Building Reading Stamina in Disciplinary Literacy
One thing that stood out to me in Buehl's chapter this week was the idea that teachers should be mediators who bridge students' knowledge gaps and help them navigate challenging texts that are mismatched for them. This reading also validates our students' concerns that valuing literature indeed takes effort and greater reading stamina.
The reading also intrigues me to think about more practices to help students build their reading stamina. So, in this blog post, I'd like to highlight some practices I would like to try more frequently to support students in building greater stamina for reading complex texts.
1. Framing the Text
Before asking students
to read a long, challenging text on their own, teachers can proactively engage in pre-thinking by connecting universal themes or ideas in the text to students' personal lives and
experiences, or by making text-to-self connections. By doing so, students will activate their schemata and build their own mental images before engaging with
the text. This framing the text will provide
students with more context they can relate to, and help them be better prepared
before jumping into the text.
2. Chunking
A long, complex disciplinary
text will be absolutely intimidating, even unappealing to students and to adult readers. Additionally,
assigning such a text will lead to cognitive block and frustration for
students. To anticipate this, teachers can try to assign the reading into
smaller chunks.
How does chunking look
in reading?
Instead of assigning a
whole chapter at once, for example, teachers can chunk a big chapter into some
parts or shorter paragraphs. Or perhaps teachers may give a ‘brain break’ after
some time or at certain points, allowing students to process what they are
reading, turn and talk with each other, decomposing their own reading process, or sketch and jot down important
information they find. Chunking will help students take a break before they are ready to proceed
to the next part of the text.
3. Think-Aloud
Modeling
Remember our previous
reading about think-aloud? I personally believe that think-aloud will also be a
great modeling to help students build their reading stamina. Reading complex
texts can be challenging for students, and they often give up or develop mental blocks because they do not know how to approach them. Therefore, modeling
think-alouds will help them see their teachers’ thinking processes as they
approach a complex text, showing that sometimes readers need to slow down in several
parts to gain a better understanding, or reread challenging, unfamiliar words,
terms, and allusions to decompose them. In short, allowing our students
to see our invisible reading process will eventually lead them to see a strategy
they can apply to build their reading stamina.
4. Peer Scaffolding
One of my favorite activities during
reading is listening to my students’ ideas and responses to the text during peer conversation.
Peer conversations allow students to interact with each other, share confusing
parts, share their interpretations, and learn from what their peers learn from
the text. How to do this? Teachers can provide time for students to talk about
what they have read in pairs or small groups, or they can simply have students
turn and talk or engage in discussion using teacher-provided prompts.
These peer conversations serve as social
scaffolds, allowing students to clarify confusing parts, share interpretations,
and maintain their concentration and engagement as they work through difficult
texts.
I'd like to know about any strategies or classroom practices you think work better for building students' reading stamina.
Also, you can check this link or this one if you are interested in reading more on a similar topic. Thank you! (DD)
hi!
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate you giving some love to the think -out-loud strategy. I also see it been used A LOT in the classroom and I feel like s a lot of teachers incorporate it as a model for students to follow along and build the criteria for the subject. For example, for history the teachers help students learn how to annotate then share with the class and build a sense of being able to do these skills on their own. I feel like its a good formative assessment to see if students ahem the ability to the same as you are but on their own
I really like the strategies you shared. Another important aspect I felt could help develop stamina in disciplinary literacy is allowing mistakes in the classroom. As we did in our class exercise, it is a great idea to show that you don't know and allow the students to take over a little, using their perspective on texts and problems. The strategies are great, and mixing them is stronger, but without students having confidence in what they are doing, can lead it to not be very helpful.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your emphasis on building reading stamina through scaffolding, especially chunking and think-alouds. One point I kept thinking about is that scaffolds should gradually fade over time. Chunking can reduce cognitive overload at first, but if students always receive texts in small pieces, they may not develop the independence needed to sustain attention across longer, more complex texts. I think Buehl’s idea of the teacher as a mediator is useful here: the goal is not to make the text permanently easier, but to provide enough support so that students can eventually manage complexity on their own.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI think breaking reading into smaller parts can help students understand better and feel less stressed. When I have a long reading assignment, it can be hard to stay focused until the end. Taking short breaks and writing down important points helps me remember what I read. I also think talking with classmates can help because they might understand something I did not. Do you think students would read more if teachers let them choose some books or topics they are interested in?
Di,
ReplyDeleteThis is a great, succinct list of ways to build reader stamina! This isn't something I ever thought about explicitly addressing in my classroom with littles, so I'm thankful you've summarized different strategies here. I'm thinking, as students build stamina, you chunk in larger and larger portions? I'd be interested in hearing about your experience teaching students about building reader stamina in the classroom!