The current adolescent readers have grown up in a time where anything they want can be found with just a click of a button. The access they have to all information has dulled them to the things that take time to get through and process. Due to their access to anything at a click they only want to spend time on things that can give them instant gratification. When it comes to reading, students will just find the short version or a video that covers the same reading material. Students do not understand the disservice they are giving themselves in not allowing their minds do the processing instead of the PC. From the immediacy that they achieve in many aspects of their lives, adolescent readers do not know how to take time and read the things given to them in classes. They read quickly which prevents them from actually seeing what they are reading. When reading in different content areas, skim reading will never allow students to even prick the surface of what the reading is discussing.
Content literacy is subject that I feel that I just learned as I went. It was a lot of trial and error and I still make a lot of mistakes. I am seeing the importance of exposing and teaching students how to read in different content areas. It is important because students today have access to the Internet and the intentions of writers online need to be known to make informed decisions on their opinions. Even though students are reading less tangible books they are still reading, but their readings are opinions and ideas of people all over the world.
In my content area, Chemistry, reading articles is an art that I am still trying to master. Reading chemistry articles can take hours because each sentence is filled with important information. I have learned that reading the abstract and conclusions of an article is the best place to start reading. By reading these two sections first you are able to find the things that you need to be looking for as you read rest of the article. Also, note taking is extremely important. After each sentence and paragraph, you need to ask yourself what was important about it and what does this show me. After asking these questions, writing down the answers and then writing points about how this aids in understanding or if it created even more confusion. If it created more confusion then figuring out why it was confusing is the next task. Typically the reason is because the vocabulary used was unfamiliar. It takes a lot of time to read a Chemistry, or any science article. However, if students are able to learn the way to go through an article, the task of reading the article becomes a little less difficult.
From my experience and the things I have been taught the best way to effectively read in my discipline is to:
1) Get some background information: Going in blind will not be to your benefit.
2) Read slowly!
3) Take a lot of notes
4) Don’t understand something: STOP! Look up words or ask someone to help clarify a few things
5) Read the abstract and conclusion first
6) Graphs, Figures, and Tables actually help to look at
Sorry, this doesn't really flow but I wanted to make sure that I got all my ideas down.
I completely agree with you about the article reading. The experience was the same for me the first time I read a scientific article. I could not understand what was going on! There were a couple of semesters in college where I just did the best job of reading the articles that I could and I simply "got by". Then, as a more complete understanding was needed, I discovered the same method that you describe here. I would simply read the abstract and the conclusion and then determine what the main concept was before reading the entire article. I think that you will do your high school students a great service if you teach them the "tricks" of reading within the Science content. This is especially true for the Scientific articles. I also really think that the steps that you list at the end of your post will truly be helpful; however, I think that it will be difficult to make your students see the benefit of actually using them. I know that when I was a teenager, I always thought that I knew better than the teachers. Hopefully we will keep learning strategies in this class that will make learning to read in the content more popular!
ReplyDeleteYour list of effective reading steps works not only for a Science content, it can also be applied to all the areas that we are focusing on. Besides the one for graphs these are all suggestions that I would give to my future history students. While reading in the social sciences is admittedly not as difficult as reading science texts, the basic reading tenants are the same. I also think that you get to the heart of the matter when you say that the students are letting the PC process for them rather than exercising their brains. One of the best suggestions here is the read slowly comment. I think that students, when they actually read, often try to get done as fast as they can. If we can actually get them to do the reading and do it properly, I believe we will all be better teachers for it.
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