Sunday, April 16, 2006

Strategies that Work
Chapter 2

This chapter focuses on strategies that effective readers utilize. The text states that strategic readers are connecting, inferring, questioning, visualizing, and synthesizing as they read. Please review the strategies presented in this chapter and choose one to share with your class.

Please share the following information:
1. What strategy did you choose? Did you use a specific book to teach this strategy? If so, what is the title/author?
2. Your thoughts and reflections on this chapter.

Please click on the comments icon to submit your reflection

2 Comments:

Blogger Sam Fuchs said...

The strategy that I worked on with the students is making connections. We are reading Bunnicula by James Howe right now and it is a really funny book. The problem is that a lot of the jokes I don't think the students fully understand. We did a web of things that we knew about vampires from films and shared things in class. During the discussion I was able to work on some misconceptions that some children had much like the teacher in the story. In the current chapter the characters get the words stake and steak mixed up and try to get rid of the rabbit by smothering him with a t-bone. I prefaced todays reading by going over our web that we had made at the beginning again with a focus on fighting vampires. We also talked about how they should try and visualize what is happening in the story as they read. I know the students had a better understanding because there was a lot of laughter. They did a better job of understandind the mistake the characters made and thought it was hilarious.

9:23 AM  
Blogger Mr. Bretzmann said...

I did some visualizing with my U.S. History students. I used our textbook and the readings about different parts of the Civil Rights movement. I asked students to imagine the conversation with their parents when they told them they were going to go to the South to register African-American people to vote. I asked them to visualize their parents say that Black AND White people were being murdered because they were doing that. And then I asked them to visualize themselves saying, "Yes, I know that, but I'm going anyway because my freedom is tied to the freedom of every other man." I told them this is the conversation that people were having in the 1960's. I think it made the reading and the lesson more meaningful. I told them that these were the kinds of visualizations that they should be doing on their own when they're reading.
I find that I'm always visualizing what I'm reading and it makes sense that students should be doing the same thing. I like the analogy of creating a movie in their minds. As I'm reading the text, I find myself visualizing what it would look like for my students to be doing the things that are discussed in the text.

3:36 PM  

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