Kris's Post for 3/23

Kris Walters

3/22/12

TCH 412

                                                Book Club

Dialogue Journal:

            In Chapter two of Janet Allen’s Reading History: A Practical Guide to Improving Literacy I saw a bunch of great strategies for working on student comprehension In terms of reading social studies text. Of course, like we’ve said in class students learn best from a variety of text and comprehend best when taught with a variety of text and perspectives. I couldn’t agree more that students must be taught effective methods of reading for dissecting history and historical text (besides the textbook).

This chapter displays a bunch of great strategies that could be used, however there were only few that I would like to use in the near future. I have a lesson to conduct next week at Peekskill Middle School, therefore I may use the Question Game or the Words in Context Plus strategies. I loved the fact that The Question Game incorporates comprehension, critical thinking, and making connections to the reading. I also liked the fact that it gets the students moving around the classroom using social skills and working in groups or pairs. However, I may want to cut out a step of two just because I think it’s a little lengthly and may take up too much of the period. I also think it would be important to make sure students are on task when using this strategy.

I think that content language is a issue that student face even in college. While reading or doing an assignment there are certain words we may not be familiar with that may throw us off. Like its said in the chapter, I think it important for students to record and study words that come across and difficult for them in their content areas. In order for students to retain the meaning of a lot of content language its up to the teacher to include certain terms into the students’ everyday lesson (while connecting to their everyday lives) so they become familiar with the words. I  couldn’t agree more that having the students apply, explain and illustrate the content language is the best way for them to practice and retain a fully understanding of the word.

            So after writing my Dialogue Journal I realize that Jamie and I have a lot of the same ideas. We both want to use the Question Game strategy, but I would like to make a few adjustments to the strategy. I also agree with Jamie’s statements about literacy in Social Studies. Usually the term literacy is associated with English, but this chapter made the connection between teaching comprehension and content literacy in the Social Studies classroom.