Thursday, October 25, 2012
Technical Reading Strategies
In the FACS classroom, technical reading is super important. Whether it is from reading a recipe to reading directions to sew a garment together, technical reading is all over our curriculum. Last year, I was able to work with our literacy coordinator to come up with some great ideas for the foods classroom and 8th grade sewing. This year, I'm reaching out to all of you for ideas for my 9th graders. They all had sewing last year and they are STRUGGLING to reading simple directions. I'm finding much of it is that they come to ask me how to do it before reading instructions and don't like my answer when I tell them to first read their directions. Are kids being spoonfed too much nowdays or is it lazy or is it that they lack the skills to read their directions first before asking for help? Anyone have thoughts on this and suggestions to combat this? My kids now know when they start to come up to ask me and I look at them, they turn around and go read their directions first...I feel like this is something I need to teach to them though. Suggestions?
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Sarah, teaching technical reading is hard work! If you are still looking for resources, check in with an IC or let me know. As for the rest of your observation... I think you're right in that we need to continually reinforce the idea that they are responsible for their own learning and should start out with the resources at hand (and check the directions!).
ReplyDeleteI think part of this is a learned behavior from all the technology that we have now. I am one of those people that when I get something new I want to read the directions on how to use it. However most people laugh and say "you just need to use it and play with it to figure it out" Obviously you can't do that with a recipe or when you are sewing something but I don't think many students slow down and think about where they can find the information they need - instead they want to go right to the source - you.
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