Reflection 8

In the first article I read for this week, Laura Pardo’s “What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Comprehension”, I found that, just as when we were discussing fluency in our previous class, I truly like the idea of incorporating small performances or pieces of theater into the classroom in order to encourage overall fluency. Such activities provide students not only the opportunity to work on their own fluency, but also the chance to listen to their peers our their teacher as they speak. Additionally, I found that the appropriate amount of emphasis was placed upon how critical it is for students to be able to associate the words and meanings they gain during and for school to events, people, and times outside of the classroom. Students need to be capable of utilizing the words gained for tests and quizzes in daily life outside of school hours. Lastly, the idea that teachers will gradually relinquish responsibility of the application of strategies to the students seemed a beneficial method of slowly allowing the students to demonstrate and employ what they have learned. Though, once again, I think it is necessary to remember what Pardo stated about the process, “Teachers and students do not always progress in a linear way, but often slip back and forth between more and less responsibility depending on the task, the text, and the strategy” (Pardo, 2004, p. 278).

In Greenwood and Flanigan’s work “Overlapping Vocabulary and Comprehension: Context Clues Complement Semantic Gradients”, it was interesting to read how many words individuals will learn in a more incidental fashion rather than when they are explicitly taught. Moreover, it seemed appropriate that the author’s stressed the concept of “gradually becom[ing] aware that authors choose their words carefully. Writers are at times subtle and economical in their word choices, leaking information on to the page carefully, purposefully–yet at other times gushing information in a torrent of words” (Greenwood & Flanigan, 2007, p. 249). While sometimes a, perhaps, difficult notion to adequately convey, it is highly important that readers realize the significance of the diction used by the author. A slightly different word has the capacity to change the meaning and interpretation of a portion of text. Finally, the use of the semantic gradient appears an entirely apt manner of communicating the aforementioned idea.

From classrooms that work, I found two different activities that I might use, in particular, the first of which was the KWL chart. With this table, students can attempt to exhibit what knowledge they already have and what they hope to discover. Furthermore, it provides the teacher the opportunity to see whether or not students are gleaning from the text or topic being discussed what they should be. Also, writing out various questions on the beach ball in order to create a smidge of enthusiasm as it is passed about, while still permitting the students to display their comprehension, seemed, to me, to be a unique learning venture.