This chapter discusses different prereading strategies that contribute to activating prior knowledge and sparking interest in our content which prepares students to approach text reading in a critical frame of mind. We know that by the time our students enter middle school, motivation to read often declines. How can we as teachers help our students to achieve meaningful reading in our content areas?
Our text gives us several strategies that we can use in our classrooms to address the declining motivation in our students. We should get to know our students in order to make connections between the text and our own students' lives. Making these connections creates engagement. It also deepens understanding because students are now able to paint a picture of what they are reading in their minds. It is also important for us to help our students understand that they are capable of generating credible responses. We should be paying attention to our students' curiousity and imagination and must understand students' backround, prior knowledge, and interests.
Before we can implement the prereading strategies that help us to activate the prior knowledge and interests of our students, we must first assess their prior knowledge. Chapter 6 of Content Area Reading tells us to use initial associations with the concept by starting discussions such as "Tell me anything that comes to mind when..." We should then reflect on the initial association by asking questions like "What made you think of....(response given by student)?" Next we should reformulate the knowledge through questions similar to "Based on our discussion and before you read the text, do you have any new ideas on...?"
When we have properly assessed the knowledge and interests of our students, we can move on to a prereading strategy. One of the strategies I plan to implement in my future Spanish classroom is making predictions. I will have my students use their initial images to make predictions about what they are going to read. Before and after the reading I will encourage my students to confirm or modify their predictions based on the reading. Students will be engaged in the reading because they will want to know what happens and compare it with what they thought would happen in the reading.
There are many activities that will help us activate our students' prior knowledge and will lead to a successful and meaningful conten-area reading experience for our students. I am excited to learn more and use them in my future classroom!
You did a great job explaining the importance of prior knowledge, especially in language learning. When students are learning another language, it is important they learn to draw on all their knowledge - using what they have learned in English or about English to facilitate their L2. Many of the activities in this chapter would be great to use in a second language classroom!
ReplyDeleteI really loved how you went through the procedure of assessing prior knowledge before working to activate it. I feel like sometimes we can forget that we need to know what the students already know before we can build on anything. You explained both parts of the procedure very well and gave great examples that will be really useful in future classrooms!
ReplyDeleteI agree with your stressed importance on building connections in order to be able to best draw on the students prior knowledge. If we don't know our students backgrounds or even a few interests, likes and dislikes, it is impossible to know what exactly their prior knowledge includes.
ReplyDeleteI also really like the idea of using predictions in the Spanish class. I was definitely thinking about how I could also incorporate these types of activities into my future Spanish classroom as well. I think it creates a great way for students to build comprehension in the language as well as giving them opportunities to develop their own higher level thinking skills in the second language.