Week 5

The second article, “Understanding Literature” Judith Langer, talked about four major ways students can understand and interpret a text. These four ways of understanding a text had to do with processes that the readers needed to go through in order to see the deeper and broader pictures of a text. The four ways included Being Out and Stepping In, Being In and Moving Through, Being In and Stepping Out, Stepping Out and Objectifying the Experience. While reading through the four different ways of viewing and understanding literature, it reminded me of last week’s reading by Gibbons about the different roles of a reader; readers as a text decoder, text participant, text user, and text analyst. The four ways and the four roles of readers seem intertwined together and are parallel to each other. Both Langer’s four ways and Gibbons’ four roles are what the readers need to be and need to do in order to understand the inner side of literature rather than just the outside, reading through words where readers do not find any meaning. Students need to be able to play these roles when they are reading, and it is also important that students are not just doing it in class with the teacher but also when independently reading.
While reading through the first article, “Instructional Conversations: Promoting Comprehension through Discussion”, classroom management was a topic that came to mind. This is because when teachers are not able to manage students’ behavior and keep them focused, especially during the discussions, it becomes impossible to carry on a “serious” and in-depth discussion with the class. This can be seen in my first grade field placement class. It is really difficult to do a class discussion, and even though the teacher does one, she has to end quickly by asking some simple questions. Although there is always an excuse of saying “they’re first graders…”, I feel that it is important to talk with students in depth about what they have just read, regardless of grade level. It is an opportunity for both students and teacher to listen to each other’s opinion and learn from it. For me, it is also a chance for students to talk about various perspectives and how each individual understood the text.