Instructional Challenge

Instructional Challenge:

Read the following passage:

Hocked gems financing him, our hero defied the scornful laughter. �Think of it as an egg, not a table,� he said. Then three sturdy sisters sought proof, forging over vast calmness, and sometimes over turbulent peaks and valleys, until at last welcome winged creatures appeared, signifying monumental success.

Answer these questions about the passage:

1. What are the hocked gems?

            I think that hocked gems are valuable things put together to create enough assets to make Columbus’ voyage possible.

2. What should we think of as an egg and not a table?

            While many people believed that the earth was flat, Columbus believed that the earth was round. I believe he is referring to the earth.

3. Who are the three sturdy sisters?

            The three sturdy sisters are the three boats in which they travelled.

4. What kind of winged creatures appeared?

            I think the winged creatures were birds signaling that land was near.

If you were to use this passage with students, what schema would you need to activate with them first? How can you help teach children whose schema and the text�s content don�t match? How much time should children spend in texts that don�t match their interests or schema? Post your thoughts to your blog. Name this blog entry "Module 1: Instructional Challenge."

If I were to use this passage with my students, I would have to activate my students’ schema on Christopher Columbus or make sure students had some sort of background knowledge about Columbus before reading this excerpt. I would not introduce something like this without first teaching a unit on Columbus since students need substantial knowledge to comprehend this text. Making sure students have adequate background knowledge is going to cut out a lot of frustration. When I was reading it, I had to break the passage into individual lines and work on decoding one line at a time. This may be a helpful strategy for students as well.

I believe that students should spend very little time in texts that don’t match their interests or schema. When I teach reading in my classroom, my students are broken up by their reading levels. I think this helps cut down on frustration when all students are at their instructional level. As a teacher, it is also important for me to create meaningful learning experiences so that students are engaged and interested in what we are learning. For example, when teaching social studies in my classroom, I do a lot of acting out and get the whole class involved. The students love it and recall the information more readily than they would have if I had just told them about it. They have a personal connection with the story. I think creating that personal connection is vital because you can refer back to it to activate schema. It also keeps students engaged and interested.