Why was this book worthwhile for me to read?

My book is:  Benjamin, A. (2007).  But I’m Not a Reading Teacher:  Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

This post contains my thoughts on this book, and the benefit I got from reading it.  For ease in reading, I’ve left the font black, but imagine it red, to be consistent with the other 9 blogs!

This book opened my eyes to the necessity of teaching reading in the context of a science class, or in any classroom for that matter.  I loved that it was pragmatic and gave real-world examples for math, science, social studies, English and foreign language classes.  While my content area is science, there were still viable tips and techniques in these other content areas that made sense to me.

Reading this book made me take a hard look at “traditional” methods of teaching reading.  I don’t know how wide-spread reading comprehension is explicitly taught in English classes, but I don’t believe the “connection” idea is widely taught.  This was a whole new idea for me, that avid readers connect to text.  I’m an avid reader, but I never gave any thought about why I love to escape in books.  It was eye-opening to do some thinking about how I read both fiction and textbooks.  I could see my personal strategies in her words, at least in part, but many of them were new to me.

Of greatest impact were the notions of modeling reading comprehension strategies and finding ways to connect students to the text.  Her use of specific content areas for her examples were a great to demonstrate her strategies, and gave me many ideas.  Certainly, many that I can apply for teaching reading in my science classroom.

My favorite strategies are (in no particular order):

1. Short creative writing exercises to practice using new vocabulary and subject matter in ways that the student chooses. 
2. Read “nature writing” texts to help spark interest and supplement reading the textbook.
3. Break vocabulary down into Greek and Latin origins, so these roots can be applied to different, new words later.
4. Teach the specialized test question wording and have students create test questions themselves.
5. Create graphical representations for critical areas of the content.
6. Model reading comprehension strategies.
7. Find ways to connect students to the text and the content.

I’m so glad I read this book.  Definitely worth it!  As I’ve said before, “Thanks, Amy Benjamin!”

Putting all the pieces together

My book is:  Benjamin, A. (2007).  But I’m Not a Reading Teacher:  Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Black font indicates what the author says.

Red font indicates my comments.

At the end of the book, Benjamin has a dandy chart that she calls “The Strategic Reader”. 

The Strategic Reader

Before Reading
What do I already know about this subject?	What am I reading to find out?	What do I know about the main ideas from previewing?
During Reading
What are the main pattern clusters? (Narrative, classification, comparison/contrast, process analysis)	How can I connect my life, other readings, and the world, today and in history, to this reading?	What am I visualizing and animating as I read?
After Reading
What can I create, think about, talk about, or do that will help me make sense of and remember what I just read?

This might be a great addition to the wall in a classroom, to remind students that reading is more than fluency!  I’ve highlighted my favorites.  The most powerful concept to me in this entire section (which was about half the book) was the notion of connecting prior knowledge to new knowledge, in all phases of reading.

She also has a closing section on what kinds of strategies work at schools and which ones don’t.  By far the most successful strategies are those that are student directed and selected.  The more typical practices of looking up vocabulary words to write definitions and reading a chapter to take a quiz on it immediately afterward were considered the least effective for both reading comprehension and retention.

After-Reading Strategies

My book is:  Benjamin, A. (2007).  But I’m Not a Reading Teacher:  Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Black font indicates what the author says.

Red font indicates my comments.

In an earlier blog, I talked about something Benjamin wrote, that it’s not enough to read, you have to do something afterward to make it stick.  The “something” is what she refers to as after-reading strategies.

After-reading strategies can be used to cement knowledge after reading, or even for assessments.  There are five steps to an after-reading strategy, and she urges teachers to let students decide which ones to use, to take charge of part of their learning and to appeal to the type of learning style they possess (verbal, visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, or social).  Unfortunately, she doesn’t give any examples of different strategies for the different learning styles.

1. The first step is to summarize the main idea using the key vocabulary and any pertinent relationships between the data. 
2. The second step is to note the supportive details, deciding which are most important in the process, and connect these to the main idea.  One way to help students decide which details are most important is to ask them to imagine what will be on the test.
3. The third step is to put new vocabulary in context with the new knowledge, which could be as simple as expanding definitions or simply reinforcing what students already know.
4. The fourth step is to make inferences or draw conclusions.  This requires some higher order thinking, to get students to apply their new knowledge. 
5.  The last step is internal organization, having the student identify the types of patterns found in the text.  Again, as in the discussion with during-reading strategies, I found this step to be the least helpful. 

She gave a science example of a wrap-up activity.  Students read about Mount St. Helens erupting, then had to describe another volcano somewhere in the world, and what would happen to the surrounding area if it exploded and why, based on what they’d just learned.  This helps the students to internalize what they’ve learned and utilize their new knowledge to analyze  and draw conclusions about similar situations.  Great idea!

She ended this section emphasizing yet again, the importance of connecting prior knowledge to new knowledge, calling it this time, creating links between the known and the new.  It’s significant to note that this is a common thread through all of her strategies, for before-reading, during-reading, and after-reading.  

