Writer's Notebook Post #1

Hello to all!! :)


I have finished one graduate level course (EDT 610: Technology & Education) and I have quickly moved onto another (EDT 646: Reading & Writing in Content Areas). As a requirement for EDT 646, I must keep a Writer's Notebook (highlighting and notating my learning in the course). I was excited when I heard this, because it has now given me a chance to revisit my blog and revisit my professional and personal learning experiences!


This week, our homework was to read an article about CORI (Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction) by John T. Guthrie, Allan Wigfield, Pedro Barbosa, Kathleen C. Perencevich, Ana Taboada, Marcia H. Davis, Nicole T. Scafiddi, and Stephen Tonks. This article, though long and verbose :), provided lots of great information regarding student motivation in reading.


As a Language Arts teacher, I can understand and appreciate the importance of motivation in reading for my eighth grade students. At an age where socializing with peers, playing on the computer, and texting seem WAY more fun than reading or doing homework, motivating these students can be a difficult thing. Additionally, they are starting to lose the "drive" to impress their teachers that many elementary students possess. However, the CORI article hits on one point that I have noticed a lot with my students. They are more motivated to read if they have learned (and utilized) strategies that can help them be successful. In the educational world, we call teaching these types of strategies SI (Strategy Instruction).

SI is critically important at both the primary and middle grades, but if SIs are not taught in the primary grades, reading comprehension (and fluency) will be even more difficult for middle level students (like mine). The most recommended strategies from the CORI article include (but are not limited to):

-- Activating Prior/Background Knowledge
-- Generating Questions Related to Topic
-- Summarizing Text
-- Searching for Info. in Texts & Documents
-- Organizing Information Graphically
-- Learning Story Structures & Themes of Narratives
-- Monitoring Their Own Comprehension During Reading

The two strategies I work w/ my students the most on are 1 and 2: Activating Prior/Background Knowledge and Generating Questions Related to the Topic. During our Holocaust Unit (which is when I teach Night by Elie Wiesel), I frequently have my students use Post-Its to stick right into their books and ask questions of the text. This helps them remember to bring the questions to class discussion the next day. I will also have them monitor their own comprehension by jotting down their thoughts on the Post-Its notes as they read the assigned pages. Lastly, the Holocaust Unit has many, many historical ties and background knowledge to World War II. We spend a lot of time during this unit activating prior knowledge on what occurred during the Holocaust and during WWII. These strategies have been immensely helpful in my two years of Language Arts instruction.