Welcome, all educators to my language arts blog!
Thank you for reading my second blog post!
This week, I will be focusing on the Reading strand of language arts. This is a crucial strand within language arts, as a lot of children despise reading, fall behind in reading and some don't learn how to do it correctly as everyone learns in different ways. Therefore today I will be teaching you, educators, how to teach different types of reading to your students. One of the most important pieces that I hope you take and possibly explore further from my post today is the article, Text Structure Strategies for Improving Expository Reading Comprehension. This article will help you as an educator in more ways than I explain in this post (KEEP IT HANDY - for future reference). Secondly, I will teach you a couple of ways/ activities I have found to engage your students and make them want to read.
The Article You Want To Know About:
In my opinion, the key messages in the article entitled Text Structure Strategies for Improving Expository Reading Comprehension are to provide educator’s research as well as strategies for teaching the expository text. I cannot attach the article due to copyright issues, but with the title and authors provided you are able to search to find the resource.
This reading using multiple exemplars throughout the article, these will aid teachers as they can use these exemplars as a guide for teaching the concept. For instance, when teaching expository work there are different categories, such as; technical vocabulary, high density of facts, unfamiliar content, as well as cognitively demanding concepts. All of which teachers/ educators should know how to best teach their students, whether it be through extracting texts from expository texts or re-writing these texts so students are able to decipher them. They can also use other strategies such as signal words, summarizing and graphic organizers, all of which this article explains further how to do. Therefore, with these exemplars and research, educators should use assessments to determine the best way for their student’s grade levels to learn expository texts.
This reading using multiple exemplars throughout the article, these will aid teachers as they can use these exemplars as a guide for teaching the concept. For instance, when teaching expository work there are different categories, such as; technical vocabulary, high density of facts, unfamiliar content, as well as cognitively demanding concepts. All of which teachers/ educators should know how to best teach their students, whether it be through extracting texts from expository texts or re-writing these texts so students are able to decipher them. They can also use other strategies such as signal words, summarizing and graphic organizers, all of which this article explains further how to do. Therefore, with these exemplars and research, educators should use assessments to determine the best way for their student’s grade levels to learn expository texts.
This feature article connects to the Ontario Curriculum, through multiple grade levels; in specific to the junior intermediate grade levels it connects to grade 5 using exemplars. Within the article, authors Roehling, Hebert, Nelson and Bohaty state, “ Of course, teachers can make the assessment more challenging for older students. As another example, Bohaty (2015) assessed fourth and fifth graders’ identification skills with a 15-item measure. Each item consisted of a short passage followed by five multiple-choice options: simple description, compare and contrast, sequence, cause and effect, and problem and solution. Students first read the passage and then decided which of the five text structures it best represented” (Pg. 77). In the Ontario Curriculum, at the grade 5 level, within the Overall expectations, students are expected to use a range of strategies to create meaning, as well as use informational texts (Ministry of Education, 2006, p. 97). All of which this great article explains how to do! In addition, within the specific expectations, students are expected to know how to; use a variety of informational texts, identify the purpose of reading, make connections within the text comparing it to experiences, summarize ideas, make inferences, as well as connecting the work to other works (Ministry of Education, 2006, p. 97). This article explains can be assessed by teachers and increases in difficulty as the grade level increases to test their knowledge.
Be sure to check this source out as it contains some great examples!
Engaging Students in Reading:
Speed Dating Books:
Within this site, I found a great idea that engages students to read, and sometimes read outside of their comfort zone, because we all have one of those when it comes to reading. This activity is called Speed Dating Books. I found it to be great, as you select books and wrap them all in a wrapping paper, and then write something about the book on it (TVO Teach Ontario, 2016).
(TVO Teach Ontario, 2016)
That way, students are solely selecting the book based on that small tidbit of information that has engaged them, it is fun and engaging for students to see the surprise of what they receive (TVO Teach Ontario, 2016).
Learning Vocabulary Through Play:
This is another source I found to be very engaging for students and informative for teachers. Students and people in general learn most from conversations with others (Peterson, 2016, p. 1-3). Therefore, this method of learning and introducing words to students and having them play and solve problems using these words will teach you what they know through observing them (Peterson, 2016, p. 1-3). As well, it will teach them more about the topics being taught to them, as they will learn from one another.
