Teaching Your Students How to Study the Text

This chapter, over the studying of texts, provided me with new information on how students can approach the text in a manner instructed by the teacher. As it started out, studying texts is not just about rote memorization but rather it’s about how students should really learn and interact with the text. The first concept the chapter discussed was the text patterns. To fully comprehend the text, you must first discover the patterns purposefully done within the book. For a teacher to spend class time pointing out the features that exist within the books gives both the accelerated reader and the struggling reader a chance to adapt and understand what is provided within the text.

Once the pattern of the text is discovered, the next step is to see how the patterns relate to the information that is needed to come out of the text. One method that allows for students to visual interact with the text is through graphic organizers. Graphic organizers allow the students to understand the pattern of the text then apply it in organizing the information. Although there are different methods of graphic organizers, it should be through a scaffolding effect on how students go about this task. Towards the beginning of the year teachers should provide their students with the tools to go along with the text and illustrate to them why this form was used. Then the teacher should start taking away the process of providing them with the organizer by asking questions on what the best method that should be used or what type of pattern they see within the text. Finally, by the end of the year they should be organizing their ideas to reflect what is provided within the texts.

The one key fact through all of the different ideas for teaching students how to study the text was the idea of teaching them. In many classrooms today, studying the text is expected of students who don’t understand or know how to study it. Teachers need to be the support for their students by gradually giving them the reigns and expecting them to study the text. First, though, the teacher should provide them with the ideas and methods they need to go about studying the text which was discussed within this chapter.