#readingstrategy

A week ago my working definition of literacy was being able to make sense of and engage in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. For the time being I am going to stick with this definition.  Metacognition (thinking about how you are thinking, knowing about knowing) has come up a couple of times now in class discussion and in podcasts that we have listened to. Although, I am keeping my working definition the same as of now, I feel that metacognition plays an important role to literacy.

 The podcast that metacognition was brought up in is titled “Content Literacy Friday 101”. The question, how do students gain insight into their own reading and thinking processes, was posed. This is where metacognition came into the discussion and is a very interesting concept. Reading is an on going activity. Even as adults, especially as students, you will encounter difficult texts. Your ability to read or reading level is dependent upon how you attempt to read a text. This is where metacognition of your reading comes up. You have to think through not only what is happening in text but also what reading strategies you are pulling from and how you are attempting to go through text. There are lots of moving wheels involved and unless you can think through ways for you to think, reading the difficult text could be a problem. As a reader you are having to make thinking visible.  This is where I think that metacognition has some part in literacy, at this point not sure how major or minor that may be.

In our last class we focused on the double journal entry reading strategy. This is mainly used, as far as I have seen in non-math and science classes. However, as those are my two main focus subjects, I wanted to find ways to use these in those classes. This strategy can be used but it is all dependent upon how the two column or sides are labeled. Typically if you were to use a double journal entry you would put a quote from a reading on the left then on the right would be questions about it, or how it made you feel. There is not much room for how quotes from your math and science textbook or articles make you feel. Instead you could use the left side or vocab words, formulas, functions, equations and then the right side correspond with the definitions, explanations of the formulas, functions, and equations. In math many can solve the equation 3x+6=5x+2. But not many can explain the steps in detail as to why x=2. The double journal entry can help with that. Writing and speaking are in my working definition of literacy and being to speak and write in math and science could greatly benefit the student’s comprehension in the subject.

Link to the podcast