(I’m republishing my best posts from the first half of the year. You can see the entire list of them here)
ninosouza / Pixabay
Just about every time I read a piece on reading strategies written by an education researcher – even from the best, like Daniel Willinghman, who wrote this recent one – a key point they make is that after a few hours of practice, teachers don’t have be explicit about students applying them (like summarizing, predicting, etc.). To be fair, in Dan’s piece, he suggests that older readers then can apply more advanced forms of analysis, which many of us do but don’t necessarily label them as “strategies.”
But, what researchers generally miss is that comprehension is not the only reason many of us teachers have students apply reading strategies many hours beyond the few hours they recommend.
And that reason is student engagement.
Without the requirement to do quick strategies, often with a partner, a fair number of our students might not read the text at all or, if they did, would do so in a cursory way – no matter how interesting we think the content might be…
Having students document how they apply these strategies, share what they did and why with their classmates, provides accountability and and easy tool for differentiation through the complexity of each student’s response.
I’m not bringing up anything new here – I’ve been talking about this since at least 2012.
It’s just another example, in my opinion, of some researchers not seeing the forest through the trees, which I’ve shared in a few previous posts, like:
It Doesn’t Matter If It’s “Effective” If Students Won’t Do It
The “Best Learning Techniques” Are Useless If Students Won’t Do Them — A Critical Take On A Well Done Study
HELP ME UNDERSTAND WHY SOME IN EDUCATION SPEND SO MUCH TIME BEATING DEAD HORSES?
New Study Finds That The Presence Of Immigrant Students In Schools Helps Everybody, But Totally Misses Obvious Reason
I’m adding this post to The Best Posts On Reading Strategies & Comprehension – Help Me Find More!