During
this week’s discussion we were asked to express our thoughts on the reading
(Winch chapter 2 and chapter 6) and in particular discuss which ideas were new
and the most thought provoking. There was a general consensus throughout the
group that a lot of the ideas if not all of them were new to us. One of the key ideas that were most
interesting and relevant was in regards to the context of a text and how this
can differ. We spoke about how the
context of a text and hence the meaning of a text changes for a reader
depending on their background as well as how it differs from the author to the
reader. We also spoke about how the
purpose of a text for the author is very different to the purpose of a text for
the reader. Examples of reading context include,
acquiring information, for leisure and the sharing of experiences.
The
group discussion then shifted to looking at the glossaries of words that we had
created. We were amazed at some of the
different definitions we had derived and discussed the difficulties that we had
in finding some of the meanings. A
talking point for the group was the difference between grammatical information
and phonological information. We
highlighted that grammatical information relates to the text while phonological
relates to the sounds. The final area of
discussion was to do with the reading program and selecting text graph. We thought it was interesting to read and was
could be a basic guide to begin with when picking texts for students. We thought that this could be interesting to
push students to read books at their level or help out the students that were
struggling. We did however identify that
telling students a book is too hard or recommending an easier book may create
problems in itself. We also thought that
it would be necessary to have a greater understanding of books that could be
suitable for students so that a book of the right level that interests the
student can be found. The readings were
therefore very useful both in the explanation of terms and as a basic guide for
picking children’s literature.
I think what really struck me as important this week was realising that how an individual reads a book depends on why they are reading it - is it for pleasure, or for homework? Are they interested in the book or not? Various contexts will drastically change the way the individual reads the book, what they will pick up from the book and how (or if) they will change in response to reading the book.
ReplyDeleteI also found that performing poetry is an excellent method of introducing or encouraging students to become interested in poetry, as well as explore their own emotions and develop public speaking and team work skills.
A majority of what we discussed about chapters 2 and 6 of Winch et al. (2010) felt new to me. However the most thought provoking was the idea of cohesive ties throughout the text. I had always known they were there, but had never thought about them the way the book illustrated the ties in a paragraph.
ReplyDeleteI was also fascinated with our discussion about the glossaries we had each made. This is because we had found slightly different definitions for some of the glossary words. Such small differences can change a word completely. This discussion highlighted to me that if we want students to use language, we also have to teach them to understand how to use it.
I was interested by the discussion on the context of the reader. The thought that most interesting part of this idea was that the reader purpose changes the context.
ReplyDeleteThe cohesive ties were a very new idea for me, and the explanation of an ellipsis was different to what I'd known before.
The discussion on selecting texts for readers also interested me as this seems like a large task we will need to undertake when we have a class of our own. I found it useful to discuss how we might facilitate this selection.