences driving their reading? This seems to be the classic, chicken or egg first argument. Yet, I tend to favor the experiences helping the drive to read. If a person has more background experience in the subject, they will have a greater working vocabulary associated with subject, and thus more apt to read literature in that subject area successfully.
Here is where I think the article does not take into account other cultural histories. Being an African American, I come from a community that has a rich history that is more oriented in oral tradition and one on one transmission from elders to youth. Saying this, I think it is possible that a young person can be interested in and learn about a subject predominantly from experience and not be driven to read about it. I find it hard to believe that young boys in the “hood” will pick up a book about basketball to get better at the sport. They may pick up the sports page, but more than likely, they will look either at the internet or television to review outcomes from previous games and other events.
Most enlightening was the fact that most schools do not take into account student interest when developing reading curriculum. When the fourth grader read the state standards and said that he would stop reading large books (2 inches thick) and switch to smaller ones that may not interest him as much so that he could meet the 40 books per year requirement, I thought about how we can miss the boat with standards. Why we do want the students to read should always be the question upon which we focus. What’s in it for them? (WIIFT)
I must confess that the Mokhtari, Reichard article about student assessment of metacognitive processes during reading was a difficult for me. I found that I had to more explicitly use the techniques noted in the survey to persevere and gain sufficient understanding to write this blog. I am, however, appreciative that there are researchers out there who are trying to quantify these areas so that you can have predictable and repeatable results when you implement the strategies with students.
DeleteI wholeheartedly agree that you cannot be a successful reader and be passive in the process. You cannot simply let words run past your eyes and not do anything about them. I had to first overlook the article because the two columns per page and the spacing were intimidating. I then read the first sentence of every paragraph to get an overview, followed by a cursory review of the abstract. I then highlighted points of interest, key definitions and word sequences. In the interest of time, I did not spend too much time on the description of the statistics used to analyze the data. I could always come back to that if I were to repeat the study.
The key point with metacognition here I believe is to get across to the student that you have to be conscious and present to what you are doing while you are reading. What you need to learn from what you read is not always going to jump out and grab you. You have to grasp it for yourself. You have to be willing to wrestle with different writing styles (here the passive voice made comprehension more difficult), unfamiliar vocabulary, and different sequencing of the information. It will not always be left to right. It may include top-down, right to left, and diagonally (graphs).
The data seems to conclude that the most skilled readers used the Global followed by the Problem Solving strategies to read effectively. However, by it being a survey, there is no direct evidence that the students are using these strategies at the level they are indicating in the survey. Follow-up is necessary where you would look at students’ reading of several different types to verify strategies.
Thank you for writing, Damon. I appreciate your critical feedback about not including culture competencies when speaking about reading. I'd like to hear more about your thoughts and its implications for your classroom.
DeleteOr to your point (WIIFT), perhaps a more important and critical question maybe how will learning this information provide opportunities for me to transfer my learnings to new environments? How will your classroom reflect this effort through reading strategies?
DeleteI also think students would benefit by you sharing how your read challenging text and then having others share their strategies.
DeleteThe Life to Text article had a similar message to one of the conferences that we visited this past year, “you have to reach them to teach them.” So often we forget the power of choice and options and what that can do to help student achievement. In our summer course on urban education we talked about differentiated assessment and how important it is to have choices on how you assess what students have learned. The need for this stems from the fact that students learn different ways and show what they have learned in different ways. Just like assessment students need to be engaged in different ways. Some students have the discipline to sit down and read what is required of them but most of us have learned by reading for enjoyment and then reading what is required. Yes, it is important to integrate quality but to get to the point of quality we must reach the students and keep them engaged.
ReplyDeleteThis article was also relevant to the idea of transfer that has been brought up in class. The practice of allowing students to develop good habits by reading what interests them allows for the possibility of transfer to other types of text no matter what their level of ability or their interests. Encouraging students to read for pleasure can help them find the stamina and skills that they need to tackle texts that are complex and less enjoyable. It is traditional that school teaches students the skills that are required to read and comprehend but then they typically apply those skills to chosen educational texts that have no text to life connections. However, if we pushed students to read what they please (maybe by providing 15 minutes a day for them to read whatever they like) we may help students find text to life connections that will eventually help them conquer other types of literature.
