I found this article constantly reminding me of my childhood experiences in elementary school. In my elementary school classes we did a lot of reading, but I cannot ever remember it being for learning about a certain topic. In other words, we read a lot for enjoyment (stories and poems) but never for strictly learning purposes. (science, social studies) When we did read about these certain topics, it was straight out of the textbook, either alone or with a partner, or we listened to the teacher read aloud (we were supposed to listen). We were never taught how to comprehend what we were reading when reading this type of material, so most of the time no knowledge was gained at all. I now feel that it is very hard for me to read things from textbooks or other material such as articles and actually keep up with what the message of the text is. I think that exposure to these things at a younger age would have helped me to have a much higher reading comprehension than I do.
I feel that it is very important to start teaching children at a young age to read and comprehend expository material. Not only do they need to be taught how to read, but they need to know how to understand what they are reading. I have come in contact with children who can read all day long and at a very fluent rate, but when asked what they read they can't answer one question about the reading. Another thing that I found to be very interesting was the fact that instead of the teachers reading the material aloud to the students let them independently read some too. This will help them to be able to learn how to read it and comprehend it on their own instead of just gaining listening comprehension from hearing it out loud. Having material that is appealing to the younger students is also a good way to gain their attention to content area literacy. Books from National Geographic have amazing pictures and will catch the eyes of any age of students. These are very informative and will give them a good experience with these types of books. I have already made a point to began building my library for my future classroom. Since I never had access to these kind of books and never learned how to read and comprehend material other than pleasure books, I want to make sure that my children have full access to every kind of text possible. I think reading is an amazing way to learn and I cannot wait to show my future students how much fun every kind of book can be.
As I mentioned earlier, while reading this article I was constantly thinking about my elementary years and wondering why I was never exposed to this type of reading. Two questions that came to mind were:
1. Did my teachers not realize how important it was, or did they just not know how to incorporate it into their lessons?
2. How can I make sure that my students never feel like they didn't have the opportunity to experience all different types of text and reading?
Great job on this post! I really like what you said about not being exposed to a variety of text at a young age. I can remember when I began reading out of textbooks in my 5th grade science class, and I would just get so overwhelmed by all of the text that was so different from anything that I had been asked to read before. I think that what we learned in Dr. Boyce's class last semester would be very helpful for us as new teachers. Being able to equip our students with the skills to pre-read text will keep it from being overwhelming to them and will also allow them to connect the new information to the background knowledge that they already possess. In response to your first question, I think that some teachers teach what they know and don't make an effort to do more. We need to learn to be aggressive thinkers and do research for our students' sake so that they will succeed.
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