How to Read for Understanding

I really enjoy that pre-reading was stressed a lot in this text. I have always thought that it was a very important and valuable step, however; I think the older students become the less it is enforced in the classroom. I think that pre-reading should be used more at higher grades because of this difficulty of the text that students could be reading. Readings in high school are going to more in depth, and have a lot more meaning that readings in Middle school, because of this I think taking steps to ensure that students are going to gain multiple perspectives and understandings of the material is very important for their learning, and for their growth as an active reader of the material. 

I also thought it was very important that the text brought up anchoring their thinking to the text by asking them about their experience and how that could relate to the reading. Making a reading purposeful in class is going to be very important for the students because they are going to need initial guidance on their thoughts or how to articulate them, so having students use their knowledge and experience to make predictions before they read will help them reinforce their ideas after they read as well. It was also mentioned by the text to have students read with what they called “with the grain” and “against the grain” this is something that I still do today, that is highly encouraged in my literature classes. Often students will have more to say about a text if they read it from a perspective of disagreement, finding things within the text that are saying one thing, but could be saying another. Sometimes to read a text with the intention of arguing against it will give you more to say or think about, then to read something for what it is and take what they author is telling you for truth.

Annotating and questioning the text is going to be crucial for students to have a deeper understanding of the material and interpret it how they choose to. As one of my current professors says, reading without a pen in your hand is just looking at words on a page, to read something thoughtfully you must take notes on it. Considering the proactive steps of reading like pre-reading, reading for different purposes, and post-reading there are many different ways to engage your students so that they have a firm understanding of the text and can analyze it, write about it, or discuss it in a classroom setting. Other very important steps include reading a text for ethos, pathos and logos. These steps are important for gaining a purposeful understanding of how the writing wrote something, the emotions they wanted the reader to feel, and agreeing or disagreeing with the text. There are many different ways to read and analyze a text, it is important to use as many steps as possible when you are working in the classroom because students are going to need as many resources as possible to dissect and understand a text especially with more challenging material.