Thoughts on SMART Reading, teaching across age groups
Hey everybody,
A big thanks to Marin for her presentation on the SMART Reading System; I keep hearing about it, so it seems like it's a good methodology to be aware of. Here are a few of my reactions:
-I like the fact that it gets students to engage throughout the reading process by making predictions and writing about their understanding of the text as it unfolds. Far too often in highschool, I would read through a text fairly uncritically and cursorily and then get to the end wondering "What on earth was THAT about?" I kept expecting that finishing the text would suddenly make everything come clear, but since I hadn't been thinking very deeply as I went along, that never really happened. It's important for students to realize that interpreting a text is a process that is integrated with the act of reading itself, not a separate process you go through after you've finished reading.
-That said, the breaking up of the text into sections doesn't really prompt a holistic approach to understanding it. This could easily be remedied by adding a stage where the students re-read (as preposterous as many students might find this idea--better get used to it!) and answer some questions about how the ideas in the entire text fit together.
-The biggest limitation of the system, as I see it, is the "smarking" (as Madelaine put it). Without a lot of written explanation, it would be nearly impossible to tell what positive aspect of the writing the highlighting is supposed to indicate, and if you're going to write a lot, what's the point of the highlighting anyway? I also think that progress would also be hard to track with a highlighting system (presumably, the approximate ratio of highlighted to non-highlighted bits would remain fairly constant regardless of the specific strengths and problem areas in the writing?)
On a different note, I was kind of disappointed in the article on teaching across age groups, because I sort of assumed from the title that it would deal with age diversity within a single classroom (at Lord Byng, my ESL classes have students ranging from Grade 8 to 11!). I also thought the article essentialized what it means to be a "teenager" according to North American stereotypes ("age of transition, confusion, self-consciousness" [92]) ... I would have liked to see some acknowledgement that there are different cultural constructions of what it means to be a teenager. (Even in the West, adolescence as we know it is a fairly recent development; not all societies have a period between puberty and entry into the full-time workforce, and even those that do assign a variety of meanings to this period.) So, not only are ESL teachers likely to have to work with students of various biological ages, but they may also come up against a whole range of socio-cultural ages, even within a single classroom. Sounds complex, to say the least. I was also a little frustrated that the article about teaching learners of different levels of English proficiency glosssed over the difficulties involved in multi-level classrooms: "that diversity can work to your advantage with carefully designed activities that capitalize on differences among students" (108). Okay, sounds great--but can we get some concrete suggestions here?
A big thanks to Marin for her presentation on the SMART Reading System; I keep hearing about it, so it seems like it's a good methodology to be aware of. Here are a few of my reactions:
-I like the fact that it gets students to engage throughout the reading process by making predictions and writing about their understanding of the text as it unfolds. Far too often in highschool, I would read through a text fairly uncritically and cursorily and then get to the end wondering "What on earth was THAT about?" I kept expecting that finishing the text would suddenly make everything come clear, but since I hadn't been thinking very deeply as I went along, that never really happened. It's important for students to realize that interpreting a text is a process that is integrated with the act of reading itself, not a separate process you go through after you've finished reading.
-That said, the breaking up of the text into sections doesn't really prompt a holistic approach to understanding it. This could easily be remedied by adding a stage where the students re-read (as preposterous as many students might find this idea--better get used to it!) and answer some questions about how the ideas in the entire text fit together.
-The biggest limitation of the system, as I see it, is the "smarking" (as Madelaine put it). Without a lot of written explanation, it would be nearly impossible to tell what positive aspect of the writing the highlighting is supposed to indicate, and if you're going to write a lot, what's the point of the highlighting anyway? I also think that progress would also be hard to track with a highlighting system (presumably, the approximate ratio of highlighted to non-highlighted bits would remain fairly constant regardless of the specific strengths and problem areas in the writing?)
On a different note, I was kind of disappointed in the article on teaching across age groups, because I sort of assumed from the title that it would deal with age diversity within a single classroom (at Lord Byng, my ESL classes have students ranging from Grade 8 to 11!). I also thought the article essentialized what it means to be a "teenager" according to North American stereotypes ("age of transition, confusion, self-consciousness" [92]) ... I would have liked to see some acknowledgement that there are different cultural constructions of what it means to be a teenager. (Even in the West, adolescence as we know it is a fairly recent development; not all societies have a period between puberty and entry into the full-time workforce, and even those that do assign a variety of meanings to this period.) So, not only are ESL teachers likely to have to work with students of various biological ages, but they may also come up against a whole range of socio-cultural ages, even within a single classroom. Sounds complex, to say the least. I was also a little frustrated that the article about teaching learners of different levels of English proficiency glosssed over the difficulties involved in multi-level classrooms: "that diversity can work to your advantage with carefully designed activities that capitalize on differences among students" (108). Okay, sounds great--but can we get some concrete suggestions here?
posted by Alana Chuk at 8:09 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home