When reading Chapter 2 in “Teaching the Best Practice Way”, the section entitled “We’re All In This Together” has stuck with me. The authors state that many of your math, history, and science teachers cringe when faced with “possibly having to be teachers of reading” as well. They are too polite to say it, but they are thinking that their plates are already full with what they are expected to teach and they don’t have to the time to help the reading teachers do their job. Daniels and Bizar are quick to say, “Yes, you are not primarily a teacher of reading, but you are a teacher of ideas and concepts and procedures and traditions of your chosen subject-matter field.” You are teaching your students to think, but the road to thinking in any of these disciplines goes through text, whether that means print, artwork, or images. If students aren’t thinking effectively while they read, they aren’t going to understand or remember the vital math or social studies or art or science content.
We are truly in it together. It takes an army to educate a child to think effectively. No one teacher can do it on their own. We must teach our students the strategies needed to gain these thinking skills. The strategies must start simple as the example of “Terrie Bridgman’s first grade class” (p. 43- first full paragraph) or more complex as in “Tina Peano’s high school class” (p. 43- second paragraph). Our students must constantly be taught thinking strategies across all subject areas in order to succeed in school. “Teachers are always helping their students go deeper, constantly expanding and refining their thinking skills”.
Yep, this is where integrating the curriculum comes in. Every teacher is a reading teacher - whether they teach science, math, social studies, etc. Reading is everywhere. And yes, children need to learn to think effectively.
ReplyDeleteWe are all in it together! It takes every teacher that a child has to help them expand on their thinking skills. Like you said, they first start out simple and progress to more complexity throughout the years.
ReplyDeleteAshley we are all in this together as teachers because our students deserve to get the best education that we can provide for them. For years I have incorporated reading in my music classes. I have to teach every grade level in my school and have taught every grade Pre-k through 12th and even some college over the years. When they say reading is fundamental they are not kidding. I have seen students struggle in every grade and I struggled personally with reading when I was a child. I was part of a “new” program when I started school that only used word recognition and purposely did not use phonics to see what would happen to the students. Well what happened was that I could not read at the end of second grade. My mother went to the principal of our school (who was a family friend) and asked him for some books on phonics. She showed me the books during the summer and taught me the sounds. When I went back to school at the beginning of third grade and was tested, I had a 7th grade reading level. The moral of the story is that we should not only teach reading, but be persistent enough to find the right strategy for each child. Obviously my 1st and 2nd grade teachers were just following the mandated protocol when they tried to teach with word recognition but it did not work for me. What would have happened to me had I not had a mother who cared and who was smart enough to take action?
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