I found Pauline Gibbons' chapter "Reading in a Second Language" to be probably the must useful portion of reading that I have engaged in so far throughout this semester. I found it to be very informative in regards to how I as a future teacher can better meet the needs of students who are learning English as a second language. In addition to this I found the suggestions for activities and strategies to incorporate in your lessons before, during, and after reading to be very helpful.
Many of the activities and strategies mentioned within the text are ones that I deem to be very useful in the classroom as they are wonderful suggestions for building comprehension and deriving meaning from the text. After reading this chapter I realized how many of these strategies my CT uses when reading with her students, or when preparing her students to read a text. Always before diving into a book with her students she is sure to get students thinking about the text either by having students predict what the text could be about and by relating the text to students' prior knowledge, to name a couple. During reading she is sure to be enthusiastic, "bringing the text to life" and getting the students attention, as well as their approval (Gibbons 87). Post-reading activities commonly include reflecting on, and summarizing the text to check for students' comprehension or by providing the students with a prompt related to the text in which they write and support their writing with a drawing. These are just a few of the strategies i had been subconsciously taking for granted as i observed my CT reading with students and assisting student reading.
Another aspect of this chapter that I really liked was Gibbons' talk about incorporating the illustrations of the text both before and during reading. Many times the illustrations within the text can be overlooked by teachers, while to the students this is one of the most important aspects of the book. It is true that students use the illustrations to help make meaning from the text; this can be one of the most effective meaning-building strategies that is often not linked to the text. This can especially be helpful when considering ESL students and the difficulty they experience when trying to make meaning from an unfamiliar language (86).
One of my favorite quotes from the chapter is "Good readers read for pleasure, to extend their worldview, to read more about what interests them, or to find out things they want or need to know about" (98). I think that this one excerpt can really help when trying to help my students' (ESL or native speaker) abilities to read. I think that this needs to be the goal of each teacher. If you are capable of structuring/scaffolding a learning environment where students are reading because they want to then you are doing your role as an educator.
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Hey Nick,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear that you get to see some of Gibbons' strategies in real life. I'm particularly intrigued by your CT's (and, for that matter, Gibbons') post-reading activities, since I don't see too many of those in my classroom. Prompting the students to write something and create their own drawing based on something in the text... that's awesome! My CT usually stops her reading lesson with a very brief summary; I don't think the students are getting the application/closure time they need.
You're right: discussing the pictures really IS helpful for ESL students in an extra way. The illustration itself gives them something that can help them understand what the text is saying; discussing this illustration can help them hear synonyms to words used in the text. And I agree with your picking the quote about reading for pleasure and information. Sometimes, when we think about teaching children to read, we focus so much on fluency and comprehension that we risk losing the reason of why people want or need to read in the first place: because it is fun (or it should be), and because it helps us learn about the world around us. Thanks for your insights, Nick.
Dave Koch