Professional Learning Corner
From The Teacher Tip, A Free App from Heinemann
The Power of Naming
Adapted from Reading Projects Reimagined: Student-Driven Conferences to Deepen Critical Thinking by Dan Feigelson.
If we want students to be more independent and in control of their reading comprehension, they need to learn to recognize, name, and extend their own ideas. So how do you help them do that?
Start by helping them realize they are capable of coming up with valid ideas on their own. Listen to what they notice and help them name it in a way that is bigger than any one book. You want them to take away something they can bring to the next book, and the book after that.
To teach something that will be generalizable to other reading experiences, beyond today's book, start with specifics—but then pull back to name the idea in a general way that could apply to other texts. For example, a student reading Tuck Everlasting may say it's unfair for Jesse to pressure Winnie to drink from the spring. You may respond, “It sounds as if you're thinking about the reasons characters do what they do—and whether you agree with their actions.”
Sometimes the more sophisticated thinking happens when we go from the specific to the general. And this is what you are after as you help students name the ideas they are coming up with as they read.
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