Content Area Reading and Content Area Writing Chapter One

In Content Area Reading the authors write about how skilled readers have reading strategies at their command that they use to comprehend texts that they are reading.  Now, I presume, hopefully correctly, that I am a skilled reader, and therefore must have multiple reading strategies at my disposal.  Ask me to name them, though, and I could not do so.  I am unaware of what my reading strategies are, and prior to reading this text, I was unaware that I had any.  Hopefully, as I continue to read further, and reading strategies are described, I will begin to recognize these strategies in myself, so as to become more self-aware of my own functioning.   This will, I trust, enable me to better help future students who struggle with reading comprehension by allowing me to teach them the strategies. 

Another interesting point the authors of Content Area Reading make is that, in reading, content determines the process.  That is, the process of reading changes depending upon the content of what is being read.  So, a skilled reader reads science differently than history.  This is interesting and would be curious to know more about this idea.  I can understand that in reading different subjects the use of jargon changes, but it does not seem so readily apparent that different processes are used beyond the specifics of style. 

I really enjoyed the writing style of the authors of Content-Area Writing.   Their personal and humorous style makes for quick and interesting reading.  I am looking forward to reading the rest of their book.  I am excited to learn from them new ways to incorporate writing into my classroom.  It seems that when students write things of their own composition and not just class notes or copying answers from text books, they can really learn the subject matter better. 

My favorite point they made was that teachers teach too much stuff.  Because of the amount taught, issues are covered very shallowly, and little time is left for doing meaningful exercises like writing.  By teaching too much, whatever the students learn, they forget soon after the test because it is too much to remember and is covered in an uninteresting manner.  The authors, therefore, recommend that teachers teach less, only covering the most important things.  In doing so, they can better teach their students the methods of the discipline, enabling the students to reason more like an expert in the discipline.  This way, when the students encounter new information they are unfamiliar with, they will be able to reason through it on their own. 

Of course, the teachers will need to decide what is most important and therefore must be taught.  This would be a difficult task.  The authors give some criteria for what should be included.  This criteria includes asking if the topic resides “at the heart” of the discipline, and without which the field cannot be understood.  This criterion and the other criteria do not provide much help, though, as even by eliminating the obvious choices, there is still a lot left over.  Choosing what to eliminate and what to keep would be a very difficult matter for any teacher.