In Chapter 4 of Readicide Gallagher discusses various ways of breaking down text for better understanding. One of the ways he mentions is by breaking the reading up into parts that way the students won’t be so overwhelmed when it comes to reading the difficult and very long text. Another way, which seems very simplistic and common, but at the same time surprised me was the idea of providing topics and or themes to students during the reading. Providing topics for students not only helps the child become more aware of what the text is about, but allows them to search for context clues within the text that further enhances understanding of the reading. I truly believe that this method is one of many that have been very successful. Providing topics and or themes does in fact allow the student to be able to read complex material and gather information about it that is needed. This teaching strategy can also be used in other forms of literacy such as communication. When it comes to communicating, especially in foreign languages, I find it interesting that if given topics, I am capable of singling out the context clues within the sentence and forming a better understanding of what the person is trying to say. For example, in Spanish class, when we first begin to learn the language, our teacher would say various statements in Spanish although we had no clue what each meant. However, as the class progressed, and we became more familiar with certain vocabulary, our teacher begins to speak even more in Spanish. Here intentions were to get us to understand the context clues and be able to determine what the sentence meant.
Important insight! Context clues are tools that all readers should be aware of and know how to use effectively.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you Tashina that context clues are SO important to reading and "figuring things out" for yourself. This is something that I have noticed that students struggle with during my placements. They want you to give them answers and do not want to think. When given questions that are strictly opinion, such as, "if William Shakespeare lived today what media do you think that he would write in, television, film, theater, or something else?", they don't want to answer it for themselves. These students want everything spoon fed to them now, and instead of complaining about it, maybe we should TEACH THEM how to "figure it out" themselves. This is something that completely baffles me. Yes, part of it is laziness, but it also is partially that they do not know how to look for the information! :) I really like that you brought up the context clues aspect of reading because it is SO imperative to reading and literacy and can be used in all content areas!
ReplyDeleteTashina,
ReplyDeleteYou may have difficulty in your business classes with students not knowing the vernacular of the business world. They are going to be unaware of the concepts and ideas and may struggle with the vocabulary in context because they will have no contextual understanding on which to draw from- do you understand? In your course, A straight vocabulary list may be helpful at first to allow the students to become familiar with words they will be reading, THEN let them read the selection with some knowledge of the terms and then maybe they could draw conclusions within context. Using context clues in reading a novel would be easier that finding clues in a text on the economic structure in China!