What to watch: "Reading is a top priority" has become the common sense of society, parents and teachers. But in fact, the main place for developing reading ability is in the classroom. Zheng Gang, vice principal of Shanghai Gaodong Middle School, visited American classrooms and found that there are no textbooks for English teaching in the United States. Teachers often choose classic works in a wide range of genres, such as novels, dramas, poems, and essays. They are not like excerpting a part or a section of a famous novel, but teaching the whole novel or the whole novel, encouraging students to read it completely and in depth. Below, he introduced to us how the "whole book reading" teaching for seventh graders in Glenn Junior High School in the United States revolves around students' authentic reading and organizes students to read "real books" and "complete books."
Text丨Zheng Gang Editor丨Li Zhen
When I go to an American school to study and study, reading is an unavoidable topic. In order to cultivate students' reading habits, both society and schools have spared no effort. Cultivating students' lifelong passion for reading and developing good habits of lifelong learning are important goals of American reading education.
The goal is real, but reading is definitely not utilitarian. Teaching based on mother tongue and transcending mother tongue teaching is the biggest feature of American reading teaching.
Graded reading always accompanies children's growth. From the moment they enter school, they must read every day and complete corresponding reading assessments. The grading system is like a game. Students can make choices so that they can Find books that suit you, and at the same time, you can continuously cultivate students' sense of reading achievement and efficacy, from one ladder to another.
Many schools will organize reading activities such as solving key problems or meeting standards, or various exchange and display activities that link reading with practice to stimulate students' enthusiasm for reading.
"Reading aloud" is essential
"Reading is a top priority" has become the common sense of society, parents and teachers. During the lectures, I often see that when a student completes a task or homework in advance in class, he can go to the reading area in the classroom to choose books that suit him, and then start reading without anyone else, even non-English subject teachers Seeing this, I was not surprised and turned a blind eye. Reading has been integrated into campus life, integrated into the marrow and blood of students, and has become an inseparable part of learning and life.
However, the main place for cultivating reading ability is in the classroom. There are no textbooks for English teaching in the United States. Teachers often choose classic works in a wide range of genres, such as novels, dramas, poems, and essays. . They are not like us who excerpt a part or a section of a famous novel, but teach the whole novel or the entire novel, encouraging students to read it completely and in depth.
Therefore, their reading teaching is centered around students' authentic reading, and organizes students to read "real books" and "complete books". As for the value and significance of classic works, it is self-evident. It is an important task for students to use the treasures of world literature and masterpieces that reflect mainstream American values ??as nourishment for students' growth.
When I walked into the seventh-grade English class at Glenn Junior High School one day, the teacher was leading the students to read the classic American juvenile novel "Pigman". The author Paul Jindale artistically read it through a unique narrative perspective. It reproduces the physical and mental growth and development of teenagers as well as the anxiety and hesitation during the growth process, and reveals the theme that growth requires a price.
At the beginning, the teacher was reading a paragraph of text softly, and the students' eyes slowly moved along with the teacher's reading, from left to right, and from the previous line to the next line. During the reading process, the teacher always paid attention to the students' expressions. When the students' eyes wandered away from the text, she gently walked to the students to remind them to concentrate and develop good reading habits.
"Reading aloud" is an indispensable teaching method in American reading teaching, allowing students to feel the beauty of the phonology, rhythm and momentum of the article, as well as the succession and transition of the article.
After the teacher reads aloud, it is time for students to read silently. Next to the book is a daily reading note sheet. Students can record and make notes while reading, and explain what words they are confused about in the text and what words they are confused about. What you know and what you feel, understand, evaluate and question about the text are written on it. The teacher told us that this reading teaching method is called independent reading, which teaches students how to take reading notes while promoting in-depth study of the text and driving students to have in-depth dialogue with the text.
And this kind of reading is also personalized reading. Each student can find his or her own confusion or interest in independent reading, and the teacher can understand their understanding in a timely manner. The dialogue between the teacher and the students is often close to the text. , targeted.
