Framing our reading

Text Citation:
University of Iowa. (2015, April 13). Why we have chins: Our chin comes from evolution, not mechanical forces. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 14, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150413183745.htm

Rationale For Choosing:

• I wanted to read the article
• Evolution is listed in the Maryland curriculum for science and it is a weak point for me in the content area of biology
• The article itself presents a cause & effect general discussion of the mechanism by which evolution occurs between the theory that mechanical stress and other factors
• The article presents a proposition that evolution encompasses many factors such as the physical environment, social functioning, psychology of individuals, and biology of living organisms (humans in this case)

Text Frames:

• Cause/Effect
• Concept/Definition
• Proposition/Support

Strategies Used & Resource:
Anticipation Guides (Buehl, 2014)  & Pre Reading Plan (McLaughlin, 2015)


One of the key elements to setting up reading for comprehension is matching the background knowledge required for a text to what readers know (Buehl, 2014). When this does not occur a mismatch arises and can result in readers being confused, frustrated, and not comprehending the reading in front of them (Buehl, 2014). With this in mind one of the goals of a teacher is to engage the students' prior knowledge of a reading. This known as frontloading - addressing knowledge demands before reading (Buehl, 2014).

Frontloading or engagement is done for several reasons. First, teachers can access what students do or do not know about a topic that the reading is about (Buehl, 2014).  As a form of assessment this could be used to gauge student retention of previous topics. This can then in-turn be used to develop the important background knowledge that is needed for comprehension of the reading (Buehl, 2014). Most importantly this can be done to spark interest in the topic to be covered and specifically the reading at hand (Buehl, 2014).

The original technique that I chose to use was pre-reading plan (PreP) as presented by Langer (Langer, 1981). In this type of engagement exercise students brainstorm a list of concepts, key words, or phrases on a certain topic and explain the reason behind how it applies to the topic being discusses (McLaughlin, 2015).  I like the idea of using vocabulary to spark participation in students by having them present a key point they have learned and link it to the current topic. I read the article with this in mind, but realized for this assignment it did not make much sense and I am not very good at it. I feel like this really requires a group to be effective. Sitting alone trying to come up with a list of key words about an article did not have the same effect as when I have done this with a group. Upon reflecting on this I realized one of the reasons that I like doing this is I have difficulty starting a list such as this and I like to see the creativity that people can use to link concepts to a larger topic, because I struggle with it.

So after trying the PreP plan, I thought it would be more effective to use something that was similar to PreP, the anticipation guide, but was better for this assignment and I myself can do. Anticipation Guide (Herber, 1978) is a frontloading strategy that focuses on the main ideas of a reading and the students' understanding of them. Before reading, students respond to 4-6 statements that relate to the main ideas of the reading (Buehl, 2014). The goal of doing this is to engage a discussion on the topic to set the purpose for the reading, increase interest, and raise questions about the topic (Buehl, 2014). Students would then read the text and then return back to the anticipation guide and re-evaluate what was discussed.

I enjoyed reading the article, because I chose the article for the topic, but I also liked rading it for the main ideas. As I work on my own reading skills I have been focusing on find the 3 main concepts in a reading. It was just coincidence that the Anticipation Guide helped me do that. I have been doing this because I believe that it is good communication skill to be able to tell people what they are going to read or hear, let them read it or hear it, and then let them read it or hear it again. As a teacher and presenter in the past I have not done a good job of this. I have tried to become better at this through find the main ideas and making them simple. The Anticipation Guide facilitates this very well, I think that it would help students to better prepare for a reading by indirectly presenting the key points.

As a secondary outcome of this assignment I am now aware of how little I actually know about Biology as a high school content course. I have specialized in human biology, but after looking through the high school curriculum it seems that is little to zero of the curriculum. Evolution is one of the major topics in high school curriculum and while I understand it generally, I have a long way to go for the Praxis II prep.

Aside from that, one of the problems or possibly jut a question that I did have was that my key point statements kept ending up sounding and feeling that the answers were either true or false and I do not think that is a good way to generate discussion. Somehow my phrasing seemed to be off, just something else I need to work on. Here are the 4 key points that I came up with after reading the text and then re-reading it to see if the key points help:

1) Evolution is mainly dependent on the physical environment
2) Evolution effects a small portion of living things
3) Evolution is managed by the biological, psychological, and social drivers of a living thing
4) Evolution in humans is best understood by examining change over many generations and thousands of years.



References:

McLaughlin, M., (2015).  Content Area Reading:  Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Boston:  Pearson.

Buehl, D., (2014) Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, 4^th ed. International Reading Association.

Langer, J. A. (1981). From Theory to Practice: A Prereading Plan. Journal of Reading, 25(2), 152-156.
 
Herber, H.L. (1978). Teaching reading in content areas (2nd ed.) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.