Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Week 5 Reading Identities and Proficiency

The Buehl chapters gave me more insight into other challenges I will have to face in a science classroom. All of the students will have different backgrounds and therefore different reading identities. As a teacher, I will have to find out which students identify as science readers and who do not. However, as I will be teaching high school biology, many of my students may not identify as a 'science person.' Throughout the year I will have to encourage all of them to become science readers even when they might not want to.

That will be the difficult part. How will, or should, I motivate students to become better science readers? The modeling and argumentation strategies, that we have been reading about, may be good ways to motivate a student to learn a scientific concept, and even how to write scientifically. However, they do not have the students focus on scientific literature, which is how students will have to learn about a science related event after they leave my classroom.

I will have to be, as Buehl discussed in chapter two, a mentor to my students. How can I be an efficient and effective mentor when all of my students will be on different reading levels? Mentoring is usually easier in a one-on-one situation. Should I start teaching at the level that everyone has reached? This could be boring for the more advanced readers. Should I assign harder assignments to the more proficient readers in the classroom? I suppose the more advanced students could help mentor the not as proficient readers.

Buehl's concepts will be interesting to incorporate into my future classes.

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