Discussion 5

Chapter 10 - Determining Importance in Text: The Nonfiction Connection

As I began reading this chapter I could relate very well with Steph. Just like her I was told to highlight important parts of the text but up until my sophomore year in high school no teacher had ever taught me “how” to find the important parts when I was reading something. There are times I still find myself struggling to figure out which parts are important when I am reading a non-fiction piece of text. With common core in kindergarten standards pertaining to finding important details, etc in a text are all done with prompting and support. With this being said the majority of the time I am modeling these strategies with students.

To begin modeling I do a lot of overviewing with students. This consist of activating students prior knowledge and figuring out how it relates to the text. Also, I have students notice important heading, captions, etc. I model this with students when we do a close read with a non-fiction piece of text, as well as, in small group guided reading instruction.

One strategy that I have used from the book effectively during my small group guided reading is building background knowledge of nonfiction features. I used this last year towards the end of the school year students who were reading on a first grade reading level. Students were required to compile in a small book the features from non-fiction text. We included things like captions and comparisons. The students enjoyed doing this and it taught them how to look closely at different text features.

The strategy called coding important information on unfamiliar as well as familiar topics is one that I would like to try with my students together. I would not expect them to be able to do this independently at this time of the school year seeing as how many of them cannot read. I would use this strategy with my students and let them come up and put their sticky note in the book when they learn something new. As they come up to put their sticky notes in the book I would have them explain to us the new thing they learned.

Overall, I felt many of the strategies in the book were geared towards students who are in higher grades. As a teacher, I know I can always modify a strategy to use with my kindergarten students. A lot of what students learn at this level is through modeling, support, and guidance. With scaffolding I am sure some of my students would be able to complete some of the strategies on their own, while others may still need help. 

Discussion 4

Visualizing and inferring are something I use with my kindergarten students on a daily basis. I enjoyed reading this chapter and getting some new strategies to implement with my students. I like how the text explained that visualizing and inferring are written about in one chapter because when we visualizing we are inferring with mental images rather than words. They do not occur in isolation but instead together.

The first strategy I found I would like to use in my classroom is visualizing with wordless picture books. With this strategy you show students the picture book and then choose a page where students have to visualize what happened between the current page and the next. By having students do this a teacher can find where students have misconceptions. The goal is not to have students go too far afield because the purpose of visualizing is to help them better understand the actual text.

Another strategy I would like to try with my students is visualizing from a vivid piece of text. As a kindergarten teacher I would read students a piece of text and then have them draw a picture of what they were visualizing in their minds. I think this is great to use with kindergarten because all of the books we read them have pictures which go along with the story. This will allow students to visualize all on their own and tell the teacher whether the student is understanding the text or not.

Inferring feelings with kindergarteners was yet another of the many strategies I want to try! Here you give students feeling cards taped to the back of their shirt. Students have to go around and find someone to act out their feeling and they have to guess it. Students help by giving clues and then the student with the card on their back must infer what feeling is posted on their back. You could also use this with a variety of other cards, not just feeling cards.

Overall teacher in a classroom with the majority of students being ELL, using visualizing and inferring is essential to help students learn how to comprehend text. This goes right along with background knowledge and offers strategies to strengthen many areas in reading. By trying these strategies I will quickly know which students are lacking in background knowledge and still need more instruction.