Friday, August 22, 2008
Space to Think
I provide a lot of reading passages to students. In making the invisible visible, I realized that perhaps my presentation of material may be interfering with the student's ability to begin a megacognitive conversation about these passages. In reviewing my reading lessons, I have decided that the "checks" or "questions" about the passages need to be more separate from the passage itself. To accomplish this, I am placing the passages on one side of the paper and the "questions" on the backside. I know that many students have been taught to read the questions first; I want to retrain these readers to see the invisible and begin to rely on the text more than the clues presented in the questions. Does anyone have any thoughts on this matter?
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3 comments:
This sounds like an interesting strategy. Have you changed or modified any of your "test" questions to tailor them to the activity?
No, but I have asked students to mark the "invisible" aspects or clues in the questions to better understand what is being asked before answering a question. This is really helping them assess different types of questions and talk about what is needed on various question formats.
Another idea is to have the students formulate their own questions. On another note, I have used a workbook that had the questions mixed up and not in the order of the text, and I didn't find that strategy very fruitful for organizing and helping students retain the material. Sequential questions following the material in the book may help frame the material.
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