Until I decided to become an educator I’ve never thought of metacognition. Thinking and analyzing how people think never fell into my realm but as an educator, it becomes your world. In order to learn and engage yourself, you need to think so naturally, to be an effective teacher, going to the source of how people think is helpful in teaching. But even going beyond this, to reflect on how to become effective thinkers are some great points I’ve learned with this first week of Literacy of Adolescence.
Literacy is everywhere and is an important component of teaching any content area because apart from speaking, reading/writing all types of text is how we communicate with students. During my middle school observations this past May and June, I was surprised at the low reading levels of students. More than 50% of the seventh graders in this class were at reading levels one to two grades below and some even at a 4th grade reading level. So how to tackle this problem?
This is where I believe the metacognitive strategies could really come into play. You need to know where you’re at to know how to get to your destination. Telling students to just “read more” doesn’t seem to really work at the problem. I understand metacognitive strategies as a way to get to the core of the problem by helping students to think differently. Specifically, strategies to get students to reflect on how they are thinking and actively trying to better their thinking especially starting at an early age can benefit students of all abilities. Modeling our own cognitive abilities as described in Apprenticing Adolescence to Reading in Subject-Area Classrooms in the section “Demystifying Reading” would be a beneficial approach to show students skills we as educators use to tackle challenging texts. As we were conducting the "Think Aloud" exercise, I realized how much inferring, predicting, and questioning is going on while reading, if I'm truly engaged.
Going through many of these strategies such as think aloud, using the metacognitive bookmark, and the fix-up strategies made me realize how challenging it can be to understand what you are reading. Although we as educators have the ability to internally dissect the text to comprehend and make connections to the reading, there are many students who haven't acquired these skills or need assistance in strengthening them. Especially in regards to content specific material such as science. Many people see science as it's own language which can be intimidating to many students. But making efforts to convey the concepts and then unpack the language could relieve the stresses involved with reading scientific literature. Then students can use visualization to help process the text.
Finally, this week I've learned not to assume anything. I think it becomes increasingly important for educators to keep an open mind in regards to the abilities of students. This involves not only assumption of their level of knowledge or content, but assumptions of future abilities. Just because they don't possess the tools to succeed now, its doesn't mean they cannot in the future. That's why I believe that metacognition can be an essential tool for students. To be able to teach students to reflect on their methods of thinking can provide them with a life-long tool of problem solving and critical thinking skills.
I think you made a great point with the fact that some teachers think by simply telling their students to read more, the students will become better readers. If students have a hard time understanding what they read and even have difficulty locating the main idea, how is "reading more" actually going to help?
ReplyDeleteIn my ideal educational world, students would practice metacognitive skills before they go into middle or high school. Even something as simple as visualizing can help with comprehension, and can occur with some students even in kindergarten. I was amazed at what my kindergartners were able to visualize when I read them a few sentences and they drew pictures based off of what I read to them without showing them the illustrators' pictures.
Another important take away I got from your post is never to assume anything. All educators, regardless of what age or type of class they teach in, should believe in all of their students. Even if a student comes in performing well below their grade level, with high quality instruction and the practice of beneficial strategies, such as metacogniton, anything is possible.
I could not agree more. Throughout my education I feel that most teachers would assume the students knew not only how to read, but how to maintain the important and intended information that we were given. This was not always the case. Some students in my class would be confused, and constantly ask for help. Luckily the teachers were more than willing to help with the reading and were very enthusiastic and supportive.
ReplyDeleteI take this more into consideration now than ever because of the field I wish to teach in, Spanish. In language acquisition it is extremely important to practice writing, speaking and reading. As we have learned this past week anyone can read something, but it is understanding what you have read that is important. This is harder when done in another language because you are not only attempting to understand/translate the text, but also understand the meaning behind it as a whole. I do not believe this to be possible unless you have the initial reading/metacognitive skills in your native/fluent language. Yes, this is something that all students should know prior to learning a new language, but unfortunately that is not always the case.
Many language teachers I have spoken with and observed have always said to never assume. Never assume the students knows how to write properly; never assume the student knows how to read properly. When teaching a language, or any other subject, we should go in ready to teach basic skills if need be and be as supportive as possible. The first week in CI504 has only reenforced that notion.
Calling out the tendency for teachers to tell students to "just read more" is a great point. I, personally, can get distracted while reading and realize three pages later that, sure, I read everything in that I processed the words written, but I will have no idea what was communicated. I'm fortunate in that I recognized this at a young age and so was able to have good reading comprehension when I focused on what I was reading. However, I was always and continue to be a rather slow reader. As such, "just read more"-- whether it was to motivate or because an English class required a lot of reading-- was very difficult for me, and I tended to find that I could not keep up with the pace, and so would just give up. If I wanted to read without processing, this would have been fine, but I always wanted to understand what was happening. I probably could have benefited from some of the other tools we were taught this week, including continuing on and deciding later whether it was necessary to go back.
ReplyDeleteFelipe, I am interested in what you have learned through classes (or personal experience) about how being raised bilingual affects literacy. Is it harder to gain literacy in two languages simultaneously? Does comprehension benefit, suffer, or stay the same as a result of being raised bilingual?