During-Reading Strategies

My book is:  Benjamin, A. (2007).  But I’m Not a Reading Teacher:  Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Black font indicates what the author says.

Red font indicates my comments.

After the before-reading strategies comes the during-reading strategies.  The strategies for during-reading involve ways to keep the reader engaged and focused on what they’re reading, use prior knowledge, just as before-reading strategies, and also allow the reader to realize when they’re losing focus and comprehension.  I loved the way she added a strategy for when you realize you’re just not in the mood to read or you’re just staring at the pages.  She said to punt and revert to skimming.  That way when you come back to it, to do the close reading, you’ve got some basic knowledge. 

There are three during-reading strategies:  recognizing textual pattern clusters, visualizing and animating, and making connections.

There are numerous patterns found in texts.  The reason it’s important to recognize them is that the brain likes things that are organized.  Science texts rely heavily on classification, definition and example patterns, comparison & contrast, and process analysis or sequencing.  She gives several diagrams to help students organize the text, depending on the type of pattern they find.  I found some of these helpful and some not. 

Visualizing and animating text may be more common with fiction, where our imaginations and emotions run riot.  However, Benjamin does give a science example where the teacher describes wetlands and gives a demonstration to the class of how wetlands work before they read about it.  It helped bring the topic alive for them.

As with before-reading, Benjamin writes about the students connecting with the text.  She states that learning happens when we make connections of the new knowledge to prior knowledge, and that this can happen in three ways:  text-to-text (what the student is reading reminds them of something they’ve read), text-to-self (what the student is reading reminds them of their own experience, knowledge, and emotions), and text-to-world (what the student is reading reminds them of something going on in the world or in history).  This to me, was far more powerful than recognizing patterns in the text.  She lists questions for each type of connection, that at first might be cumbersome to students until they begin to occur naturally.

She gives a great example from a social studies text that describes how railroads changed America.  She asked the students to briefly think about and discuss how their lives would be different without cell phones.  Armed with a new awareness, they then read the text about how railroads changed the way America communicated and could more easily understand.

Connections should be made to any type of text, from textbooks to fiction to poetry.  She writes that readers with comprehension problems typically read 1% of a novel, then put it down because they don’t feel connected.  Perhaps nobody ever told them to ask the connection questions:  “What have I read that reminds me of this?  What has happened to me that reminds me of this?  What has happeneed in the world, today or in history, that reminds me of this?”  Benjamin is in favor of the teacher modeling the reading-for-connections process, to demonstrate how students should be thinking as they read.  The more I read this section, the more convinced I became that we don’t teach this concept when students are first learning to read.  We teach pronunciation, fluency, and how to pick out settings and character names, but not how to connect to the text. 

Feeling a connection to the text seems a simple, yet integral part of comprehension to me.  So why did it feel like such a revelation when I read about it?  Thanks again, Amy Benjamin!

Before-Reading Strategies

My book is:  Benjamin, A. (2007).  But I’m Not a Reading Teacher:  Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Black font indicates what the author says.

Red font indicates my comments.

Benjamin writes that there are three critical time frames for reading:  before-, during- and after-reading, and that there are specific strategies to increase reading comprehension at each one. 

There are three features in the before-reading strategies.  Establish a purpose for the reading, use a before-reading strategy to quickly look at the text, and connect the new knowledge to prior knowledge. 

The first step of any before-reading process is to set a purpose and expectation for the reading.  I suspect that most students would say their purpose is that the teacher told them they have to read the chapter, not something more meaningful, so most will need a little help with this.  I think it would be helpful to have a short introduction to summarize the main topic, and the basics of what the teacher wants the student to learn from the reading.  Knowing why they’re reading can help students pick out important details and facts.

Then, there are a couple of before-reading strategies to choose from, skimming and scanning.  We skim when we want a brief exposure to the text, typically before we read more closely, or to decide if we want to read the text at all.  We skim by flipping through the pages, reading headings and captions, and looking at pictures.

Scanning allows the reader to quickly find information to answer questions.  Typically, one might use an index or table of contents.  If you must scan the text itself, you narrow your search by using headings or textual notations, just as in skimming, but you’re looking for targeted words or phrases.  She says that scanning pages instead of using the index is too time consuming, but I would say, after helping my daughter with her history questions, that many answers aren’t in the index or table of contents.  Knowing how to quickly peruse the pages is a valuable strategy. 

She also points out that building on prior knowledge is key to reading comprehension.  This can be tricky for science textbooks, if the topic and jargon are new to the students.  This is part of the reason that skimming and scanning are so vital.  The teacher can also select a few key words that are vital to understanding the text, and preview them before students read the text.  Once the student has the general structure or pattern of the text from the headings, and the knowledge of the keywords, comprehension during close reading is more easily achieved.  Relating the topic to something the student already knows about is extremely powerful.

