Teachers should incorporate a combination of direct instruction and the constructivist approach when teaching reading. This essay will discuss six elements of teaching students to read including oral language, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency, and ways in which teachers can deliver instruction using a balanced approach. A balanced approach to teaching reading involves explicit phonics instruction as well as world view. Traditionally students were introduced to reading with an emphasis on phonics. McBride-Chang (2004) recognised that this bottom-up approach resulted in students who are more likely to lose interest in reading due to the limited vocabulary and repetitiveness of texts they read (p.120).
Mind’s Eye strategy could be one of their best ways to solve this problem. This strategy can develop students visualization and improve students reading comprehension as the technique includes students memory and asking them to be more critical in giving their perception and prediction. According to Silver, Strong and Perini (2007) mind’s eye is a reading strategy that is used by the teacher to improve students critical skill of the words on the page into memorable images. When the students read about a text the students will combine their background knowledge with the information that is gotten in the text. In addition, Sejnost (2009) states that this strategy is started by the students who listen to the keywords which are mentioned by the teacher and then attempt to visualize what are they hearing by making pictures in their minds.
In the Educational Leadership article entitle “The Boss of My Brain”, authors Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers examines the explicit instruction in metacognition. Researchers stated that “explicit instruction in metacognition puts students in charge of their learning.” It was also stated that “meta-cognition supports learning by enabling us to actively think about which cognitive strategies can help achieve learning, how we should apply those strategies, how we can review our progress, and whether we need to adjust our thinking.” I believe this a unique teaching tool for teachers to implement with their students. With the use of metacognition, students whether they are struggling learners or gifted can learn how to use a variety of cognitive strategies to help improve their learning.
Timeline: Reading comprehension is a strategy that needs to be practice and reinforce throughout the school year. In order to implement such strategies with fidelity, all teachers will be given enough time to revisit the strategies, to discuss videos that portrayed the used of the strategy as well as work in collaboration to create lesson opportunities to deliver those strategies. Teachers will be asked to incorporate this initiative immediately after each professional development. Every week a different reading strategy or skill will be presented through video discussion during grade level meetings. Teachers will be expected to start using and implementing this reading strategy a week later after the PD.
For these types of information, mnemonic strategies are extremely effective as they create links or associations that give the brain an organizational framework on which to hook new information. In this way, mind maps appear to be one of the most appropriate techniques to “unlock the potential of students’ brains”. They involve relevance, creativity and brevity, as information is connected and organize in a way that every branch comprises a key word. They appear to be particularly effective at increasing pupils’ understanding and retention of information. Perhaps, this is because these visual devices make possible to see connections between aspects of the information that are not obvious in a linear form, such as an outline or a narrative.
First of all pre reading strategies help to stimulate their prior knowledge about a topic and involve the students in the themes before they even open the book. The while-reading strategies help the students to monitor their comprehension in the moment of reading. Besides, activities like asking questions and explaing key ideas help them to engage with the text. Finally, the post reading activities help them to organize the informations, clarify doubts, and respond to what was read. In conclusion, I think that the use of reading strategies in my class is helping my students to become independent readers that know that reading is reading is an active process that involves critical thought before, during, and after engaging the
The Interactive Model The interactive model takes into consideration the continuous interaction between The bottom-up and The top-down processing in the text's meaning building (p: 93-100) . 4. Reading Strategies Many researchers in the area of reading strategies studies have used different types of strategies; these strategies are as follows: predicting, inferring, self- monitoring, and summarizing, where they are more effective, useful and beneficial for students. 1. Predicting: This reading strategy includes thinking about what might be coming next in the text, where the effective reader can apply it before beginning reading by using pictures, texts, headings and his / her personal experience in order to make predictions .
METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS IN READING AMONG HIGHER SECONDARY STUDENTS Introduction: Research on metacognition and reading demonstrates a strong relation between awareness and use of strategies and reading comprehension, the readers are more aware and more likely to engage in strategic reading. For the students of English as a second language, reading is the most crucial skill to master. Proficiency in reading is closely related to academic success, students’ success depends on learning to read with reading comprehension strategies and recognize the function and comprehend the meaning from context. Review of Related Literature: Myers and Paris (1978) asked children in the second and sixth grades a series of self-assessing questions concerning
With intensive reading, the teacher helps the ELL student understand a text by explaining it line for line in his/her native language. This can be an important aspect of a reading program for students who are learning a second language; however, it should not be the only strategy. This strategy has many benefits-comprehension, irregular sounds, vocabulary, cohesion, structure, genres, and the concept of strategies. Comprehension is the most important aspect of reading. Without comprehension, reading is purposeless.
They should know the new implemented lesson log to make it effective in the classroom setting. “Applying metcognitive strategies such as self-awareness and self monitoring is to develop independent learners who can control their own learning and learn how to learn for life” (Papaleontion – Louca, 2008). It provides self- monitoring which is a step-by-step process of evaluation during the learning