Reading in the Content Areas

     This chapter discussed how to help students improve in their reading skills by using the correct complexity of text and the concept of deliberate practice. The authors discussed the different types of text complexity characteristics: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative scales rate specific characteristics like word difficulty and sentence length or structure. Qualitative scales rate overall difficulty using characteristics like explicit or implicit meaning. They also discussed the three components of deliberate practice: teacher knowledge of student prior knowledge, steadily increasing difficulty, and effective feedback. These components can help students become better readers.      One thing that I found interesting was the point the authors made about student choice. First of all, they said that sometimes it would be acceptable to let a student choose a book that might be too hard for them if they are interested in the subject and motivated t...

     This chapter focused on students who struggle with interacting with difficult academic texts. One of the first things that stuck out to me was the fact that many students who struggle with academic literacy are intelligent, full of good ideas, and intent on learning. However, they have trouble with more technical reading and the analysis they are expected to do in an educational setting. I have seen so many students in my placements who love to learn and may even love to read at home and during silent reading time. However, they dislike and have trouble with more academic reading. I believe that often this is because the vocabulary and topics of the reading are less relevant to students' daily lives, and therefore more effort is required to understand academic texts.      The author focused the chapter on helping students change their "reading identities" meaning what they thought about themselves as readers (are they good/average/bad readers?). They ...