Thursday, January 17, 2008
In Need of Advice
This past semester I incorporated independent reading as part of my class activities in my Spanish classes. Two days per week my students had to read for 10-15 minutes. In addition, they had to fill in a sheet summarizing the book and showing me a few things they learned while reading the book. I was just wondering how often and for how long others (especially non-English classes) have their students to read independently. Also, what do you do to hold students responsible for learning during this independent reading time? Any advice would be much appreciated!! :)
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4 comments:
This is something I'm planning to do with my French II class this semester. There are few activities that come to my mind at this moment do to hold the students responsible for their reading and some of them may work well or not depending on the student's level.
You may ask your students to make a list of a new vocabulary that they found in their story. You may also ask them to share what they have read with a partner or the class and give their opinion about the book (recommend it or not to their classmate to read). As a homework, students may create a poster representing their reading and present it to the class. Spanish III and IV may do double entry journals ;-)) I'm planning to give my students 15-20 minutes for reading and about 10 minutes for the "after reading activities".
Tonya & Yelena,
I think that if we put too many restrictions on FREE reading time that more we encourage students' dislike of reading. This semester, I am going to have my Drama students read from articles in professional theater magazines. To meet the accountability need, I am going to have a reading log, one or two sentence summarizing what they read that day and then that will hopefully help them pick up the next day too. Now with independent reading, you could do kind of a socratic seminar situation where everyone in the group is responsible for offering a reflection on what they have read. Since EVERYONE must contribute to the discussion, it will be easy to tell who read and who did not. Develop a rubric that specifically details what you expect from their contribution (i.e. two substantial comments describing what they read etc...)
Thank you for your input. I like the Socratic Seminar idea. I think that I might try it.
I like your ideas on holding students accountable for their silent reading. I teach special needs and sometimes they think they can 'fake' read. I think also that this is not limited to my students. If they know that they are going to be responsible and share their views on what they read, they may buy into doing it. For my students, the oral discussion may be better. I also like the idea of a poster or some sort of visual. Has anyone heard of symbolic borders? You have the students write a brief summary of what they read in the middle of the paper. On the borders, they draw items that are important in what they read. Ex. Sign of the Beaver- they could draw arrows, gun, dog, a book, etc. on the borders. This is a visual way to check for understanding of what was read or if it was read and students, I have found, like doing this.
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