4 Reading Strategies to Retire This Year (Plus 6 to Try Out!)
A reaction and personal thoughts on an article.
A partner and I read an article titled "4 Reading Strategies to Retire This Year (Plus 6 to Try Out!)". As English major students, we went ahead and decided to share our thoughts and opinions on what the article provided.
We have been tasked to read texts in our classes at least once. Teachers then would make tasks or activities to engage the students in their reading experiences. These strategies can make or break the students reading experience. It can either engage the students, making them fall in love with reading and after the task, read more books, or discourage the student from reading as they find this a huge chore and burden. In the article, there is a list of reading strategies that should be avoided and encouraged. These strategies are as follows:
Reading Strategies to AVOID
1. Reading Logs (and other rote accountability tasks)
Reading logs require students to have entries and write the amount of time, pages, and other notable properties of a text. This is discouraged as it is believed that students only read for the sake of having an entry to their reading logs without actually understanding what they are reading.
My partner and I agree that this should be avoided as making reading as a form of 'task' or 'chore' won't encourage students to deepen their knowledge through reading. In fact, we both believe that using this approach would take longer to properly understand a text.
2. Turn-taking Oral Reading Practices
The most popular form of turn-taking oral reading is recognized as Round-Robin Reading wherein a student is called to read aloud in class and the rest is expected to silently read along. After a few passages, another student is asked to follow along where the last student ended. It is said that many teachers have been told not to do this form of reading practice, but still did so.
We both agree that this does not encourage reading behavior for students. Instead, it pressures students to follow along with a text instead of letting them understand it at their own pace. It also induces anxiety among students. Both of us experienced this form of reading practice and agree that it did not really work well for us in terms of understanding and gaining knowledge, and oftentimes we need to re-read it by ourselves.
3. Awarding prizes for reading
Giving prizes is not entirely a bad form of reinforcement in reading, but the article encourages us to avoid providing prizes that don't align with reading. In order to make better reading habits, the prizes should be aligned with reading such as more reading time, more books, and the such.
Both my partner and I agree that rewards are not much of a motivation for us if it's not worth it, nevertheless, rewards are nice to receive. We agree with the article that rewards aligned with reading would be better compared to candy and toys as rewards.
4. Overemphasis on reading as a discrete skill
This reading strategy focuses on reading texts and having lectures afterward such as how to summarize and paraphrase. After that, the students are expected to have a reading and apply what was taught to them. In a study called the baseball study, it was observed that students who have more knowledge on the actual topic of the text do better compared to those who read without prior knowledge.
My partner and I are at an impasse with this approach. One does not like this approach they believe it only encourages reading as a skill. Something to be used when needed and not as a habit. Meanwhile, the other believes this is a good approach as it teaches reading efficiency.
Reading Approaches that work better
1. Reading accountability partners
This approach works in pairs. The students will meet for at least 10 minutes a day to discuss their previous reading. This allows students to hold their peers accountable and understand roles in groups, making sure that everyone follows through with their tasks.
We both agree that this is a good approach to reading as it helps students interact more with each other and learn the importance of group work. The students will benefit from this by improving both their reading skills and their social skills.
Instead of a round-robin reading approach, the class reads aloud together with the teacher which supposedly reduces the exposure of struggling readers.
Neither of us believes that this is a good way of reading. We believe that it is only useful for a younger demographic but it would still be rather chaotic, for lack of a better word. Additionally. we think that it would cause some problems for students who read better silently instead of aloud.
3. Scaffolded silent reading
A way to let students read on their own and at their own pace. This introduces them to advanced words and how they can even answer simple activities like a K-W-L Chart.
We believe that this is a good reading approach for the students if and only if their respective teachers provide them with enough prior knowledge of the terminologies that will be new to them in their readings.
4. Teacher read-aloud and modeling
This method allots time for teachers to read for a few minutes to their students while they listen silently. They found that many of their students enjoyed being read to.
Once again, we are at an impasse as we have differing opinions on the matter. One of us believes that this is a good strategy as it teaches students how reading should be and how it can be inspiring for them. Meanwhile the other disagrees and thinks that this method does not work too well with students with possible learning abilities. Simply listening to a storyteller won't provide too much engagement.
Reading buddies are very similar to reading accountability partners, but with this approach, there could be a group of 3 and the group would consist of students around 3 levels apart where the lower level can pick their reading material to inspire themselves in reading, and the higher level one to engage them and teach them more.
Neither of us has the same opinion on this approach. One believes that this is a positive way to inspire young learners to read and get a feel for a community-based environment. Meanwhile, the other one believes that it may cause pressure among the students with forced interaction.
6. Building background knowledge
Using this approach, teachers are expected to teach the students terminologies and build their vocabulary prior to providing them a text to ready. It is best when said terminologies can be observed in the text that the students are tasked to read.
Both of us believe that this is a good reading strategy. We have personally experienced this type of strategy as the students and it worked out really well with the students being able to easily navigate and understand the text.
These are all the reading strategies mentioned in the article and our respective thoughts. We hope that it was easy to understand and that you also form your own opinions. As for educators and future educators such as ourselves, we hope to have enlightened you with these different strategies as our own educator enlightened us.
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
