EDRG 3321 T/R Chapter 4 Blog

I am amazed how much I have acquired about the way that students learn to read and are able to enjoy reading. Chapter 4 discusses how reading is a personal connection and how schemata influences the readers response to the text. It is true, I see my daughter enjoying reading and can feel what the character is going through, she is engrossed. It is a natural thing for my daughter is incorporate higher order thinking when she discusses the book or text. I get a little jealous because I was not taught these techniques. My daughter was taught on Rosenblatt's theory giving her the power to get what she whats out of it rather than what the author wants. I was given a novel with a stack of worksheets and vocabulary. Then I was asked what was the authors message, or what was the author trying to say. My teachers never tried to create a connection to the text so that I could relate it the book and become interested and motivated to want to read it. I would read the cliff notes to get by. So now I understand why I did not like to read. I could not connect my culture or background knowledge to understand what I was reading.

Another point I liked is how it discusses the SES of students because it is true. I see several of my daughters friends who hate to read because the don't connect with the novel. My daughter loves the novel and tries to help her friends get involved in discussions by giving them descriptions of experiences she has had to help her friends relate. This is when I realized that because we took my daughter on several trips and I pointed out things to teach her about while on the vacations, we unknowingly built her schemata. On the other hand, some of her friends have never flown on a plane or even left San Antonio for that matter because of the cost of traveling. Now one can get on the Internet and experience what it looks like to go on a trip (but it is not the same as being there and experiencing the real thing). Anyway, If students are not allowed or unable to because they don't own a computer at home, then the child will not be able to explore and build background knowledge.

This chapter gives lots of great examples of how to incorporate different assignments in writing, oral responses, storytelling, drama, puppets, art and music to help students enjoy reading and understand the text.