Does any of the information presented in Chapter 15 influence your personal philosophy of reading? In what ways? How has your perspective this changed since you took the DeFord TORP a few weeks ago?
After reading Chapter 15, some of my thoughts of reading were definitely, which has been the case this for this entire course. One of the interesting things I read was the idea of decodables on page 366. Decodables are a resource that is provided with most purchased curricular. The book brought great points at high these books usually have unnatural language, and therefore students cannot use some of the strategies they have been taught, such as syntax. I love the graph that Weaver has on this page that shows the amount of errors compared to a book that consists of predictable language. With this information, decodables are definitely something that curriculum companies and even the people who choose the curriculum for schools should look at.
Weaver also discusses that the more students know about a topic, the more they will understand (2012. p. 373). While this is not a new idea to me, it is definitely something that I am going to be sure to be conscious of when teaching. When I am about to begin a new book with the students, I am going to be sure and discuss the topic indepthly. This will help the students when they try and read the book themselves. They will be able to comprehend the text and answer any questions that follow.
I really like the point you made about how important it is for our students to be familiar with a topic before reading about it. This is something that sometimes we either take for granted, or skip due to time constraints. I am glad though, that through Weaver's text we now know the importance of using instruction time to do so. The book did a good job of giving us research-based helpful facts like this to make our students better readers and learners. I can't wait to start trying some of them out...
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