Chapter 1 and 2 Review

These chapters were highly informative for me when I think about the kind of teacher I want to be. I want to be able to help build the toolbox in my student’s minds that they can use to better understand difficult texts. 

One thing that struck out to me was the two very different stories of reading and learning. The first story was very proactive in getting the students to use multiple sources in understanding the concepts of the lesson. The teachers taught the students ways to better understand the concepts that were prevalent in modern day. The other story, Mr. Cosgrove's lesson on photosynthesis, was a laid back approach to teach the students the material. His class reminded me of the classes that I really disliked when I was in high school. In my opinion, I find that teachers should implement a combination of these two stories and methods of teaching their students. A cross subject project may not be conducive to every school and group of students, and also a teacher shouldn’t only assign readings and not really discuss the topics. If a teacher can find a way to take the better parts from both of these stories, I believe the students could benefit greatly. By assigning reading from different genres of literature such as books, journals, articles, newspapers, and magazines, the students could better understand topics.

 

I found that I was highlighting and underlining things in the chapters that I learned I was subconsciously doing because I am an advanced reader. It was a reminder for me to think that the things that come easy to me have to be taught and explained to the students. It really makes you think about your previous schooling and teachers and how they built these unconscious actions in my head. I’ve been doing things with the text that I didn’t know I was doing and were scientifically proven to help readers perform better. 

I am looking forward to finishing this book because I know that I can learn a lot about how to help my students become better readers. After reading the first two chapters, I can tell that the information presented is not to be looked over, but instead learn and implement in classrooms.