Britta Schmaeh

Britta Schmaeh

EDG 4909

Christi Edge

11-09-09

Professional Book Abstract

Reading Reminders

- Tools, Tips, and Techniques

Burke, Jim. (2000). Reading Reminders: Tools, Tips, and Techniques. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

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About The Author

After spending his first three years teaching at Castro Valley High School, Jim Burke is now teaching English at Burlingame High School. Prior to becoming an English teacher, Jim Burke taught special education. He even spent some time teaching in North Africa where he served in the Peace Corps in the mid 1980s. In 1998, Burke began writing about teaching. He focused on English Language Arts as well as adolescent literacy in general. Since then, he has published nearly 20 books. Some of the most notable of these is The English Teacher’s Companion: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession. Burkehas received numerous awards, including the NCTE Intellectual Freedom Award, the NCTE Conference on English Leadership Award, and the California Reading Association Hall of Fame Award. He served on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Committee on Adolescence and Young Adulthood English Language Arts Standards and recently worked with ACT on their high school English Language Arts standards. In 2007, he participated in the national Adolescent Literacy Coalition roundtable and worked with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

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Purpose

The general purpose of Reading Reminders is to help teachers improve their students’ reading skills. The book features a great amount of effective techniques for teaching reading. Burke provides significant tools and tips on how to implement certain techniques. It can be read very quickly, and it resembles the format of a typical reference book. Therefore, it is a great tool for teachers because they can easily review information and search certain strategies in order to support their students successfully. Today’s classrooms are very diverse. We will teach students with different reading abilities and needs. Burke’s Reading Reminders will help us to provide our students with every necessity they rely on. By applying the strategies Burke suggests we can achieve significant gains in student performance, confidence, and engagement. In order to support struggling readers, teachers have to take a lot of information into close consideration. Chapters 5 and 6 concentrate on:

-  Teaching students to read a variety of types of texts, including websites, tests, literature, and textbooks, and

-  Using a wide range of teaching and reading strategies based on current reading research.

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What Students Must Be Able To Do:

Read a Variety of Texts for Different Purposes (127-169)

1)  (128). Burke stresses that independent reading provides students with an excellent means of integrating a wide range of texts into their reading experience. It is important for teachers to make room for different types of texts because students need to know them all, as they require different sets of skills, capacities, or attitudes.

2) (130-1). In order to read textbooks and fully comprehend, students need guided instruction in how to read them independently. Burke suggests developing questions that address specific reading assignments to begin a discussion. Some significant examples of the questions Burke lists are:

-  What is the perspective of the author/publisher of this text and how does that shape my perceived meaning?

-  How do you determine whether an idea is important?

-  What role does the textbook play in the classroom?

3) (132-3). Poetry invites attention to the smaller details of the world, enriching students’ understanding of “the big picture.” Burke provides very helpful steps in order to approach poems and figure out what you want to accomplish teaching certain poems. In my mind, these are especially helpful:

-  Reminding oneself why you are having students read the poem.

-  Finding the crucial moments within a poem.

-  Rereading the poem.

-  Considering form and function of the poem.

4) (135-6). Today’s students are spending more and more time online. It is important for them to see Web pages as texts that demand critical reading skills, especially when it comes to determining the quality of information and the credibility of the people they encounter online. Burk suggests encouraging students to evaluate Web sites by using evaluation forms to help them think: about the site in general, about the author, about the audience, and about the information provided.

5) (137-8). Burke stresses: narrative fiction often provides students their only encounter with the imagination during the course of the school day; in this one respect, teaching such texts is vital. When teaching narrative fiction:

- Developing an identification with characters can be a powerful experience for students.

- Use graphic organizers to help students see sequences, patterns, or relationships because it will help them to read more effectively.

6) (142-143). Burke mentions crucial abilities students need in order to successfully read expository texts:

-  Identifying the elements of a paragraph and read them.

-  Recognize transitional words.

-  Establish the genre.

-  Organize information into an outline for subsequent analysis.

-  Annotate text for specified purpose.

-  Summarize paragraphs or sections.

-  Etc.

In order to help students gain these abilities it is important for teachers to help students understand the characteristics of an expository text.

7) (149-150). It is important for teachers to help their students understand how to read tests. They need to be shown how language works and how tests are designed and must be read. Burke names a number of great advice teachers should give their students when reading and taking tests. The following steps should be taught:

-  Skim and scan.

-  Do the easy ones first.

-  Read all the possible answers before answering.

-  Eliminate the wrong answers.

-  Paraphrase the question in your own words.

-  Watch out for traps.

-  Try to answer the question before looking at the answers.

-  Read recursively.

-  Read the answer sheet.

-  Answer in the order that works best for you.

8) (151-2). Burke stresses the importance of including primary source documents (maps, documents, reports, photographs, letters, diaries, posters, recordings created by witnesses of events in the past etc.) because it gives students the opportunity to “touch the living past”. The most important aspect by using this kind of material is to help students understand that contemporary writings about the past are shaped by “era, biases, and values of those who write them”. At the same time students are challenged to create their own interpretation of events, which will lead to valuable classroom discussions. Burke suggests a number of questions to start discussions, including:

-  What alternative interpretations might you offer based on this same document?

-  Whose point of view is this document representing?

-  What are the facts/opinions?

-  What biases or other cultural factors might have shaped the message of this document?

-  Etc.