The relevance that this article has for my mathematics classroom is actually really inspiring and reminds me of a class that I observed during the school year. In one of the Spanish classes the teacher took time during a class period to discuss the Free Press article that came out about the murder rate in Detroit. While the text itself had little relevance to Spanish, the class took time to go through the article and hold a classroom discussion. The teacher took time to have the students read the article silently and then they tackled the text together. They dissected all of the numerical data and every diagram that was in the article as well. The students spoke with thought and conviction to what they thought about the article, but gave others the chance to portray conflicting feelings. In the end the teacher posed the question of how it was related to Spanish. To my surprise a couple of students were able to find connections that were somewhat relevant. While the mathematics portion was small it was there and it was relevant. It was a great experience and you could see the classroom culture building right in front of you. This was a text to life moment that showed me the importance of finding ways to reach students, make education relevant to their lives, and take time to give them that connection within reading and discussion. This is exactly the type of experience that I would like to provide for my students to help them see the bigger picture of what connections education can make in their lives inside educational materials and out.
The article on MARSI was interesting because I actually had to apply several of the 30 strategies to get through it myself. However, after dissecting the reading strategies in class it was interesting to read some more background information on them. The overall message that I took away from this article is that one should not use this as a way to measure how well students comprehend but as a way to help them increase their awareness of strategies they use when they read. This is important because to be a stronger reader students and teachers need to be able to pinpoint what is making any student a strong reader in the first place. On the sheet that we filled out in class I gave reading aloud a low number because thinking back I could not reference how many times I read aloud to help my understanding, then after about my second time of trying to reread the first paragraph I started reading aloud. I think it is important that students are aware of what is making them successful in reading so that they can apply those strategies anytime they are struggling with a text and idea. After all, how can we transfer what we cannot identify?
DeleteThank you for writing. I like how you coined the phrase a "text to life" moment.
DeleteThanks for writing. I am glad to hear that you are thinking about your thinking about student read-alouds. What would a read-aloud look like in your math classroom?
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ReplyDeleteI found the article, “Assessing Students’ Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies” to be a well organized, and mathematically proof driven account of the best strategies for reading. I agree with some of the others’ posts about the cautions of using MARSI in the classroom. In my opinion it all boils down to the problem of self-reflection and helping student to honestly reflect upon their current skills, habits and learning process. MARSI is a great collection of reading strategies which can increase students’ metacognitive awareness of good reading habits, but just telling them about the strategies is not going to make them do it. So it is the teacher’s job to demonstrate and model these habits, whether or not they actually use all of them as they read. It seems that no matter how you implement the survey to a classroom of students, some of them will not make the distinction between being familiar with a strategy and actually using it as they read. Furthermore, some students who feel the need to always be correct and make the teacher happy will just say that they use the strategies when they really do not. This article provides several tools and strategies which could help ELLs and students with IEPs, but making these students aware of how they comprehend while reading can be a difficult task, given that just knowing all of the word is hard enough. I guess what I am getting at is that there is no single method which suits all students, and it is up to them to determine which strategies work best for them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing, Mike. How do you model some of these MARSI strategies in your own classroom? I appreciate your final line about determining "which strategies work best for them." How would you help your students receive this level of metacognition?
DeleteWashor, Mojkowski, and Foster’s article, Living Literacy, was a great summary of factors which are contributing to Americans illiteracy. They concluded that at the heart of all learning is an infinite cycle of text to life and life to text, and the American approach to teaching reading, and using reading to learn other subject, is hindering not only are will to read but also our ability to read effectively. One part of the article that stuck with me was the statement about how students are coming to understand the broken cycle early on and are responding with ill informed decisions which make all educators cringe. Unfortunately this same problem is also reflected in the pacing guide and causes teacher to react in a similar manner. Just as the student said they would start reading many smaller books, so they could stay in line with the state standards, teachers are forced to skim, “cover”, or even skip some sections or chapters due to the sheer volume of information that the state mandates students are taught. I believe that rather than trying to teach 13 chapters in one school year, students would learn more effectively and retain more information, if the class were to focus one really mastering four or five chapters. This way come the next course, there will be less need for review and remediation, and the class can begin to master new concepts by relating them to the previously mastered ones. The other main idea of this article was that students must make the text to life connection in order to make learning effective and efficient. I believe this to be true to a certain extent, but just because we can make something relatable to our students’ lives, does not guarantee that they will learn it any better. It is our job as teacher to not only help student to make concepts relatable, but also to provide them with the skills to teach themselves. If we can help students understand that reading should not be looked at as a chore, but instead a way to learn about different concepts that interest us, it is hoped that students will conclude that they are in charge of their own education and that are free to learn about whatever they please. I can also get on board with the idea that increasing reading in the classroom will not have an immediately measureable effect, but instead the it is the sum of all of the tiny changes over months or even years, that add up to more effective reader and learners.
