EDC 532 Reading Reflection #1:

STRATEGIC AND ENGAGED READERS

What makes a reader strategic (as they make sense of printed text)? How do more strategic readers differ from less strategic readers?

In order for the reader to have a strategy, it would require that they understand a purpose for the text the read prior to reading.  This is important to distinguish early as for this writing will only dwell in the instruction of academic reading, not pleasure. A Nabokov lecture titled Good Readers and Good Writers is one of the earliest texts newly initiated AP Language and Composition teacher work through during our College Board Seminars.  Nabokov intuited the basic research findings from our first week’s readings by arguing that  "one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader."  In the essay, he reminded his audience that reading is a deliberate act and in order to maximize the true enchantment and art that the great works provide.  What Nabokov advocated for college students for Flaubert is strategically no different than what a science teacher should require while reading a passage about cephalopods.  As Snow asserts from our Week 2 reading, we “need to teach literacy skills all day long.” and the road to appreciate Flaubert is forged through strategic habits while reading about squids in 3rd grade.  My sense of a less strategic reader is that this particular reader has no intent (perhaps no priming for the particular context they are reading) and perhaps coupled with no formal meta-cognition habits.  Snow writes of “fix it” strategies for meaning breakdowns, but how would one even know how to use this approach if they were never introduced to it? A screwdriver could be used for scratching a head but to understand the function/ application of a tool is to also maximize its support to us.  This lack of exposure to “fix its” or lack of imagination clearly burden the less strategic reader.

What does it mean for a reader to be engaged? Can teachers/librarians foster engagement in strategic reading?

The act of holding a book and eyes passing over the pages is not evidence enough for engagement.  Depending on which leap of a Vygotsky ZPD, a reader will be engaged depending on the task. The opening bullet points from Duke and Pearson provide the full buffet of what good readers do but good is not exactly engaged reading.  Snow also bullets a list of stages of engaged reading (existing knowledge is activated, new information and experience are related to existing knowledge, intrinsic motivation is developed…) I stop after the 3rd listed bullet point because this is clearly the lynchpin reaching to build new knowledge and then applying, evaluating, and revising this new knowledge.  Snow states that engaged readers are social to the extent that we may use what is learned in what we read and use it as a type of currency with our peers. Look no further than the immediate sharing of content from Twitter and Facebook in order to understand that the reciprocal flow of information is uniquely human. There is no greater engaged reader than such a breathless share of a meme or news story via these platforms.

Teachers can foster engagement if they can model the desired strategy and outcome in a myriad of ways.  Text selection of course must be well within the class’s ZPD in order to help this process along. Yet, this is only for what we provide to the students.  The risk is sending off students to select their own texts that have relevance and quality to hit the desired reading targets. The reward is engaged reading.  If we can get at the same skills reading about NFL or Egypt, the hope is that the habits becomes entrenched and can be transferable during the eventual assessments.

What appears to be some of the key research that informs how we currently define reading comprehension and how to teach it to learners of various ages?

The research that interests me for its potential model best habits of mind are Think Alouds of Bereiter and Bird and the Silven and Vauras.  The shared meta-cognition modeling appears to be the best approach as the results were impressive. This pushed me to search for more examples of this technique as I only use a strategy that I develop which basically mirrors what I do when I confront a text.  A quick search of the Teaching Channel for Think Aloud strategies netted many results.  While I was thinking of it, I cast a wide net into Youtube with a similar search term and found even more teacher generated strategies for future reflection.  

The other research that looks intriguing to me is Boyd & Ellison, Forte and Bruckman, and Lewis and Fabos (reference in chapter 1 of Johnson) about the "reciprocity between reading and writing when writing and communicating on the internet." Whatever connection to the success path of unlocking the practice of analyzing reading and mapping it over to effective writing is the core pursuit of what I do in AP Language and Composition. if there is a better method, I want to know as the blade of expression can always be sharpened.

