Collaborative Teaching Strategies

Collaborative strategic reading is an approach that sees students as active participants in the construction of meaning rather than as passive recipients of knowledge. In this approach, teacher and student/s work as collaborators in order to build meaning. This type of conceptual learning is emphasized as students reflect on their learning, test out ideas, and learn to listen to other viewpoints through small-group and whole-class discussions. The atmosphere is cooperative rather than competitive. I think this is a good idea because students feel free to express ideas without being criticized and also learn to tolerate a multitude of viewpoints. In some forms of collaborative learning, the teacher is very much a part of the group as an active participant or even discussion leader. Another form of collaborative learning is cooperative grouping; this is where students complete tasks as members of a student- directed group. There are two main approaches to teaching reading comprehension strategies collaboratively: direct instruction/explanation, and collaborative. In the direct instruction/explanation approach, teachers introduce, explain, and provide guided and independent practice. In a collaborative approach, students are taught strategies but the role of the teacher is different. The teacher facilitates the discussions and the students collaborate to form joint interpretations as well as discuss the mental processes and cognitive strategies that are involved in comprehension. The overall emphasis of collaborative strategic reading is that children interact and exchange information amongst themselves in the classroom in order to get a better grasp on what they just read. Using collaborative approaches, such as ReQuest, Reciprocal Teaching, Questioning the Author, and Reading Seminar, helps to provide support for the student by their teachers as well as their peers. After all, reading takes on more meaning when students reflect on and discuss what they have just read while it’s still fresh in their minds. Collaborative reading provides them with the opportunity to think about and reorganize the information they have just learned, and presents them with the opportunity to get a multitude of diverse viewpoints from their surrounding peers. One collaborative strategic reading approach that I’d like to focus on is Reading Seminar. Reading Seminar is a holistic, interactive approach to reading content area text. Unlike other approaches, Reading Seminar emphasizes strategy instruction in addition to collaborative discussion. It builds both background and strategy use. The instruction that is involved is intense due to the students and teacher working with brief segments of text. Through questioning and discussion a deep understanding of the text can be achieved according to this approach. Reading Seminar is an inclusive model that includes overlapping levels of reading discussed in earlier chapters such as: preparing, comprehending, organizing, elaborating, and monitoring. Not all levels are included in any one session; however, during the course of instruction, all levels are presented and practiced. In any one lesson or series of lessons, the teacher might guide instruction and discussion in such a way as to focus on a particular level or strategy. A key element in Reading Seminar is the use of prompts. These prompts guide the students’ thinking and responding, provide structure and scaffolding, and also affirm and encourage. Preparational prompts are prompts that are used before actually reading. Examples of preparational prompts would be questions like: What do you know about the topic you are about to read? What reading strategy do you find most effective when you are reading this content (social studies)? What do you think this chapter is about? Comprehension/Organizational prompts are used during and after reading. As the student reads they should have a question in mind. Usually, the question is based on the pre-reading survey or short blurb at the beginning of the chapter. Headings can also be turned into questions. After a section has been read, you can then use a variety of prompts such as: What is the author trying to get across to the reader? What did you learn from this section? How might you go about organizing this information to make it easier for yourself? Elaborational prompts are attempts at getting feedback from students on what they don’t fully understand. These prompts are used in order to find out if the student in comprehending what is being read or is in need of a further explanation. Some examples might be: What questions came to mind as you read this selection? How does this information fit in with what you already know? Based on this information, what conclusion might you reach? Monitoring prompts are prompts that help in finding where exactly the student became lost along the way. Students might be encouraged to put a sticky note, bullet point, or highlight mark next to any passage that is not clear. Prompts that can be used to determine what is unclear are: Was there anything in the article that confused you? Were there any passages that you didn’t understand? Did you have trouble understanding what some of the words meant? After reading more than one section when taking part in Reading Seminar you can then incorporate text connecting prompts. These are used in connecting information from a previous section with the current section being read. Examples of these are: How does this idea fit in with what was read in the previous section? Putting together the information from all of the previous sections and the current section being worked on, what have you learned so far? Discussion prompts are helpful in that they can be used to scaffold instruction, discover and clarify confusions, encourage students, and keep the discussion moving forward. These questions are usually a result of students not providing sufficient information and are used to get them to think more critically. Examples of this type of prompt would be: Could you tell me more? What do you mean by that statement? Lastly, there are scaffolding prompts used by teachers in order to get students thinking on the right track. The key to this is asking yourself (the teacher) two questions: What has gone wrong with the student’s thinking? What can I ask or state that would guide the student’s thinking to the right thought processes and correct answer?