DeleteThe implications of this article for students with special needs or ELLs, is no different than that of other students. If teacher can help student become better readers and help make the text to life connections, then students’ achievements should increase with enough time and support.
As teachers, our goal is to teach our content at levels where students actually benefit. One way of doing so is by teaching content through literacy. In the current school system, we are very interested in short-term results. These results show student “growth” in content. What is really being taught in the classroom though? Review for the MEAP? Review for ACT or MME? Are true-to-life content and valuable skills being taught? Are life skills being taught? I don’t need to dwell on these questions, as we all know the answers to them. Both of the articles were very good as they discussed the reasons for literacy in the classroom, which is a valuable skill that should be taught interdisciplinary.
ReplyDeleteWashor article: On the first page, the article stated, “…traditional literacy is declining as a result of the pervasive influence of the internet.” This basically hits home with the purpose of this article. This access to the Internet has strong implications for our teaching. The Internet allows for “search” via search engines. This search allows students to find information with little thought, where this thought is critically thinking, reasoning, or neither. Also, a lot of media is available on the Internet that students can basically “copy and paste”. This creates a lot of room for plagiarism. When I was in high school, many of the questions that the teachers asked on a story could be found online. Most of the time I just had to search the exact question I was asked and it (and the answer) would show up in search results. As teachers, we need to be aware of these things and form our questions such that they don’t appear in search engines, and actually require students to think critically and reason about the material being required of them.
The article also mentions on the second page, “schools ignore the power of students’ interests to provide the motivation to read and fail to exploit the experience-to-reading-to-experience cycle. Schools reflect to the prescribed canon about what is important to read and when it must be read, thereby reducing the quest for literacy to the conquest of a reading list.” This hits home with me. As a student, every 9th grader read Romeo and Juliet. Every 10th grader read articles from American Literature. We were prescribed a set of readings. This did not help me as a student. I wasn’t interested in reading anyway, but I think I would have been more apt to read had my teacher given me an option. In my senior year of high school, I actually started to read a book that was on the reading list. However, as soon as my teacher discussed symbolism and all that, I became instantly annoyed. She ruined the book for me instantly and I wouldn’t even pick it up again. It would ruin reading “for the fun of it.” Schools need to do more than have students choose readings that are “interesting” to them. They need to restructure the curriculum as well. Of course, this needs to be done across many content areas, especially with the new push for “reasoning, critical thinking, and understanding of content.” This is said on the last page of the article when the author says, “literacy is much more about habits of mind than a reductionist approach to skills development.” This isn’t just literacy we’re talking about. It’s our entire curriculum. Everything is about “skills development.” Granted, skills are important and are vital in order to think critically and reason, but are we teaching the right skills?
Thanks for writing, Jordan. To your final point, we must go beyond even teaching the right "skills" and provide students with more authentic experiences in which they can transfer their knowledge particularly as it comes to comprehending text.
ReplyDeleteThe Mokhtari article: There are many implications for students when trying to apply literacy strategies in content classes such as mathematics and sciences. We discussed many of these implications in class, so I won’t discuss them here. In the Mokhtari article, there is a “Reading Strategies Inventory” on page 5. Discussed on page 7 is the fact that the MARSI “enables students to increase awareness of their own reading strategies” if answered and taken seriously. In a sense, by having students answer the questions honestly, and after going over the results of this tool, students will begin so see where their learning is in terms of literacy. As teachers, we can use these results and scaffold literacy instruction in our classes to meet the needs of the students. This is great because not only will we differentiate and scaffold instruction in our content, but also in literacy. Students will become better readers and thinkers in our classroom context and outside of it.
DeleteAlso, as we discussed in class, we can have students take the inventory multiple times throughout the course to see how their view on their literacy has changed, and help us to accommodate any areas that still need work. In a sense, if students understand the changes occurring, they may value this aspect of their education more. The key, though, is if students answer the responses honestly, and if they understand what the responses are asking of them and if they realize that they actually engage in that particular item on MARSI. This means that MARSI should be a supplemental tool to measure literacy. This is also discussed in the article, but is a good start to establishing and understanding literacy, especially in a mathematics or science classroom.