CONNECTIONS

What connections do you see across the texts and ideas?

via GIPHY

Perhaps to a fault, most observations I make become a metaphor.  The connections I see over these readings resemble a nesting doll to me.  If done right, all parts comprehension are built upon each other. Starting with the RAND research, it continues to be an anchor study for much of the readings.  This makes sense as it was perhaps the first NGO and non-university affiliated entity to confront reading comprehension and marshaled a unique set of academic perspectives into this report.  However, most essential was what it established with foundational blocks reading comprehension with text, reader, activity, and socio-cultural context. While it appears obvious after the fact, these four parts serve as essential considerations for comprehension design regardless of the medium: print or digital.  The next layer of the nesting dolls metaphor of reading connections is that several of the reading advise upon distinct observations about the habits/strategies of successful readers coupled with the tools that teachers can use to lead them to the most essential stage of engaged learning- intrinsically motivated reading.  If teachers can somehow thread the needle to keep students towards intrinsic reading, The last layer of the doll is to deliver our students to true reading independence via reciprocal reading. The strategies inherent with reciprocal reading allow for teachings to leverage their release of students to more confident reading.  Words like regulation and impulse are twin challenges for students to be graduates from reciprocal reading strategies.  We can't let go too early...

via GIPHY

What connections do you see between these ideas and things happening in your teaching/learning/working context? Teaching practices? Learner behaviors? Classroom, library (or other setting) climates?

I have taught AP Language and Composition for the past 7 years and most of my explicit preparation via College Board paired with implicit intuition of what works best with the curriculum has tilted towards the CORI principles.  Hopefully, I modeled an activity that captured the spirit of CORI principles applied to a sentence structure.  My pull towards CORI is born out of necessity as the nature of AP Language and Composition is a nearly impossible course to design.  AP courses like AP U.S. History/ Government/ or World History are driven by content. Students memorize facts and apply some strategy in the recall of this information on the exam.  In contrast, the AP Language exam is entirely skill-driven as the multiple choice readings and essay prompts are cold to the students. This demands that I figure out the best heuristics for them to process all possible scenarios that could show up on the exam.  In this case, student achievement really is bracketed by conceptual knowledge of rhetoric and student strategy use to process these readings and prompts are imperative. I have some intuition to the CORI principles driven by the scarcity of actual content for preparation but now I see that I can be more mindful about closing out the circle during my activity design. (Figure 1.2) What is sometimes difficult is to find the balance of my explicit directions of these strategies of reading (eventually leading to better writing outcomes) and delivering them to the intrinsic element of this process.  Teaching applied grammar and writing style can be the brussel sprouts of instruction but it is essential for the eventual transfer of it as a writing goal.

IMPLICATIONS/QUESTIONS/CRITIQUES

What implications do these ideas have for your work in education? Again, try to focus your attention on offline comprehension rather than moving to more digital, web-based practices.

Without considering the shift into the inevitable digital dominance, we were already at a convergence with how we tackle comprehension as the worlds of cognitive science and compounding years of institutional energy have laid out core factors for success.  Consider the various bullet lists provided in the Duke and Pearson chapters and from Swan and we the essential approach to better comprehension and engaged reading will be same regardless of the medium of the text. Again, even if there was no such tsunami of digital literacy challenges/opportunities off our shores, there are significant paradigm shifts that need to be initiated for the goal of better comprehension.  The implication may be how can philosophy, habits, and comfort of veteran teachers be un-calcified towards their common approach to reading? We get it because we are here learning about how to sharpen our practice; however, how to persuade our colleagues will be the challenge. Top-down initiatives have a tendency to be met with reluctance at best and open revolt if not properly couched to those that are needed to implement a new policy.  If teachers see that it can work and it still allows for their autonomy in their craft as a teacher, I have faith big changes can occur.

What questions do you have? (e.g., clarifying terms, broader applications, extended wonderings, critiques)

I was talking to a colleague yesterday who shared with me her anecdotal assessment that students entering into her 9th grade regular English course demonstrate lower skills than previous years.  Perhaps our situation is unique at our school but if we accept that this teacher’s impression is true, this may be the consequence of several factors. Are students finally not getting the necessary eyes on page hour count to develop vocabulary, syntax, and academic stamina because of the ratio to digital distraction?  And are the lines between code-switching between texts becoming too blurred? This is the billion dollar question as the texts shift more into the digital realm, we have to answer/ confront that this digital space frequently has consumer implications in terms of the user experience and reciprocity using it as a free resource and this consequence may in its own way impact the reading engagement and outcome.