Sherpa Al for 2/28 Class

One of the aims of last week’s class was to show how reading could be used to build students’ knowledge of content. The class began with a review of key vocabulary terms from our readings. One term that stood out for me was scaffolding. Scaffolding refers to the process of helping students to perform tasks that they would not be able to do without your assistance. Combined with content literacy strategies, scaffolding provides a powerful tool for enabling students to learn new concepts and skills.

In an attempt to refine my metacognitive reading skills, I read the poem “The Voice Your Hear When You Read Silently.” Once again, I found it difficult to monitor my own reading. However, hearing the reading process modeled during a think aloud activity enabled me to hear text and to visualize its meaning, essential skills that I would use in other reading activities later in class.

After having reviewed cognitive strategies for reading, such as questioning, summarizing, predicting, and clarifying, a new term, signposts, was introduced. Signposts are textual cues, such as punctuation marks and transitional words, which help readers anticipate the meaning of text. These strategies were applied in a group activity, where members of my group read a portion of a math article. What I found particularly interesting was when an English language arts person presented her group’s analysis of a poem. It was discovered that strategies, such as questioning, visualizing, and reflecting were applicable to both the reading of the math article and the poem.

I agree with Miriam’s view that there is a connection between the content literacy and reading frameworks we have been studying, and the theory of Multiple Intelligences proposed by Howard Gardner. Reading text requires the ability to use inductive and deductive reasoning (logical-mathematical intelligence), the ability to use words and language (verbal-linguistic intelligence), and the ability to visualize objects and internalize images (visual-spatial intelligence). In addition, reading is a reflective activity (intrapersonal intelligence), as well as a social activity (interpersonal intelligence). Furthermore, reading requires the ability to recognize sounds, beats, and rhythms (musical-rhythmic intelligence). In fact, the very act of reading is a physical process that requires coordination between the brain and body (body-kinesthetic intelligence). Even the dimensions of the Reading Apprenticeship Framework - the social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building dimensions, each connote their own set of intelligences – interpersonal, intrapersonal, logical-mathematical, and verbal-linguistic.

As a prospective teacher of secondary mathematics, I will need to incorporate content literacy strategies in my instruction. Specifically, I will need to implement strategies that activate and build upon students’ prior knowledge, develop new knowledge and understandings, and encourage more self-directed and independent learning. In addition, I will have to make sure that these strategies facilitate the learning of mathematics. Given such a challenge, the question that arises is how can I adequately teach mathematics and literacy skills to all my students, while still satisfying the requirements of a rigorous curriculum?

I would like to nominate Theresa Murray as next week's sherpa.