The biggest issue, however, is combating the reading issues that may arise when trying to integrate literacy strategies in the classroom. Page 1 of the article says, “…skilled readers approach the reading task with some general tendencies…they tend to be aware of what they are reading; they seem to know why they are reading; and they have a set of tentative plans or strategies for handling potential problems and for monitoring their comprehension of textual information.” These are all skills that students learn as they read and become more literate. Not only this, these are skills that students learn themselves. Over time, students learn what methods work best for them. When having students read in, say, a mathematics classroom, we have to tackle each of these skills and teach strategies to readers, on top of helping students translate mathematics to understandable and readable terms, all while teaching them content relative to our pacing guides. This seems like a daunting task, but one that is very much needed.
In short, we have to teach students the proper literacy strategies, teach students how to use the internet as an educational tool, and help students to see where they are at and help them recognize where they need to be at – and show them how to get there. Both articles addressed tools in doing so and the implications in doing so. As teachers, it’s up to use to get our students to the next level. I will definitely be applying these tools in my courses next year. As far as metacognition, if we can get students to the point of “knowing about knowing” in terms of problem solving, they can use their literacy and content knowledge together and become successful. It’s not about facts, it’s about connecting these facts and learning how to do so, and doing it.
I appreciate your understanding of the habits of good readers, particularly those that set a purpose for reading as well as your description of translating math to "understandable and readable terms." How might this understanding drive your teaching goals?
DeleteThere were so many things to think about after reading these two articles. First in the life to text article, I have to say that as a learner, I could truly relate. I always preferred reading about what I was interested in; but I was not the student who gained interest in reading because my teachers gave me more things to read that were tailored to my interest. Instead, I was that student who lost interest in reading anything because eventually the reading became a monumental task. Before school I was an avid reader and there was not much I was not interested in. After making the readings more plentiful and more difficult I became less and less interested in the entire process. I think that the same happens with our students except they often begin in a place where they are uninterested and are only reading for their homework. This leads me to believe that we as teachers have to find a delicate balance in what they read, how often, how difficult and how lengthy these readings should be; then temper it well with writing. I say temper it well because kids begin to hate writing when it is overused as well; no matter how much it can assist them with comprehending and retaining the information learned. It is already apparent to me that many of my students have been unsuccessful in these areas and therefore the anxiety to fail again keeps them dodging the entire process making balance even more crucial.
ReplyDeleteConcerning the metacognitive awareness article, it is interesting that the authors stated that the tools employed were most effective in the elementary levels. Even by the definition the article gives, “knowledge about cognitive states and abilities that can be shared among individuals while at the same time expanding the construct to include affective and motivational characteristics of thinking” seems more advanced than an elementary student’s cognitive development so can they really understand what is being asked of them. In addition, the article stated students were “grade-equivalent” in their reading abilities when many of my students are not.
The fact that I gave some of my students the survey and many were asking “is this what you mean” while completing the survey themselves makes me believe they are more like the skilled readers mentioned who are thinking about their reasoning. On the other hand, it makes me wonder if they are actually more like the unskilled readers who are so busy trying to make sense of the reading that they do not comprehend and aren’t even aware that they do not. Likewise, I was unsure if students were using 3s and 4s because they wanted to impress me or because they were being honest. I only say this because some who stated they utilize strategies such as note taking while reading are often the same students who cannot remember or explain concepts when the appropriate time arrives. It makes me believe my failure to provide them with the appropriate strategies to help them become independent, confident learners is just as likely as their failure to study.
The authors stated, it is not possible to determine (based on the survey alone) where my student’s ability levels truly lie, and I agree. I also agree that it would take a great deal of time to help them become the type of “strategic readers” discussed. First because many, when they are overwhelmed (readings are too difficult or too long or just something they have absolutely no interest in) don’t comprehend well without repeatedly reading and second because unfortunately, many will not take the time to repeatedly read something they already do not feel confident and/or interested in reading. All in all, I am becoming me less and less a fan of the pacing chart mentality of school districts that say it is best to cover so much material before the standardized tests. Piling on more information and doing so faster does not learning make (or at least not always).
The article "Assessing Students' Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies" discusses the importance of building different techniques on how to monitor students comprehension. It also stresses a central role of the teacher on developing an environment aimed at measuring readers metacognition. The authors present multiple strategies that helps teachers to create the awareness about students needs when they read, so as teachers we should develop a technique to grasp students attention, and give them chances to practice and refine their learning skills.
