| EDUC 508 Pre-reading Strategy Name of Strategy: DR/TA (Directed Reading/Thinking Activity) (Billmeyer,pg107) Purpose for using this strategy: This strategy can be used as a pre-reading activity to maximize active reading techniques. It activates prior knowledge, predicting skills, and provides a framework for guided reading for difficult text. Sequence of Instruction: DR/TA is used with an accompanying worksheet that helps student to organize thoughts as they preview, then read the assigned passage. The students first preview the selection, paying attention only to graphics, headings, and sub headings. After the preview the students can fill out the first three sections of the worksheet noting what they already know about the content, and make predictions about what they think they know and think they will learn from the reading. The class can discuss these sections in groups or as a class, exposing misperceptions and hypothesizing about the reading. The students now read the entire selection validating predictions and hypotheses as information is found. The final portion of the worksheet "What I know I've learned" is completed to review and reinforce understanding. Grade Level: Secondary Printed material for this strategy: W. Lucretia, G. (1986). Life Science. U.S.A. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Publishers pg487-489 Content area and why it is appropriate: This strategy is appropriate for any age and needs only to be adapted. I think for young students this strategy would make accomplished text readers at an early age. I will use this in a secondary science class to make better use of the text. It will be most effective with chapters with many graphics that would be hard to reproduce for the class, or for longer reading selections that I want to cover efficiently but do not want my students to tackle unaided. This strategy improves reading skills while the students learn the material. Self-reflection: For my purposes as a science teacher I will use this strategy often to maximize efficiency in planned reading assignments. My goal as science teacher is to be able to use as many resources, labs, experiments, and real-life examples as possible, but I realize that a science text will be my most valuable aide and cannot be forgotten. Some topics need to be covered in the text with little aide by outside sources, and I feel a strategy like this one will be most valuable. Completing this strategy I have developed some of the standards set for this course. Practicing strategies such as this will help me "apply a variety of instructional methodologies" and "to teach and reinforce language arts" in my students. The practice of this tryout helps me to "know how to design and deliver instruction" as stated in the Connecticut Common Core of Teaching. This exercise is and a great way to practice "the formulation of hypotheses," a skill that is expected of students by The Connecticut Common Core of Learning. References: Billmeyer, R. & Barton, M.L. (1998). Teaching reading in the content area: If not me then who? Aurora, Colorado, McREL. Vacca, R.T. & Vacca J.L. (2002). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum. Boston, Allyn and Bacon. |