The first chapter I read was Chapter 10 "Determining Importance in Text: The Nonfiction Connection". I chose to read this chapter because I personally feel that we are not really taught how to teach nonfiction and it's difficult to just jump in and teach a nonfiction text. As the chapter stated on page 156, most classrooms have mainly fiction books for the students to read and that the teachers read to the students. There is a big disconnect with nonfiction. So, this chapter gave strategy lesson examples for teaching nonfiction text. Page 159 states that "...the first purpose or real-world nonfiction is to convey factual information, important ideas and key concepts." Then it goes on to talk about how the chapter's aim is to show how teachers can help students read and take away important information and ideas from nonfiction texts. The chapter gave 10 different strategies for teaching nonfiction. One strategy I really liked was "Becoming familiar with the characteristics of nonfiction trade books" (page 161) I liked this strategy because I think it's important first and foremost for students to understand what is in nonfiction books. This strategy also allows students to write information the already know, questions they have and then information that they found out through the text. Then the students were able to make a poster including much of this information. The poster is a good idea, because it gives the students a purpose for their research.
The second chapter I read was Chapter 12 "Content Literacy" Reading for Understanding in Social Studies and Science." I decided to read this chapter, because the first page (page 205) caught my eye. It stated that science and social students get very few minutes per week in the classroom. This is very real to me, because we rarely "have time" for these subjects and I thought maybe I would learn some new tips from the chapter. The chapter was all about integrating science and social studies into literacy. We have learned a little bit about this in our previous TE classes, but I think it's a great idea. Literacy gets so much emphasis in the classroom already, why not add some science and social students into it. The chapter went through and gave some concrete ideas for integrating science and social studies into literacy. Interactive Read Alouds (page 209) with picture books was one of the ideas it gave. This is something that I don't think is too hard and can be easily integrated into the classroom. I also thought "Note-taking strategies for merging thinking with new information" (page 215) because it's a different way to get kids writing than just in a journal and they are learning new information during that time as well.
If you guys read these chapters, how did you feel about them? Did you have different strategies/ideas that were your favorites? If you read different chapters, what were important in your chapters and what were the take away messages?
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ReplyDeleteThe first chapter I decided to read was also chapter 10. I agree that it seems harder to teach reading strategies for a nonfiction text compared to fiction text. I picked this chapter because there seems to be a popular demand for students to want to read nonfiction. Yesterday I asked a student who is a male high reader what books he would like to read (he does not enjoy Diary of a Wimpy KId or Captain Underpants like all the rest of the kids do.) He said he wanted to read biographies and other text about football players and football. With further interviews it seems like the kids are really curious about "How things work" and would enjoy more nonfiction text. Which was interesting to me.
ReplyDeleteAnyways....for this chapter I enjoyed the beginning pages (157) how it gives you ideas of how to introduce reading nonfiction. I think one good strategy is having the students skim the text before even starting to read. After teaching this technique it would be helping to teach students how to "read for meaning" by determine what is the author trying to get across and what is just extra detail.
I also choose Chapter 12 because of TE401. I think it is kind of strange that I learned so much about how to use social studies and science in the classroom. Then I was seeing it in my last years placement and now it has came a screeching halt. With "Reading Street" there is NO time for anything else besides math and literacy. Which is sad because social studies is my favorite subject! I agree with Toni, that it is easy to incorporate social studies and science into literacy (even with the morning book that is read to the students.) I love the anchor chart on page 213 "I wonder wall" the students would love this because they are always wanting to know more or asking questions. This would be a great activity to launch a science lesson with learning about a new subject (insects, weather, electricity.)
I also read these two chapters. I completely agree that I was not really sure how to teach nonfiction books to my students at first. In my classroom we always talk about the difference between fiction and nonfiction which I think is a good start for second grade. However it seems like many of my students assume only science books are nonfiction and not books about social studies which is odd to me. They know that nonfiction is something that is real or that really happened,but somehow there is a disconnect for social studies and something that really happened for them. It was interesting to read that doing a read aloud with a nonfiction book was one of the strategies that was in the chapter. Since we are using the Reading Street Program, I'm curious to see if it introduces children to nonfiction. So far we have only talked about different types of fiction books.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly to Toni, I do not teach or observe any social studies or science in my classroom. The focus is on literacy and math. However, we are going to begin flooding groups within the next two weeks in which our Tier 1 students will be broken into two groups and receive science instruction two days a week and social studies two days a week. I think this is a great idea for them, but am concerned about my Tier 2 and 3 students that miss out on these lessons because their flooding groups are focused on literacy. My Mt enjoys teaching science so she tries to incorporate it into our literacy program as much as possible. For instance, my class took a trip to the MSU Children's Garden. When they got back we had some extra time so she had the students write poems using their five senses about the field trip; so what they saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt. We also did two read alouds with books about the plant life cycle before going to the Gardens to build background knowledge. Lastly, my Mt uses a website called BrainPop which has a lot of short videos about elementary science. She uses these to supplement things that we read about in Reading Street, such as the desert that we were learning about this week.
Overall, my Mt does the best that she can to incorporate the use of nonfiction books and science and social studies into our lessons, but it is difficult with the amount of time that literacy requires. It seems as if Reading Street is at least trying to have students get some science and social studies facts through the guided reading books so they are getting a bare minimum of information without supplemented material.
I read the same two chapters for the same reasons as all of you had. Yet I have another personal reason for choosing the nonfiction chapter. I am a mom with two girls who are twelve and thirteen years old. When they were young, they loved reading nonfiction books such as biographies. However, those days seem to be good old days long gone because they both seem to read fiction books 95% of the time now. I’m trying to figure out ways to guide them out of that reading “pit” and the nonfiction chapter looks very appealing to me both as a parent and a teacher. I also imagined that parents like me must have been wondering about what educators could do to help their children tune to nonfiction books.
ReplyDeleteMy current class also focuses on studying the fiction genre. There was a brief talk about photo essay during the past month. The first graders are mainly guided to understand the difference between realistic fiction and fantasy.
One encouraging thing I have noticed was that I have seen children checking many informational books out of the school library. They take home books about mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and birds, etc. The children gain a deeper understanding of the world around them. The nonfiction informational books really get the children to learn more as is stated in Strategies that work on page 156. These books all have interesting topics and vivid pictures that are very appealing to children. I actually enjoyed flipping through two books with them and learned some interesting facts about animals. Just as the authors mention on page 156, these well written and illustrated nonfiction books naturally draw kids’ attention. When they read these books, they pick up the essential ideas and information which prerequisites for insight development.
One boy was very excited to show me the book he just checked out. After sharing some pictures from the book, he then concluded “You know, Ms. Liu, amphibians are different from reptiles. Snakes and frogs aren’t the same.” As you can tell, he not only gets the information from the book, he also draws conclusion based on what he read. His words paint a wonderful picture of what nonfiction books could do in children’s life.
The Reading Street does have books relating to science and social studies, but almost all teachers realize that the program greatly requires them to focus on language arts and math leaving little time for other important subjects. I wonder how David Perkins, the Harvard professor, is thinking about how well our schools are performing in promoting a “learning and thinking culture.” (p207) Without the social studies, it’s really hard for me to imagine how school learning connects the children with their real-world, real-life issues. One positive thing is that the first graders have had a volunteer teaching them songs relating to their feelings, their school life such as how to get along the past month.