As a teacher making autonomous
readers and teaching metacognition strategies is something I have always
struggle with. These are things that really happen inside a child’s brain and
every brain is different. One of my undergrad professors ended every class by
saying “our job would be a cake walk if we could just open a student’s head and
see what they missed.” Comprehension strategies are key to making an autonomous
reader but we cant make them comprehend. I really love how this chapter breaks
teaching comprehension strategies down to begin with communications skills. I
never really thought about if a student cant communicate effectively it can
hinder their reading comprehension. I am currently teaching a 5th
grade inclusion class and I have two students who are selectively mute. One
student will whisper to any teacher when spoken to but the other student has
not said a single word all year. This makes it even more difficult to
understand where students are in their reading comprehension. The only way
these students communicate is through written expression. Even though I believe
that focusing on communication in general and about what they have read is a
great step for my main stream students but I am wondering how skipping this
step affects my mute students. One thing I really like about these reading
strategies is that most if not all of them can be adapted to involve written
expression. I believe as the teacher we need to verbally model these strategies
but these strategies do not leave my mute students unable to participate.
The
most important things to remember when creating and using reflection activities
is to; Be open-ended, provide multiple entry-points, deal with intellectually
important content, and if you use partner or group projects provide clear
evaluate criteria. Do you believe that
not being able to verbally communicate will hinder your comprehension skills?
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