Learning Blog 4

I really enjoyed Chapter 5 of our book, Reading to Learn in the Content Areas, about the Reflection Phase of the PAR Lesson Framework. The Reflection Phase “helps clarify thinking and focus on understanding. In this phase, students learn better how to retain information. Full understanding cannot be achieved until the students reflect in a meaningful way about their learning” (pg.109). At this stage, as teachers we can offer our students support in terms of the material but their role at this stage is the most critical for their success. It's where students get to connect what they read to what they already know and with the world around them.  They get to fill in any gaps and clarify what they have learned by asking questions. This is something that takes time for the students’ and may take the students’ reading the text several times to fully reflect on it.

As classroom teachers, teaching our students to be avid critical thinkers is very important for them to able to reflect on what they read and applying it to their daily lives or the world around them. It can be very tough because of SOL’s and other time constraints to consistently teach critical thinking skills because they require a lot of knowledge, effort on both the part of the student as well as the teacher, and a willingness of the student to re-evaluate any of their misconceptions about any part of the material . But if we are not constantly challenging our students and make them think critically in all content areas then they will lose the ability to derive more meaningful learning from what they are reading no matter what content area.

This chapter does a great job of presenting many different reflection strategies that I can use in my future classroom and shows how they can be used to improve communication, critical thinking, and critical literacy skills. The challenge for teachers is modeling these skills for their students in a way that keeps their students engaged and excited to learn. It will take some time and practice for the students to perfect these skills to where they reach a point where these skills become second nature to them.

As a future elementary school teacher I really liked Cooperative Learning Strategy. It can be a great strategy for students in elementary school that while they are learning they are also building and learning necessary social skills they will need as they move on through school. This strategy requires teachers to first model exactly what they expect from each student in the group and how groups are supposed to function. When I was in elementary school my teachers had us do “group work” but in every group one of us was either not interested in the material or was not doing are fair share. It is easy for cooperative learning to turn into “group work” if not modeled correctly by the teacher.

Another strategy I liked was Think-Pair-Share that I will definitely use in my future classroom.  It gives the students who are shy and feel uncomfortable giving answer to a question in front of the whole class a way to think through their answer independently then collaborate with only one other person. This helps them feel more confident to then share what they learned with the whole class.

Other concepts I liked were Three-Step Interviews, Paired Reading, Reflection Guides,  Brainstorming, Making Connections and About/Point.


The main question I have is about teaching critical thinking skills.  How do you go about it?