I sincerely apologize for my extended absence from the blog community of LLSS 538. I have been away sponging up methodologies and hearing narratives from others in the educational trenches. From last Tuesday until yesterday, I was in Dallas, Texas at the AVID Summer Institute.
I learned from this trip that we need to create experiences in our classroom where students can share knowledge but also question when learning is difficult. This theme ties into Rosenblatt, because it is all about the exchange between the text and themselves and what each of us bring to it. It works with Gee's theory of Discourse by our personal experiences and how envision the text. With the Mosaic of Thought, all of our kids come with experiences and certain expertise. As teachers, we need to find it and pull it out them through inquiry and guidance.
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| The Site Team at Los Lunas Middle School. They inspire me on campus everyday! It is always great to reconnect with them outside the walls of our classrooms! |
Back to Proust and the Squid...
In the first chapter, Maryanne Wolf started off with a bang. The first sentence blew my mind and centralize on a concept I would have never considered. "We were never born to read." Let that process for a second... How could a class like this one ever exist? All we do is read and write. But, we were never born to read.
How did it ever start? Could you just imagine the early conversations? The drawing in the dirt? Although, it is still a toss up if it was the Sumerians or the Egyptians, I don't think they realized what a kind of crazy impact their early inquiry would make on the generations to come.
| This is an example of the early Sumerian writings. |
Growing up in the Christian church, I had to know the connection to what I was reading and to the Bible. I asked my pastor where the two connect. Through explaining to him what I was reading, he told me Abraham was a Sumerian and possibly played a role in the early written language. Again. Mind blown.
She (Wolf) continued to explain reading is formed by experiences. Considering this, reading has obviously changed in the last 3000 years. On a more personal level, when I think about my early reading, not only was it shaped around the connections with the words but the people who helped me in those connections. I remember all the mornings when my grandfather would read aloud the newspaper or my mom taking me to the library. I don't remember the headlines or the plots, but I remember the relationships.
Later in the chapter, she went all neuroscientist on me! I am sure if my brain was being scanned, it would have looked like the Fourth of July, up in here!!!
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| A little of this... |
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| Or a little of that... |
A few AHA moments occurred... This section made me what to close the book and not open it again. I could hear my students' whiny voices; "Mrs. Ridley, it's too hard..." But, what does any good reader do? Slow down, look up the words they don't know and keep reading. Slow but sure, the light bulbs began to flicker.
It was about all the neurons firing or the lobes of the brain coming together, it was about the brain changing to take in and process text. From there, being able to extend our thought process.
Until later.
Thanks for sharing about your teaching trip; I'm sure you got a lot of great information! The point that we were never born to read is quite surprising. The author of the book you're reading and the author of my book "Reading to Live" by Lorraine Wilson seem to have some ideas in common. It makes sense to me that the skill of reading is formed by experiences. We all learn to read differently because we all have different experiences growing up. You're picture examples are entertaining!
ReplyDeleteI am not an AVID teacher, but I use the AVID strategies in my class all the time.
ReplyDeleteOn my very first day of teaching I ran into a former teacher, who gave me her AVID handbook. It had all of her notes in it. It was neat to see the planning she did when teaching me (most likely).
I still have that handbook and use it regularly. Plus, my cousin is a new teacher and just last night I was sharing the book with her.
That is great that you were able to attend the AVID conference in Dallas and learn new strategies to keep yourself and your students interested. These types of conferences can give teachers great new ideas and information.
ReplyDeleteI like how you were able to connect your reading and learning with the Bible and even asked your pastor for reference.
Great blog, keep it up and I look forward to reading more.
Wow!! I am not sure if your book is really that interesting, or if it is your vivid and fun writing style. Either way, I think that you brought up a really key point that I have seen again and again. That is that we have to create experiences and environments that support the creation of knowledge. Ensuring that all students feel safe to question the pieces that they don't understand is key. I remember being in classes when I would either sink or swim, but would certainly not risk looking like an idiot by asking a question out loud. Looking back I wonder how many others might have shared those questions and not spoken up for the same reasons. Something else you mentioned is identifying those words that we are not familiar with and taking the initiative to look them up. This is not something we naturally do, just like reading in general; as you pointed out. However, it is a skill and tool that we should teach out students, because by doing this they can gain so much more from the text.
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