I want to start off and say that I
really enjoyed this class after I figured out what the class was about. When I
was signing up for this class I was like not another English class, when I am
not going to be an ELA teacher. I started asking myself some questions like why
do I need to know these reading strategies, why do I need to teach/use these strategies
in my classroom? Those questions have been answered throughout this semester. I
liked the article, Teachers and content area reading: Attitudes, beliefs, and
change, because it has kind of summed up my feelings and thoughts of the
semester. I feel that I am the teacher that believes “… content area teachers
would like to teach reading but do not know how”. Even after this semester I still feel like I
do not have all of the tools and confidence to teach my students good reading
strategies. I also agree with, “One possible caution here is that much of what
these teachers learn appears to be generic strategies that some researchers and
teacher educators believe can be applied to any or most content areas. This
could lead to teachers feeling that what they are learning does not apply to
their specific area.” This class I feel was like a preview and it only scratched
the surface of the tools and strategies that are needed for content area
teachers to truly succeed in their classrooms. I think that if teacher
educators want teachers especially pre-service teachers to teach reading
strategies in their content area they should have something set-up in the
program that has pre-service teachers take LLED 3530 and another content area class
but maybe in the pre-service teachers’ primary content area, so we feel that what
we are learning applies to our specific area.
Book clubs are something that I am
still on the fence about because I feel that it will work in one of my content
areas better than the other. I feel that book clubs will work better in a social
studies class rather than a math class because with social studies there is a
little bit more wiggle room what and how you teach the content because it does
not have as many standardized tests or as much content as a math class. Also I
think that there is not a good novel that corresponds to a particular math
grade level, where as with social studies there are more good novels to use.
After all of the strategy lessons
this semester I have picked a few that I really liked to incorporate into my
classroom and they differ depending on the content area. Like in my math class
I plan to make think alouds, sketching through the text, and exit and admit
slips are going to be apart of my classroom culture and in my social studies
KWL charts and coding the text.
I am glad that I bought this
textbook because it will be a book that I return to again and again especially
page 30, thinking strategies of effective readers. Figuring out which strategy
I am trying to teach when I am doing my think alouds is something that I will
have to work on.
WC:542
