Mimi Rothschild - Home School Support & Home Education News

By Mimi Rothschild

Vickie Suarez makes a compelling argument for home schooling in her article published in The Star-Gazette earlier this week.  The fact of the matter is that home schooling is on the rise in America, despite bogus claims from critics about socialization and academic issues.  These claims are of course bogus because study after study has shown that home schoolers, on average, out perform public school students academically and also participate, on average, in about five extra-curricular activities. 

Suarez and her husband are no different than most parents.  They want what is best for their children and she explains their decision to home school their children.  She also argues why home schooling is the best form of schooling for a child. 

Read Vickie Suarez’ case for home schooling here.

By Mimi Rothschild

Here’s part two of this incredibly informative article about using prior knowledge to enhance your child’s homeschool education.

How Can You Make It Happen?

 

Start showing students how to make connections to their reading systematically and explicitly. Some teachers devote a good amount of time (6-8 weeks) to study a particular comprehension strategy in-depth before moving on to the next.

 

Begin by carefully choosing texts that can model how a proficient reader connects the text with experience. Picture books (even older students love them!) and shorter trade books that feature memoir writing are ideal texts to start with. Check the Resources section for a short list of books that are great for making connections. Use a variety of texts when teaching, including poetry and nonfiction books with different text structures and formats.

 

As you read the book with the class, “think out loud,” stopping at appropriate points to articulate your thinking as a model for students. First, model connections between the text and your own experiences and encourage students to think of their own experiences that connect with the story. These are “text to self” connections. It is important during modeling to continually come back to the text and not allow personal experiences to divert the group from understanding the story. As students share connections, talk about how their experience helps them to better understand the text and how the text helps them to build their store of knowledge and experience.

 

The next connections to model are “text to world” connections. What do they know about the world that will help them to better understand the story? If they are reading When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant or Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold, have them think about what they know about life in the mountains or in the city that can help them to better understand the story. If they are reading The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles, think about the background knowledge your students have about the Civil Rights Movement or segregation that could help them make sense of what they are reading.

 

Finally, model connections that are “text to text.” Model how a book you are currently reading reminds you of another book you read with the class. Discuss similar styles of writing, characters, themes, or how both stories describe childhood memories of two different places. How does a book like Crow Boy by Taro Yashima, the story of a boy with hidden talents who is teased by his classmates, help students to understand a book like The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes? Students can also think about what they know about authors based on books they have read by that author. They can predict what a story might be about, or if the style is similar in all of the author’s stories.

 

With all of these strategies for connecting text to previous knowledge, it is crucial to talk with students explicitly about how this helps them to more fully understand what they are reading. It is also important for students to understand how they are building more prior knowledge with each book read.

 

How Can You Measure Success?

 

Much of the assessment for this comprehension strategy will be ongoing and informal observation of student understanding through participation in class discussion and in individual reading conferences with students. As students gain experience, you can monitor their progress through their entries in a reading response or reflection journal. Selected entries, chosen to show student progress over time, can go into a student reading portfolio along with completed graphic organizers, when appropriate, for various texts that the student has read throughout the year.

 

Lesson Plans

 

Prior Knowledge, The Popcorn Book

 

This lesson is designed to teach primary students how to activate prior knowledge before they begin reading. The lesson teaches students how to connect text to self, using the book The Popcorn Book, by Tomie de Paola. In this lesson, students make connections to themselves, their knowledge, and their experiences and help complete a KWL chart as the book is read aloud. This lesson is the first of a set of activating prior knowledge lessons designed for primary grades.

 

Prior Knowledge, A House Is a House for Me

 

This lesson is designed to teach primary students how to activate prior knowledge before they begin reading. The lesson teaches studentshow to make text-to-world connections using the book A House Is a House for Me, by Mary Ann Hoberman. In this lesson, students help complete a KWL chart by making text-to-world connections before reading the book and then make new text-to-world connections after reading. This lesson is the second in a set of activating prior knowledge lessons designed for primary grades.

 

Prior Knowledge, The Three Little Pigs

 

This lesson is designed to expand primary students’ skills in activating prior knowledge before they begin reading. The lesson teaches how to connect text to text, using the book, The Three Little Pigs by James Marshall. In this lesson, students make connections to another event, setting, or character from another text that reminds them of the story they are reading. Students help complete a comparison chart and create their own text. This lesson is the last of a set of activating prior knowledge lessons designed for primary grades.

By Mimi Rothschild

Are you looking to increase your homeschool child’s level of reading comprehension?  If you are then read the first part of this informative article about activating prior knowledge. 

What Is It?

