Notes on What Readers Really Do: Teaching the Process of Meaning Making by Barnhouse and Vinton
Aptitude vs. Effort. Lauren Resnik argues that most classroom teach toward aptitude not towards effort and raises the issue how would the classroom be different if we were to teach toward effort. Makes me wonder how do we build on effort. Is Revision one way to build on effort because each attempt is responded to and then another attempt is tried that hopefully uses the lessons of the previous. In an ideal world maybe, but what I've found is that most students barely improve after you give them feedback or improve in very specific, localized ways.
Is there a way to shape towards a goal working hard? Sometimes when a student is working hard they are working hard but not getting anywhere and may in fact be going in the wrong direction. Hard work does not necessarily lead to skill development.
You have to practice to develop a skill. Students have to practice reading to develop the skill of meaning making and they have to learn to read in very specific ways. What are the ways to read toward meaning?
Think in ideas--do not focus on words, or highlighting or anything that removes the text from the meaning. Notes should be meaning making. But how do students learn to develop ideas?
Ideas are beliefs. When we are reading, we are trying to figure out the author's beliefs. Could students ask after they read a paragraph: what do you think the author believes given this paragraph? What in the paragraph leads you to conclude that is what the author believes?
The notion of meaning units and how words in and of themselves "mean" nothing. They are inert until they are connected into a meaning unit. Look at full units of meaning.
Use your own words to make meaning. Do not use quotes.
Milan Kundera:
"Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument, he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen without the book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth"
Is there a way to shape towards a goal working hard? Sometimes when a student is working hard they are working hard but not getting anywhere and may in fact be going in the wrong direction. Hard work does not necessarily lead to skill development.
You have to practice to develop a skill. Students have to practice reading to develop the skill of meaning making and they have to learn to read in very specific ways. What are the ways to read toward meaning?
Think in ideas--do not focus on words, or highlighting or anything that removes the text from the meaning. Notes should be meaning making. But how do students learn to develop ideas?
Ideas are beliefs. When we are reading, we are trying to figure out the author's beliefs. Could students ask after they read a paragraph: what do you think the author believes given this paragraph? What in the paragraph leads you to conclude that is what the author believes?
The notion of meaning units and how words in and of themselves "mean" nothing. They are inert until they are connected into a meaning unit. Look at full units of meaning.
Use your own words to make meaning. Do not use quotes.
Milan Kundera:
"Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument, he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen without the book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth"
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