This weeks readings about comprehension and different types of texts made a lot of sense to me. I feel like all of the points that the author made were more like facts about how children learn rather than his own ideas, like a foundation of where to begin when teaching literacy skills. What I got out of the reading was that students need to know what to expect in order to be able to comprehend the reading and incorporate it into their literacy knowledge. For example, students would having difficulty becoming completely literate if they thought that fairy tales were things that happened in real life. In this case, if they did think this, they'd be looked at as sort of crazy in the real world and not as a knowledgeable/literate person. The Tompkins reading was also a bit of a recap from TE 348 as well, which was good since I'm getting ready to have my own Book Talk with my 1/2 graders and my book is a legend. It was nice to have all of the facts about legends right there in the readings because I now know what exactly to hit on so that students will be able to recognize a legend when they see one (hopefully!).
The Gibbons reading was very interesting to me. I'd never thought of second language readers as being "robbed" like they stated in the text but it makes total sense. Second Language readers are robbed of their background knowledge. When I was reading about the "procedure that is quite simple", I has NO idea what they were talking about because I was "robbed" of the background knowledge and it was really frustrating to me! I found myself rushing into the next paragraph to try to figure out what this paragraph was all about (ending up being laundry,ugh.) I really like how this book puts us in a second language reader's position, it's a unique place and one I've never been in before. Lastly, I really like this text because it always gives ideas of what to do with ESL students. It not only gives the problems that they face and why they face them, but it gives solutions which are SO helpful!
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I completely agree with your post! I think giving students an idea of what they need to be looking for and how comprehension is used must be discussed before students can add to their literacy knowledge. I think students foundation for literacy knowledge that they build on must be developed in the classroom and children must be given strategies to facilitate a better understanding of the text they are reading. I also agree that ELL are being "robbed" without having any prior background knowledge because it puts them at a severe disadvantage when it comes to reading and comprehension. Sometimes we just know things because we do and can't explain why, they are just things we have picked up throughout our lifetime that are considered to be standard and these are the things that are most difficult for ELL to grasp. I think putting us in the position of a second language learner in a reading context was helpful for us to make sense of the frustration and obstacles a student may go through while reading.
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