Many veteran teachers are just that - veterans - because we have remained in the classroom after years of teaching. Long ago, we once felt called to work with children. And today, we still feel the same way.
But the problem for many of us is that we keep teaching the same way, with the same strategies - year after year.
Our students are learning. And they seem to be succeeding as they graduate from our class and move onto the next. So why change anything? After all, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” right?
Just because we stick with what we know best doesn’t make us bad teachers - by the way.
We’re excellent teachers. We’re veterans, for goodness sake. Our contracts wouldn’t be renewed year after year if we weren’t good at what we do. And we wouldn’t still be in the classroom if we didn’t love our students and love what we do every day.
But are we all staying on top of the latest and greatest strategies when we are teaching? Are we trying to understand how each group of students moving up to us from the previous grade learns best?
Are we making sure that our students are not just coasting by to the next class, but that they are truly learning?
AND THE NUMBER 1, MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION IS: Are our students reading for understanding?
As a veteran teacher - in the classroom for 9 years and in education for a total of 13 years - I have always loved teaching. I love teaching students how to read and write. What a joy it is to see their progress throughout the year!
I also love to make learning fun. And more than anything, I love when my students have that “ah ha!” moment about a particular concept.
But I’ll be honest, I have always taught a certain way, using the same strategies when teaching reading and writing, year after year.
It’s not that I’m not open to learning new strategies; it’s just that no one has ever shared them with me - until now.
So veteran teachers, listen up! We’ve got a job to do. Yes, we want to make learning fun so that our students can connect to material, but we also have to make sure that we are using strategies to teach our students how to read for understanding in all subject areas.
Whether you are a math teacher, a science teacher, a literature teacher, or a history teacher - we all need to get on board this bus.
How many of us have given a reading assignment to our students, saying, “Read this over the weekend and answer the questions at the end?” So many of us have done that, right? There are only so many teaching days in a year, and there is only so much time in a class period - some reading just has to be done at home.
But are students fully understanding what they are reading if we assign reading passages in this way? Many may miss the boat completely and feel lost during the post-reading discussion that takes place during class.
If we paid more attention to implementing strategies that incorporate the three stages of reading (Before reading, During reading, and After reading), then maybe our students would actually understand what they are reading in the textbooks in our subject areas.
I love this example that Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman write in their textbook, Subjects Matter:
With hocked gems financing him, our hero bravely defied all scornful laughter that tried to prevent his scheme. “Your eyes deceived,” he had said. “An egg not a table correctly typifies this unexplored entity.” Now three sturdy sisters sought proof. Forging along, sometimes through calm vastness, yet more often over turbulent peaks and valleys, days became weeks as many doubters spread fearful rumors about the edge. At last from somewhere, welcomed winged creatures appeared, signifying momentous success (32).
Do you know what this reading entry is about? I certainly didn’t when I first read it.
Now, reread the passage if I give you the clue: Columbus.
It makes better sense now, right? Just one word helped turn on our understanding of the passage.
This single clue opened our schema for Christopher Columbus.
Daniels and Zemelman write, “We helped you ‘switch on’ your schema for Columbus, which allowed you to comprehend the passage. It turned out that all the information you needed to read that passage was right in your head, but until the right schema was activated you ‘couldn’t read’ the paragraph” (33).
Accessing prior knowledge before reading a selection could help students learn how to read for understanding.
This is the same thing with our students, says Daniels and Zemelman. We need to help them switch on their prior knowledge so that they can understand and remember the material they have read in any classroom text (not just in literature).
Some ways that we can help our students might be as simple as paying closer attention to implementing Before Reading strategies, as well as During Reading and After Reading strategies.
Before Reading: Set the purpose for reading. Activate prior knowledge. Develop questions. Make predictions.
During Reading: Sample text. Visualize. Hypothesize. Confirm/alter predictions. Monitor comprehension.
After Reading: Recall/retell. Evaluate. Discuss. Reread. Apply. Read More.
There are many teaching strategies out there. Many of them we have all used, like the “before reading” strategy of “frontloading with images” to help students visualize the upcoming reading assignment. And we have all given pre-quizzes to see what a student might know before learning a concept.
But, before reading this book, I had never heard of a K-W-L (which can be used before, during, and after reading a text). With a K-W-L, students will write down what they already Know about the topic and what they Want to know. And after reading, they will write down what they’ve Learned.
Or what about “dramatic role play”? I do this in the classroom a lot as an “after reading” activity. But imagine the benefit of students getting together as they access their prior knowledge by putting together a skit before reading the lesson. They can then get together again after doing the reading to see how their skits may have changed once they have read and learned the facts.
Most of us have taught our students the “during reading” strategy of annotating a text while reading, but have you heard of “coding text” while reading? Coding is just like annotating, where it helps students to stop, think, and react to what they are reading, but it is faster. If a student notices a connection to another subject, he or she will write a C next to the text. The student might put a ? if he or she has a question about something. And the students can use an ! when he or she comes across something exciting and new. The list goes on. You can make up your own coding for the reading material in your subject area.
It is also important to teach strategies for learning vocabulary. Students cannot connect to reading if they do not understand the vocabulary incorporated in the text. While students need a prior knowledge of the vocabulary they will be seeing in the text, they should also make connections to vocabulary “during reading” as they continue to read the lesson or unit. Even better - students should continue to make connections to their vocabulary throughout the entire year.
in an effort to help students with vocabulary, I’ve used word walls in my classroom in the past. But I haven’t used a “vocabulary tree” that keeps growing and growing throughout the year. What a great visualization this would be for my students who are learning SSAT vocabulary. As they learn the words, students would start to see the connections as synonyms and antonyms are categorized and added to the tree throughout the year.
“After reading” strategies are important as well.
We have all used “exit cards” at one point in the classroom, where we ask students to write down what they learned from the reading that day. It’s a great tool that sparks conversation for the next class.
But have you heard of “tweet the text”? Whether you are allowed to create a classroom twitter account or you want to play it safe, and you just want students to “tweet” on a piece of paper - you can ask your students after a reading selection to summarize what they have read in 140-characters or less - just like a tweet. Not only do you look like a hip teacher (Am I dating myself with the use of the word, “hip”?), but you are challenging your students to really pay attention to the connections they are making while reading.
Daniels and Zemelman have provided all teachers - novice and veteran - with phenomenal tools to teach reading for understanding.
So let’s not get stuck in our old ways of teaching just because we think it works. As brain research develops and improves - teaching us how students learn best - so too should our teaching strategies.