One way to “activate” prior knowledge is to break the class into small groups and have them brainstorm what the text will be about, based on some basic information.  If the students find some link to a topic they’re already familiar with, the new knowledge can then be assimilated more easily.  She emphasizes that it is vital to connect the students to prior knowledge, and it doesn’t have to be through the same subject.  Analogies work as well.  She gives an example of teaching biology classification by using an analogy of classifying ice cream by fat content, flavor, brand, texture, etc.  The kids could connect with this analogy, so went into the text armed with more confidence that they would understand.

 

Graphical Representations to Clarify Text

My book is:  Benjamin, A. (2007).  But I’m Not a Reading Teacher:  Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Black font indicates what the author says.

Red font indicates my comments.

One of the strategies Benjamin uses is to turn text into a graphical representation.  This makes the student read through the text carefully, pulling out keywords, and if they know they have to make a graphical representation, keeps them more aware of relationships between words and phrases.  The first step would be to write down words that are unfamiliar.  Then, break these words down into components to find any Greek and Latin roots to help kids learn the vocabulary, comparing these new words to ones they’re already familiar.  When they learn the components for one word, they can then extend that knowledge to another word.  

For example, “optical” contains the root “opt” which means related to the eyes.  The kids might already know optometrist, so the teacher can point out that any word containing “opt” is related to the eyes.  A quick study of a few words wouldn’t take long, and could have lasting results.  Much more so than looking up vocabulary words and writing the definitions.

Benjamin points out that doing this graphical representation with a partner or a small group is helpful, especially if each group has to explain their graph to another pair, group or the class.  As she puts it, “you have to do something after you read to really have it sink in.” 

Some examples of graphical representations pulled from text that come to mind might be flow charts that describe cause-and-effect processes and cycles, hierarchical diagrams showing animal classification, Venn diagrams to show set theory, or drawings of atoms reacting to form new compounds.  Using diagrams and pictures in math help students envision equations from word problems. 

Scientific field guides often have a diagrammatic component to aid students in classification, since diagrams are so powerful in conveying information quickly and concisely.  This strategy is used in biology, chemistry and geology labs too, to aid in classifying “unknowns.”

A follow-on activity Benjamin describes for the graphical representation strategy, is to have students disrupt the representation somehow and ask questions about the resulting changes.  For example, if your representation is a flow chart, and you move a decision point, how does that effect the flow?  The overall result?

I can see how this would be helpful to conquer specific topics that were difficult to grasp, but doing this for much of the textbook would be too time consuming.  Doing it a couple of times at the beginning of the semester or a new topic might help kids to read more carefully in general.  

What the heck is Nature Writing?

My book is:  Benjamin, A. (2007).  But I’m Not a Reading Teacher:  Strategies for Literacy Instruction in the Content Areas. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Black font indicates what the author says.

Red font indicates my comments.

You’ll notice that today’s blog post is all in red font.  As promised yesterday, I looked up “nature writing,” and am blogging on it today rather than discussing the book listed above.  Thanks Lori and Diane for your comments on my blog post yesterday.  You were very helpful.

According to Wikipedia, “Nature writing often draws heavily on scientific information and facts about the natural world; at the same time, it is frequently written in the first person and incorporates personal observations of and philosophical reflections upon nature. […] include natural history essays, rambles, essays of solitude or escape, and travel and adventure writing.”  A website that came up in my query was http://naturewriting.com/, an online magazine that has essays, blogs, book recommendations and poetry.  It lists authors like Muir and Thoreau.  If Benjamin had added those authors to her discussion, I wouldn’t gotten the point yesterday!!!  Ah well, now I know about this cool website.

The books listed on this website chronicle naturalist’s explorations, autobiographical accounts, and interestingly, novels and short stories. 

I’m going on a wild tangent, so hang on.  Way back in my undergraduate days (and I’m not going to say how many decades ago that was) I took a creative writing class for short stories, and wrote an account of two people that got lost in a Carlsbad-like cavern.  I wrote about bats, cave ice, stalactites, stalagmites, underground lakes, carnivorous beetles, albino crickets, blind fish, and on and on.  I loved it.  In fact, I still have it.  Writing fiction, and marrying it with my knowledge of biology and geology was incredible!  It was wildly creative, but imbued with facts.  Why can’t we do this in a science classroom?

I’ve always thought that writing was a force like no other – extremely creative.  What if we harness that creativity and interject science, just like I did in my short story?  Might be worth trying to get a little interest growing.  I think writing fiction with science facts would be a fun project, and appeal to those put off by the drier textbooks.  The teacher could even list facts and vocabulary that needed to be included. 

This would support what Emig said, that writing can be used as a mode to learn.  There could be other writing to learn exercises, like having a sentence or two prompt, then students have to create the rest of the paragraph, using the science vocabulary provided.  Creative writing might not appeal to everyone, but it might be engaging for some.

Wow, that was fun!  I loved this tangent, and the ideas that came sprouting forth!  I promise, back to the book tomorrow.  Thanks, Amy Benjamin, for making me look up “nature writing.”