Ch. 4 Assistance in Learning

     In the beginning of this chapter, it starts off with a quote from Albert Einstein that states, “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”  I agree with this quote.  If a teacher motivates a student with learning, it will begin to unlock doors that will enrich the life of the learner and awaken their capabilities to learn.  Students are also apt to learn through discussion in class with their peers as the teacher acts as a mediator that only scaffolds their learning.  This chapter moves into the second framework of PAR (Preparation, Assistance, and Reflection).  Students begin to deepen their perception of knowledge and not merely recall facts.  Strategies are taught to the learner to help the student construct meaning in the content areas, and they also need to know why it is important to use these various strategies.

     MARSI (Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory) gages the personal needs of the student where the teacher begins to know where and how to teach strategies to her students (p. 83). Strategies that are used while reading are called adjunct strategies.  Mapping is a type of adjunct strategy that organizes information with main ideas and supporting details and shows the relationship between the two.  Mapping may be used for reflection and as a study guide.  

     While the reader is engaged in reading, he must make sense or construct meaning from the text.  Many responses to a question may be correct and higher order thinking skills are utilized. It is possible to eat an entire elephant; however, you may not be as successful if you eat is all at once. It is possible to eat the elephant in parts.   Students will need to go over parts of the text before moving on to the next segment, this is referred to as Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA) which consists of predicting, reading, and proving.  Another strategy of segmented text is Guided Reading Procedure (GRP).  The teacher explains key concepts and assesses their prior knowledge.  A passage is assigned to the students which they must remember all facts about the reading without editing what is stated.  The students will read the passage a second time to look for any misinformation through discussion and reading. The misguided information will be changed to make the statements true.  Categories will be arranged and organized from passage. 

     Reciprocal teaching is a strategy with four shared goals: prediction, summarization, questioning, and clarification.  The teacher will assign a paragraph and then summarize it. She will ask students questions about the passage clarifying any information that was misconstrued. The students will predict in writing what will happen next. Students will become the modelers for the next paragraph.

    Structure of text shows how paragraphs are ordered and arranged.  The most important formation of text include:  sequential order, analysis, cause and effect, comparison and contrast, and analogy.  There are strategies for understanding text structure that includes games, patterns, 3+ level study guides, and organizational (jot) charts.

     Questioning helps the teacher to evaluate if the student understands and if proper learning occurred.  Students can formulate their own questions to get a better understanding of the text.  A questioning strategy is QAR (question-answer relationship).  This strategy has four levels:  right there, think and search, the author and you, and on your own. Other strategies include:  guide-o-rama (Teachers give directions for passages and encourages students to use the directions given.)  Marginal glosses are helpful tidbits that are located on the side of the text giving pertinent information about the content.  Reading information may become difficult at times.  Students will need fix-up-strategies to aid in comprehending imagery, questioning, and rereading the text.