Call it schema, relevant background knowledge, prior knowledge, or just plain experience, when students make connections to the text they are reading, their comprehension increases. Good readers constantly try to make sense out of what they read by seeing how it fits with what they already know. When we help students make those connections before, during, and after they read, we are teaching them a critical comprehension strategy that the best readers use almost unconsciously.

Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmerman in Mosaic of Thought (1997), have identified three main types of connections students make as they read:

• Text to self

• Text to world

• Text to text

Why Is It Important?

Explicitly teaching strategies that proficient readers use when trying to make sense out of text helps to deepen understanding and create independent readers. Activating prior knowledge, or schema, is the first of seven strategies that Keene and Zimmerman identify as key for reading comprehension success.

“Teaching children which thinking strategies are used by proficient readers and helping them use those strategies independently creates the core of teaching reading.” (Keene and Zimmerman, 1997)

These strategies, identified through research based on what good readers do when they are reading, help students become metacognitive. They learn to think about their thinking as they are reading.

When students learn to make connections from their experience to the text they are currently reading, they have a foundation, or scaffolding, upon which they can place new facts, ideas, and concepts. As good readers read, they think about what they are reading and consider how it fits with what they already know. In this way, they build upon the schema that they already have developed.

When Should It Be Taught?

This comprehension strategy should be taught on an ongoing basis so that students learn independently to use it as they are reading. It should be taught explicitly and systematically over an extended period of time, moving from modeling the thinking process out loud by the teacher, to students using the strategy as a natural part of their comprehension process.

Prior knowledge should be discussed before reading the text to help set the stage for what is coming. During reading, students should be encouraged to make connections to the text from their experience and the teacher should model this process using his or her own connections. After reading, the discussion should center on how the connections helped students to better understand the text and how the text helped them to build their foundation of prior knowledge.

What Does It Look Like?

At the early stages of teaching students the strategy of making connections to their prior knowledge, the teacher models “thinking aloud.” The teacher reads a text to the class and talks through his or her thinking process in order to show students how to think about their thinking as they are reading. Slowly, after students have seen and heard the teacher using the strategy, they are given the opportunity to share their experiences and thinking. Finally, students make connections to texts independently. Teachers can check in periodically to have students articulate their thinking, in order to track progress, spot difficulties, and intervene individually or conduct a mini-lesson to reteach or move students forward.

As students are activating their prior knowledge and making connections, they use graphic organizers, such as a concept map, a flow chart, or a , to help map their thinking. Often students keep reflection or response journals where they record thoughts, feelings, insights, and questions about what they read. Students, in large and small groups, discuss and write about the connections they are making to texts. (For examples of these and other graphic organizers, click the link.)

By Mimi Rothschild

Here is part two of the visualizing article I posted yesterday.  Let me know what you think!  Have you tried a visualizing strategy before with your children?  Did it work?  If it didn’t then what has worked for your child’s reading comprehension?

Taking Visualizing to the Next Level

Visualization activities lend themselves to follow-up lessons. For example, the few sentences suggested in the “Starting Small” activity lead the way for deeper discussions about making inferences. Students can discuss not only what they visualize when they hear or read given text but also the questions that the text suggests, such as, “Why do you think Joan received all of these gifts?” or “What do you think Joan will do next?” You can take this particular discussion further by allowing students to personalize the experience by answering questions such as, “What would you do if you were Joan?” or “How would you feel if you were in Joan’s place?”

When Can You Use It?

Reading

Students can sharpen their visualizing skills as they read independently, participate in small group reading activities, or listen to a text. To encourage visualizing, turn out the lights and ask students to close their eyes as they listen. Pause frequently to allow students to share their images and mental pictures with the class. The ability to generate visual images from texts becomes increasingly important as students move from richly illustrated storybooks into “chapter books” with relatively few pictures. Ease the transition by explaining that skillful writers use descriptive language designed to generate imagery in their readers’ imaginations. Encourage students to create their own mental images, thereby illustrating the books themselves-filling in the pictures that the author paints using only words.

Writing

Text that is easy to visualize is often filled with vivid descriptions or strong verbs. Watch for sentences or paragraphs in students’ writing that lend themselves to practice with visualization. With students’ permission, share these examples with the class, encouraging discussion not only of the images created by the text but about why the chosen text allows for visualization. And encourage young writers to use language that generates images-this is when writing really sparkles!

Math

Visualization is a helpful skill in mathematics as well. Students often use manipulatives to make math concepts more concrete, and visualization is a way of internalizing the concepts the manipulatives reinforce. For instance, a class that has been studying fractions and using fraction bars can segue into a discussion comparing the sizes of fractions using common images. A question such as, “Would you rather have 1/2 or 1/3 of a pizza?” is more easily answered if students can picture a pizza (or at least a circle) and what 1/2 versus 1/3 looks like. At the beginning of such a conversation, you can draw two pizzas on the board, shading in 1/2 of the first and 1/3 of the second. As the discussion continues, (1/4 versus 1/8, 2/3 versus 3/4, and so on) challenge students to picture the pizzas in their minds or to draw their visual images.

