As we discussed in a previous video post, Connections Under Fire, discussions about the role of background knowledge and making connections have taken a controversial role in conversations about the Common Core. David Coleman has labeled text-to-self connections as a culprit responsible for perfunctory or casual readings of text. Teachers, on the other hand, maintain that activating schema and making connections are integral to meaning making and student engagement. So, which perspective is “right”? Of course, we think both.
In the opening pages of Fountas and Pinnell’s Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children, the authors define guided reading and begin to explore the teacher’s role in a guided reading session. This text lists many teacher roles during guided reading including, “…support each reader’s’ development of effective strategies, introduce the text, work with students while reading independently, and teach one-two points to support reading growth …” (p.2). In thinking about a question such as “According to this text, what is the teacher’s role during guided reading?”, we see relevance in a number of roles listed in the quote above, but are inclined to include vocabulary work, as well. In spite of what the Fountas and Pinnell text says, we often pick out a few words that we anticipate children will have trouble with and teach them prior to beginning a book. So our response to Fountas and Pinnell’s ideas about guided reading is to quickly descend into a discussion of vocabulary instruction. Our posture as we approached the text was evaluative when we intended to read for information, which means we didn’t really listen to the authors.
This text-to-self connection is an example of experience getting in the way of a close, careful reading of the text. So, do such expansions along the lines of our schema push us away from a true text-based reading? As readers of a lot of text related to literacy, we do tend to read in ways that assimilate the text with our prior knowledge. What are the benefits of this? What are the drawbacks?
On one hand, some might argue that our discussions of how we integrate vocabulary reached beyond the text, adding depth to our thinking about our reading. The flip side, however, is that by talking about what we already know, we are skirting the work of really thinking about what is written on the page. The new information seems dwarfed by our experience. While we may garner nods of agreement and affirmation from peers who have had similar experiences, our understanding of the new information actually remains limited by our experiences.
People read for a wide variety of reasons, but when it comes to non-fiction, the motivation for reading is often new information. When readers use their background knowledge as a sounding board for what is written on the page, formulating questions about new information and identifyIing examples and non-examples based on their own experiences, then a symbiotic relationship between building knowledge and making connections is forged. Background knowledge works best when it is integrated with new information. If it supercedes what is written on the page, then we trade off close reading for connections, which we think is necessary sometimes, whether the reader is a first-grader or a literacy consultant. We are also interested in closely reading for purposes of understanding what the author actually had to say. Once again, we are working toward an elusive balance in the way we approach text.
Fountas, Irene C., and Gay Su. Pinnell. Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996. Print.
Kim it was great talking to you today. Interesting how we are all thinking about reading and connections to background knowledge. I agree that background knowledge plays a part in Non-fiction reading. I remain skeptical about what we are being asked to do and how it relates to college and career ready students. I still need time to marinatenin the ideas and go through the process of talking it out and thinking about it. Thanks for always pushing me to think deeper…
Kim, I thoroughly enjoy your posts,and am a new follower. As a Titile 1 reading specialist, my work with struggling readers over the past 25 years has allowed for deep insights into the reading process. I also have the historical perspective of working through the whole language movement,the developmental movement, NCLB, Reading First, and the Mosaic of Thought generation of teachers. As we now move into the era of common core standards, I am struck by the paradox of things move so quickly while at the same time moving so slowly. It took us years to move to an integrated model of literacy instruction. It took years for us to move from teaching comprehension skills to teaching comprehension strategies. Just as teachers around the country are perfecting their craft, sweeping changes from bureaucrats and ivory tower “experts” cause us to pause and shift, taking us yet in another direction. Teaching close reading is not new. Teaching with complex text will be new for some teachers who have been working in a leveled text world. But, shifting away from pre reading strategies and making connections flies in the face of what many of us have learned from the prominent reading scholars of our time (Pressley, Duke, Allington, etc). I suspect that as we go forward we will find a degree of pushback from the practitioners in the field.
Yes, Patrice, it is all rather complicated, isn’t it? We have settled on a very strong “common sense” stance when it comes to the Common Core. As we have been working with teachers to implement the Common Core, we’ve noticed some real positive changes by paying attention and honoring the standards. It has forced us to question some of the things we have done for years and years and in turn, helped us to get better at what we do. Other things have made us wonder out loud, “What are they talking about?” and we tend to talk about those things here too.
Connections and activating schema are two things that we are thinking about a lot. NOBODY reads without these things; however, because the Common Core has drawn attention to these things, we started to look closer too. We started to see how kids don’t honor what is written on the page and want instead to talk about what they know. That’s definitely a problem and it’s helped us to realize what we need to be doing differently/better to help students do it differently/better. We can’t throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. We’ve got to make sure that what we do makes sense.