Sunday, September 12, 2010
Week 4, Pedagody Forum
I would like to add to Zac Cooper's comments. I couldn't agree with him more. So often, teachers focus on the breadth of information we should cover to prepare students for the standardized tests, that we often forget to focus on depth. By depth, I mean what Zac refers to in his last few sentences, skill based learning. I have noticed that almost all questions on the Georgia High School Graduation Test require the students to apply the skill of "reading", whether for comprehension or analysis on many different levels. We have found from our scores that our students are having difficulty with the questions that ask the students to read on a deeper, interpretive level, but they are correctly answering the recall or more basis summary questions. Using signs to teach the skill of reading gives purpose to reading for many of our students. It's almost as if we are teaching them to go on a reading mission or treasure hunt. Great point Zac. Thanks for that post.
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My mom always said, if you can learn to read, you can learn anything else.
ReplyDeleteTreasure hunt is not a bad analogy, so long as what constitutes the "treasure" remains fluid, contested. I often think of it as going to a Salvation Army. The idea there is to find something unlikely, something interesting out of a "text" that has been "read" many times before. It's the same shirt, the same lamp. You, however, have a different way of wearing it or staging it (or "reading" it).
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