In order to help students develop confidence and competence, research suggests that teachers need to provide systematicand explicit instruction in strategies used by mature readers and writers and help students develop declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge of
these cognitive strategies, thereby building students’ metacognitive control of specific
strategies (Baker & Brown, 1984; Paris, Lipson, & Wixon, 1983; Pressley, 2000).
It is the teacher’s responsibility to make visible for students what it is that experienced
readers and writers do when they compose; to introduce the cognitive strategies
that underlie reading and writing in meaningful contexts; and to provide
enough sustained, guided practice that students can internalize these strategies
and perform complex tasks independently (Langer & Applebee, 1986).
In their analysis of over 20 years of research on comprehension instruction,
Block and Pressley (2002) note widespread agreement among scholars that students
should be taught cognitive and metacognitive processes and that, regardless
of the program used, instruction should include modeling, scaffolding, guided
practice, and independent use of strategies so that students develop the ability to
select and implement appropriate strategies independently and to monitor and
regulate their use. Furthermore, research also suggests that when reading and writing
are taught together, they engage students in a greater use and variety of cognitive
strategies than do reading and writing taught separately (Tierney & Shanahan,
1991).
Thursday, March 13, 2008
I'm in my research meeting, and I just read this. What do you think? What does this mean for you and your future instruction?
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3 comments:
This is pretty much the exact concept that my Content Area Literacy professor has been stressing since the beginning of the semester, and it has really made me look at teacher reading and writing in a different way. Incorporating the two is the surest (is that a word? it looks weird) way for the students to comprehend the information and retain it. For instance, if they are reading something for an assignment they also need to be writing something that relates to the text (i.e. a graphic organizer, answering questions over the text, making "about, point, so what" comments in a journal, etc). There are tons of exercises out there that allow students to use reading and writing together and they help comprehension enormously.
First, I absolutely agree with the final comment about teaching reading and writing together. The two practices utilize two different thought processes and can be used to increase the effectiveness of each one individually. This why I love unit plans that have a mixture of reading and writing experiences. They tend to build on each other and allow for greater understanding to take place.
As for the first two comments, I feel inadequate responding to experts, but here it goes: I definitely think that in order to take students to a higher level of thinking, responding, learning, etc., we must guide them on that journey. My only fear with these statements is that if we aren't careful, we can squelch the freedom and creativity that students need to learn on their own and in their own way. We don't want them to simply mimick the ways of others, but use those to encourage them to deepen their own thinking and learning. But I definitely think that a balance can easily be obtained that is most effective for our students.
I do feel that teachers need to develop systematic approaches in their classroom, but do not think that we need to follow these so strictly at all times. It is nice to have procedures, but it is also nice to lack conformity. Students metacognitive and cognitive processes are important for them to realize and it is a teacher's job to make these process occur. The examples of instruction are helpful and every teacher should incorporate these into their classroom. I feel like these quotes, while a little much, are effective.
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