I Just Like Being Good at It

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I Just Like Being Good at It

• Developing Competent Readers
• Michael W. Smith
• Temple University
• 1301 Cecil B. Moore Avenue
• Philadelphia, PA 19122
• mwsmith_at_temple.edu

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Buster on biking

• See, for me actually, the sports I like are
  kind of different from a lot that other people
  like. A lot of people like basketball, baseball.
  I'm a little bit different I like individual
  sports and probably my favorite is
  mountain-biking. It's something I'm decent at,
  you know. I've got to see different parts of the
  country traveling throughout and you know it's
  something that I've really, it's something that
  I've been, it's something that I can always work
  towards, and it's just, it just gives me a lot of
  motivation.

3
Buster on computing

• I don't know, something about computers, I'm
  really not all that, I mean, I like I like the
  communication aspect of computers, but I'm really
  not, I don't know, something about them that I'm
  not-- first of all I'm not all that computer
  literate and second of all there's just something
  about them that I'd rather--they're too
  complicated for me I guess.

4
Buda on drawing

• Drawing is boring because I have pretty much
  no talent in drawing.

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Maurice on drawing

• Well, I like to draw graffiti, design
  headbands like bandanas. I buy a plain white
  bandana, and I'll get some markers and I'll draw
  a couple words or a nickname or what part of town
  I come from and I'll put it on the headband and
  you can sell them for like four dollars a piece
  or whatever. Make a little profit. So you can
  have fun and make money at the same time.

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Bob on a variety of subjects

• It math is challenging problems and something I
  am extremely good at. On the states test I
  have gotten like in the top forty kids in the
  state.
• I hate writing and I hate dealing with
  punctuation and stuff like that. I am extremely
  bad at spelling. I have never written a good
  report in my life.
• I like just texture in hypermedia, little
  stuff, like extra little movies, and extra little
  details and extra buttons that do things that
  most kids dont know how to do.

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So What To Do?

• Identify the strategies experienced readers apply
  to a particular kind of text OR a specific
  strategy that experienced readers apply across
  texts.
• Introduce the strategies while engaging students
  in realizing their competence with those
  strategies by using texts in which they are
  interested and over which they feel some control,
  for example, popular cultural texts and texts
  that they choose themselves.
• Help students develop conscious control over the
  strategies by naming the strategies, how they are
  used, and providing plenty of practice with
  increasingly difficult texts.
• Move students to independent application of the
  strategies by providing and then removing
  scaffolding.
  

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Two Problems with General Strategies

• They arent always applicable across different
  kinds of texts (at least not in the same ways).
  
• Theyre underspecified.

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Summarizing Strategy

• Delete trivia
• Delete redundancies
• Substitute a superordinate for a list
• Select a topic sentence if one is available
• Invent a topic sentence if non is available

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• . We became suspicious of the narrators view of
  things and rejected the surface meaning.
  
• Is the narrator too self-interested to be
  reliable?
  
• Is the narrator sufficiently experienced to be
  reliable?
  
• Is the narrator sufficiently knowledgeable to be
  reliable?
  
• Is the narrator sufficiently moral to be
  reliable?
  
• Is the narrator too emotional to be reliable?
• 2. We determined what facts were not under
  dispute in the work.
  
• 3. We applied our knowledge of the world to
  generate a reconstructed meaning.
  

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• Oh, man, that teacher. She really has it in
  for me. She sent me to the dean four times this
  month. And, I tell you, I don't deserve it.
  Ive never been sent to the dean by any of my
  other teachers. She just doesnt like me, I
  guess. At least the dean doesnt give me any
  punishment

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• Oh, man, these teachers. Four different
  teachers send me to the dean in the same month.
  Ever since I was the first African American to
  integrate the school, the teachers have had it in
  for me. Im trying to follow my folks advice by
  keeping my nose clean. And Im trying to follow
  the example of civil rights heroes that Ive read
  so much about. When I think about all that they
  went through a few trips to the dean doesnt seem
  so bad. Its hard to believe though that such a
  classic case of discrimination still exists.

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Conditions for Transfer(Haskell, 2000)

• If students have command of the knowledge that is
  to be transferred
  
• If students have a theoretical understanding of
  the principles to be transferred
  
• If a classroom culture cultivates a spirit of
  transfer, and
  
• If students get plenty of practice.

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Summarizing Strategy

• Delete trivia
• Delete redundancies
• Substitute a superordinate for a list
• Select a topic sentence if one is available
• Invent a topic sentence if non is available