ReplyDeleteNext, usually great readers make it big in life, great readers become excellent writers, therefore, reading should be every students priority. "Skilled readers often engage in deliberate activities that require plan-ful thinking, flexible strategies, and periodic self-monitoring. They think about the topic, look forward and backward in the passage, and check their own understanding as they read" This shows me to develop a long term lesson plan that would allow my classroom environment to be a way to enhance my students reading skills, promote literacy and comprehension, be it in a regular classroom, bilingual or special ed.
Further, skilled readers are much more aware of the world that they live in and are more flexible to deal with any obstacles. Perhaps, unskilled readers do not monitor the world around them in the same way, they cannot comprehend it equally. For example, skilled readers know what they read, they understand the material given and usually deal better with problems. While on the other hand unskilled readers make frequent word errors, they make mistakes and usually fall behind in classroom. At this time, maintain special attention, implement new learning procedures and ideas, as a teacher.
In addition, as teachers it is our duty to help the unskilled readers to enhance their reading strategies, by helping them organize the material, reread materials and get the meaning for comprehension, and become independent learners. For me reading is a skill that enables me to see the world differently, even though reading is a complex process, reading comes naturally to me. I just love reading and usually I enforce it in my classroom. I make time for reading. Reading has the priority, and is above all other subjects in my classroom, at least most of the time. When I implement reading in my classroom I know my students gain different experiences, important knowledge and strengthen themselves for better future, they become better at their academic skills and personal skills. Perhaps, as teachers we should promote positive and healthy environment about reading into content area. We should motivate students so they can progress daily through direct interaction. While making sure to implement different reading strategies and help unskilled students practice reading, we should promote different reading techniques and schemes so they become better students, logically, academically and socially. On the other hand, "Living Literacy" tells us how reading in U.S is declining, therefore implementing and teaching new strategies is a must for each and every teacher. Reading should not be put on the side. Research outlines this essential strategy that guides teachers toward implementing content area reading into classrooms. "Perhaps it's equally true that those who vote inclined to read because they are eager to be more informed about what's at stake". This would be an outstanding implementation into a new classroom, as teachers I say it again we should use any technique to enhance reading so the students can become better independent learners academically, socially and personally.
Blog 2
ReplyDeleteMetacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies
According to the article, monitoring of one’s comprehension processes is essential in determining their reading skill level. This awareness of one’s thinking processes is referred to as metacognition. The research states that there is a definite distinction between skilled and unskilled readers in their levels of reading comprehension and metacognitive awareness. For instance, skilled readers are more apt to be cognizant of what and why they are reading and monitors their comprehension and thought processes; whereas unskilled readers are less likely to have the same awareness. It was further emphasized that unskilled readers do not take an active role in resolving their lack of understanding of their reading.
The article explains how MARSI (Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory) is a relevant tool that can assist in assessing students’ reading strategies. It aids someone to actually look at how they are reading and recognize there are specific measures that determine how they could actually comprehend and retain what they’ve read. Taking the MARSI inventory prior to giving it to my students enabled to see personally areas I could improve in to be a better skilled reader. It is my hope when given the opportunity in my own classroom to use the MARSI inventory to guide my students’ learning and literacy skills.
Living Literacy
The article shared some rather interesting information as it relates to how readers are more inclined to do more extra-curricular activities like playing sports, exercising or visiting the museum.
This article emphasizes the importance of educators’ task to increase literacy practices that will be life-long goals for students. As an educator I want to motivate my students’ to read more as it relates to mathematics in the hopes to increase their literacy skills.
The thing about math "reading" is that students are using two languages interchangeably - English and "mathematics". So connecting life to ttext and text to life is even a three way relationship - connecting text to life, life to text and text to math, and finally mathnto life. Historically we have focused teaching processes, symbols and rules. the thing is, we don't reason in symbols. Symbols are "shortcuts" for expressing our mathematical reasoning. When we prepare students to complete worksheets and single problems tied to nothing "real", students lose the connection that reasoning must also be articulated. the very articulation assists us in our reasoning ( I know there are linguistic principles involved, but I do not have Paul's expertise).
ReplyDeleteSo, as I said before, we have to start with student prior knowlede and experience and anchor new learning there. This is much more difficult to do than pages and pages of drill and practice.
I loved the metacognition article. teaching math is indeed teaching and reinforcing metacognitio. A student must interpret problem situations, then determine a process for solving the problem, solve the problem and then evaluate solutions within context. if that's not metacognition i don't know what is.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I had not thoght about using something like the MARSI scale ina math class to help students think about how to read math texts. It strilkes me that this is one reason why working in pairs or groups can help reinforce good reading strategies.