Learning Blog #3 (Ch. 4)

Greetings everyone! Welcome once again to Dr. Education’s Learning Blog!  I just want to say that I have had a marvelous time with all of you that visit and comment on my blog postings.  This has been an adventurous 2 weeks of discussing the toss and turns of our educational system.  As teachers, we can talk for hours about the many different obstacles that we face everyday in the public school system in working with children from versatile backgrounds and various stages of comprehension levels.  As I say in all of my blogs, PLEASSSEEEE comment on my postings and make sure your voice is heard.  We are all learning and striving to become better educators.  Now lets get to the good stuff!!!!!!

This week I want to focus on the topic of assistance in learning.  Students often need to be reminded that they are not in the struggle of learning by themselves, their teachers are right in the midst offering them a plethora of opportunities to be assisted in retaining the content knowledge of a particular subject.  A great start to assist a student in learning is to prepare them for what they are about to do.  For instance, if the class is about to part take in a reading assignment, one of the most used methods of reading preparations is to define the vocabulary terms that are found in the chapter.  This method of learning is described to be, “Preparation to Read.”  Its somewhat like what we discussed in the last blog.  Many of us have heard of the term PAR (preparation, assistance, and reflection.) The most important part in the PAR lesson is the assistance stage.  Students are in great need of this stage of PAR because this is the part that they absorb information and learn how to apply it to what they are reading.  In most cases, students feel most comfortable with interacting with their peers about their work and they have the opportunity to utilize what they’ve learned and are capable of explaining why they believe what they believe.  It is necessary that a reader apprehends and ponders the significance of the content.  This analysis must also set their own purposes for reading and in future reading. 

Another important method of teaching is reciprocal teaching.  This is when students and teachers establish a dialogue and work together in comprehending text.  This method of teaching consists of prediction, summarization, questioning, and clarification.  For example, the teacher assigns a paragraph.  Then the teacher summarizes the paragraph and asks students several questions about it.  The teacher then clarifies any misconceptions or difficult concepts.  Finally the students predict in writing what will be discussed in the next paragraph or segment.  The goal of this process is that the students will be able to follow the same steps process on their own.

When students can make sense of their learning by developing a knowledge base or constructing their own purposes for reading a selection and developing tasks on their own that demonstrate their learning, they are constructing meaning.  The process of wherein knowledge is actively constructed and based upon prior knowledge, attitude, and values is known as constructivism. In my opinion, prior knowledge must be validated in order for it to be worthy of building upon for future knowledge.  I feel this way because sometimes prior knowledge is not factual or its just hear say.  Another positive way of learning is the direct reading approach.  This approach simply helps the student to understand that each segment of text can help them figure out the next segment.  Studies by Stahl (2008) and El-Koumy (2006) have shown that the DR-TA is beneficial in teaching referential and inferential learning. Because the text is divided into smaller portions, students can focus on the process of responding to higher order questions (Fisher & Frey, 2008). As advocated by Stauffer (1969a), the DR-TA has three basic steps: predicting, reading, and proving.
In conclusion, what are some positive effects of reciprocal teaching?