9) (153-5). Reading plays and including drama provides a great opportunity for learning and fun at the same time. Burke emphasizes that plays are not just read, but can be performed. He calls this a “built-in strategy” that might help students to read better: “The structure and elements of dramatic texts offer useful guides, and the acting out of scripts forces students to work closely with the text to translate its words into the actions that make up the play.” Burke mentions a number of techniques to perform plays, such as:

-  Performing scenes from multiple perspectives by having different students interpret a scene from a play. Here they must always offer textual support for their interpretations/explanations.

10) (156-8). When reading essays it is important for students to determine the purpose of the essay they are reading. In order to understand an essay’s meaning and message, they must be able to identify traditional rhetorical modes that best describe an essay they are reading. Examples of traditional rhetorical modes are narratives, definitions, classifications, process analyses, argumentations etc. When reading a comparison and contrast essay, teachers need to make sure students:

-  Answer the question “What is it (not) like?”

-  Carefully establish/develop similarities.

-  Emphasize the differences.

-  Establish early on the basis of a comparison

11) (159-61). Teachers should encourage their students to “read in different ways: to think, to study, to gather”. This means to encourage students to think when reading in order to prepare for presentations, but also to think when reading texts to stimulate new ideas. Burke gives a number of other suggestions, such as encouraging students “to gather ideas by skimming through piles of books and magazines in order to glean articles of use or ideas that help to refine/revives” the students ideas.

12) (162-5). “Students must read widely if they are to develop the range of textual skills needed to be powerful reader.” Burke stresses readers who only read the newspaper, for example, lack the imaginative. It is important for teachers not to overload their students because “readers can only handle so many tasks”.

13) (167-8). “Asking and answering questions places the reader in a more active role.” In order to challenge our students to develop meaningful questions and answers it is important to use a variety of types of questions to help them think differently. Therefore, teachers should introduce four types of questions they can use throughout the year. The types refer to the place containing the answers:

-  In the text.

-  Between the lines.

-  In their head.

-  In another place.

14) (169-70). Student choice is extremely important because it increases student engagement. It connects reading with pleasure and students are more likely to read. Burke recalls student choice as “one of the key best practices in any balanced, effective reading program”. He provides a number of suggestions for student choice, including:

-  Choosing from a set of appointed texts.

-  Choosing any book for sustained silent reading.

-  Choosing from a list of approved books.

-  Etc.

In order to incorporate student choice successfully, teachers should model how to choose your own books. Burke also suggests creating a classroom library. This will bring students closer to books and increases the chance that they will read them. Teachers should always use the knowledge they have gathered about their students. They ought to function as supervisors by pointing out books to particular students based on their interests etc.

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What Students Must Be Able To Do: Use Various Strategies (173-239)

In this chapter, Burke describes 21 strategies and techniques teachers can choose from in order to make every minute in their classroom count. The strategies do both challenge independent readers and support struggling readers. Therefore, they are excellent for the diverse classrooms we will encounter in today’s schools. Burke stresses the fact that it is not only important for our students to have a variety of strategies to choose from. They also need to know when and how to use them. Students have different needs, and therefore, a strategy that works with one student does not necessarily work with the next student. This is why Burke stresses the importance of using a variety of strategies so that each and every student filters the strategies that work best for them and their individual needs. With the help of the strategies teachers help their students to become independent readers. Through practice and experience students will recognize the strategies that help them the most. Burke emphasizes: “at the heart of a teacher’s enterprise is the need to make connections: between themselves and the book, the characters, the world at large.” And teachers have to encourage their students to use the strategies that best help them do this (174).

These are the strategies that particularly stood out to me:

Concept Cards (181-2) / This strategy helps readers who struggle with putting everything together when reading a more complicated text. According to Burke, the strategy helps struggling readers to grasp the big picture, and additionally they practice effective note-taking. Students are given index cards. They are going to use one index card for each chapter. On the front of the index card they are asked to write down the chapter title. Now students shall skim the chapter, concentrating on headers, sub headers, sidebars, bold words, pullout quotes, and the first sentences of each paragraph. On the back of the card, they will write down predictions of what the text is about (in form of five-six items using single words or short phrases). After they read the text, they will go back to their index cards and check their predictions. The wrong predictions will be replaced with correct descriptions.
è  Teachers shall ask their students to use the index cards as study aids. Additionally, they shall hold conferences with the students to discuss how closely their predictions matched with the actual information in the text (also discuss how students made their predictions).
DRTA (187-8)
(Directed Reading and Thinking Activity) / This strategy guides students in making predictions prior reading a text. When they are actually reading the text they are asked to confirm or refute their predictions. Students are encouraged to be active and thoughtful readers, enhancing their comprehension. Burke stresses the fact that this strategy works well for readers at all grade and ability levels. Students are self-assessing their understanding of text. After students are asked to skim the text, they make predictions about its meaning, main ideas by looking at specifics such as graphics or pullout quotes. While they read, they are asked to take notes providing examples/details that support their predictions. After reviewing their notes and the text, they are asked to write a summary of the text. (The strategy can also be used in a full class discussion).
CRITICS Procedure (194-5) / This strategy, Critical Reading Instruction That Improves Comprehension Skills, helps students to read critically, distinguish between fact and opinion, and finally to understand the credibility of texts. Teachers need to help their students to identify the characteristics of facts and opinions (facts: observable, verified, testable etc. and opinions: emotional, debatable, overly generalized etc.). Then students are asked to create anticipation guides consisting of statements about their current subject. They must use the characteristics they learned in order to determine whether each statement is a fact or an opinion. It is also important for them to explain why they are fact or opinion. Finally, students can write fact and opinion statements in response to the text they are reading. Again, they must identify whether their statements are fact or opinion using the learned criteria to support their point.