- Chapter 7
- Chapter 7, “Guiding Reading Comprehension,” emphasizes importance of the comprehension strategies, which guide the reader- text interactions. The chapter stresses that educators from many disciplines can incorporate reciprocal teaching, think alouds, questioning the author, and question answer relationships into their instructional routines to show their students how to read and comprehend easily.
- The chapter also describes a number of instructional strategies, which engage the students in reading, monitoring their interactions with the texts, and aiding them in clarifying and extending the meaning.
Personal Reaction
- The uses of reciprocal teaching, think aloud, questioning the author, and question answer relationships techniques by teachers in their instructional routines not only help the students to understand, but also help them to think critically while reading.
- In the classroom, it is crucial to incorporate different instructional strategies as this will further boost the students understanding of what is being taught.
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 8, “Developing Vocabulary and Concepts” suggests that it is crucial that vocabulary words taught are words, which are relevant to lesson and what the students are learning. According to this chapter, “Random words theory” doesn’t help the students to learn content. Instead of presenting the vocabulary words, one method for tutors to teach their content is by concepts.
- The chapter helps the tutors gain understanding of why language of a certain academic discipline needs to be taught within the concept development context, and how they can activate what their students recognize about words and assist them to make the connections among the related words.
Personal Reaction
- In fact, vocabulary is important to all the content-areas, and it is fundamental that educators are aware of the way they are instructing the key concepts and words in their classrooms.
- Developing concepts and vocabulary is crucial for student learning. It is therefore vital that before a teacher introduces new ideas and topics ensure that all their students fully understand the vocabulary that is involved.
- Article 1
- The article, “Guided Reading Teachers,” explains how to make a balanced literacy program that is based on the guided reading and sustained by shared reading, interactive writing, read aloud, and other approaches.
- The article also answers the question of how teachers might best support literature community and yet still meet individual reader’s needs.
Personal Reaction
- The use of a balanced literacy program in the classroom helps the children become literate easily.
- The article allows children develop as distinct readers within a small group context.
- Article 2
- The article, “The Impact of Using Guided Reading to teach Low-literate Adults,” describes a guided instructional framework that is applied to the four adult participants; Peter, Malia, Joelle, and Troy.
Personal Reaction
- The use of the guided instructional framework in the classroom improves the word recognition strategies and behaviors of leaners and results to an increase in the overall reading levels.
- The use of guided reading to teach the low-literate adults in the classroom results to positive results
- Article 3
- Dr. Shanahan in “Common Core vs. Guided Reading: Rejecting Instructional Level Theory,” stresses importance of the highly skilled and trained teachers guiding literacy instruction through all content areas.
- The instructional level theory suggests that text difficulty level comparative to student reading level is an imperative factor in education, but that ignores support, guidance, and support offered by the instructor.
Personal Reaction
- Using the guiding literacy instruction across all contents by the highly skilled and trained teachers is basic to students’ success in school.
Two Questions from the readings
- Does the use of different instructional strategies and vocabularies by the teachers result to a direct improvement in comprehension?
- How can tutors support a literature community and at the same time meet the individual needs of a learner?