Social Studies

As students study history, they are sometimes presented with a list of dates and names. For students to really visualize historic events, they need sufficient details to create rich pictures. Allow students opportunities to listen to or read personal accounts of an event or time period they are studying. When available, pieces written from a child’s perspective are helpful in forging personal links between students and the time period in question. For instance, Sarah Morton’s Day: A Day In The Life of a Pilgrim Girl and Samuel Eaton’s Day: A Day In The Life of a Pilgrim Boy, both by Kate Waters, provide context to help young children understand colonial life.

Science

Visualizing is sometimes a good challenge with some of the more abstract concepts studied in science. For instance, many classes study plants, and students are told that plants need water to grow. While students can memorize the fact that water travels from a plant’s roots through the stem to its leaves or buds, putting a white carnation in a vase filled with water that has been tinted blue with food coloring provides a vivid example of this process as students witness the flower eventually turn blue.

Lesson Plans

Visualizing: Following the Drinking Gourd
This lesson is designed to establish the skill of visualizing for primary students. In this lesson, students use clues from the text to be able to create their own images and imagine how characters are thinking and feeling.

Visualizing: Hill of Fire
This lesson is designed to expand the skill of visualizing for primary students.

By Mimi Rothschild

It is crucial that homeschooling children perceive and understand what they read, no matter if they’re in first grade or twelfth grade.  The ability to comprehend text is an absolute necessity for students in the current fast-paced competitive digital world.  One way homeschoolers can improve their reading comprehension is by visualizing.  Read all about visualizing below in this great article I recently discovered.

What Is It?

Visualizing refers to our ability to create pictures in our heads based on text we read or words we hear. It is one of many skills that makes reading comprehension possible.

Why Is It Important?

Visualizing strengthens reading comprehension skills as students gain a more thorough understanding of the text they are reading by consciously using the words to create mental images. As students gain more deliberate practice with this skill, the act of visualizing text becomes automatic. Students who visualize as they read not only have a richer reading experience but can recall what they have read for longer periods of time. (Harvey & Goudvis 2000)

Visualizing text as it is being read or heard also creates personal links between the readers/listeners and text. Readers who can imagine the characters they read about, for instance, may become more involved with what they are reading. This makes for a more meaningful reading experience and promotes continued reading.

How Can You Make It Happen?

Visualizing is a skill that can be helpful in many domains, and while it is often associated with teaching early readers, even experienced readers can benefit from practice with this skill. When selecting a text for a visualizing activity, start with a piece that contains descriptive language and strong verbs and that lends itself to conjuring vivid images. It is not necessary to start with an entire book-even a well-crafted sentence or short paragraph can provide a rich springboard for a visualizing lesson.

Starting Small

To begin a series of lessons that will focus on improving visualizing skills, you might choose to start with a short passage taken from a text or of your own creation. For instance, the following sentences could be used to spark discussions:

Joan could barely believe her eyes. All these gifts were for her! She had never seen so many packages, not even on all her birthdays combined!

After listening to or reading the sentences once or twice, students can discuss the mental images created by the sentences. Students will likely differ in their descriptions of the scene. For instance, some may picture a small child surrounded by stacks of gifts. Others may imagine an older girl in front of a table piled with presents. There is no single correct answer, and those three simple sentences, though not particularly rich in detail, do offer enough information for the reader or listener to begin to form a mental picture.

Group Activities

Students can work on their visualizing skills as a whole class or in small groups. One way to challenge young students to improve their visualizing is to read a picture book aloud, sharing only portions of the illustrations. Then ask students to create their own illustrations based on the text they heard. More advanced readers might listen to a selection from a novel that the class has been reading and create a picture or written description of a character or setting based on the information in the text.

Independent Reading

Students can also practice their visualization skills as a follow up to independent reading. Ask young students who keep track of their reading in reading logs or journals to respond to prompts regarding the images created by the text they have read: “Does the main character remind you of anyone you know?” “Have you ever been to or seen any place that is like the setting of your book?” Very young students can also draw images in their journals, recording their mental pictures in response to their reading. You can discuss these drawings during one-on-one reading conferences.

Older students who are reading novels can think about questions such as, “If you were going to make a movie based on your book, who would you want to play the main characters?” “What would the scenery look like?” and “Where would you want to do the filming?” These questions get at the imagery created in the mind of the readers and encourage those readers to share their mental pictures in their responses.