"Mapping" method of reading
The students read Chapter 6 that day. The main content was that the protagonists John and Lorraine went to the zoo together. The teacher asked students to work in groups to complete a map, collect information from the article, design and create a map with the Baron Zoo as the background, and combine the logo, sea lion pool, nut stand, peacock garden, mammal garden, primates, short-snouted animals Crocodiles are included, along with various animals featured in Chapter 6, along with instructions to integrate geographic space, orientation learning, and reading.
Teachers also encourage students to supplement and add their favorite attractions.
Students' hands-on production combines various abilities such as reading comprehension, imagination, creation and map drawing, and makes reading very happy and easy.
The post-reading task of map drawing is that reading teaching closely follows the characteristics of the text and focuses on the transformation and output of personal reading experience. They believe that identifying text features is an important reading ability. Therefore, in reading activities, teachers will design rich and diverse reading tasks based on the characteristics of the text, such as annotated books, reading report sheets, character picture books, drama performances, etc., to promote in-depth reading and Transformation and application of reading comprehension.
Even reading report sheets come in various forms. Texts with a strong sequential order use story sequence diagrams, allowing students to fill in the plot according to the order in which things happened after reading; another example is stories with obvious changes in character personality. , complete the character change chart, sort out the main plots and their impact on the character changes, etc.
Reading is like people's diet. Balanced nutrition is very important. It is necessary to read miscellaneous books, read a wide variety of books, and read texts of different styles. Even for non-fiction texts, teachers will provide different materials with the goals of "informing", "persuading" and "entertaining". Each classic or excellent work is a "living soul".
Only when students are exposed to and read as many books as possible will their minds become richer and stronger. The "American Core Curriculum Standards" propose that literature and information content each account for 50% of primary school students' reading courses. The higher the grade, the greater the proportion of information content.
The proportion of informational reading materials in high schools has been increased to 70%, while the proportion of literary content has been reduced to 30%. The true value of reading is to make reading a reenactment, shaping or preview of students' personal lives, to inspire them to construct different views and perspectives on the same text, and to turn reading into their own spiritual property.
After the students showed the map, the teacher and the students discussed and analyzed the text, analyzing the theme of the novel from the aspects of imagery, scenes, symbols, illustrations and narrative structure, and studying and analyzing the text. Read carefully. In reading teaching, they put forward the concept of close reading (Closing Reading), requiring students to read three times, and each reading presents different comprehension tasks:
The first reading should solve the problem of a certain vocabulary in the text What does it mean? Who is the narrator of the story? What is your intention for a certain part of the text? etc. questions. The second pass is about reading and understanding how the text is organized and formed; the third pass is about creative thinking and a deeper evaluation of the author's emotions and text.
Reading again and again is to "read a book thickly", it is a process of in-depth excavation of the text, and a process of in-depth dialogue between students and the text. How to read a book thickly? In fact, whether we are reading literary works or non-literary works, we only stop at sorting out the content of a work, and lack the skills, methods and means for students to use.
In the United States, close reading is actually the use of reading strategies, such as refining, analyzing, questioning, reorganizing, extending, imagining, asking questions, etc. Therefore, reading is not about breaking an article into pieces and turning it into Instead of turning into fragmented materials, students are guided to continuously think and discuss, cultivating students' critical thinking and analytical reasoning abilities, which is a process of active interaction and meaning construction.
Read classics, read classic novels
After the class, when discussing the selection of teaching materials with the teacher, the teacher told us that four to five classic novels will be selected for reading every semester. Why choose classic novels? The words of Cao Yongjun, a special Chinese language teacher, may be the answer:
“The multi-tonal and rough scenes of social life in the novel and the in-depth revelation of human nature can provide tension for thinking and space for exploration, allowing students to Contacting oneself helps to cultivate critical thinking and develop independent personality. This is also one of the basic principles for Americans to choose books.”
I also learned that they mainly read from the “Great Books Series”. Select reading materials from this set of books. This book is famous in the field of reading teaching in primary and secondary schools in the United States. It has a history of decades. The selected articles are of high quality and are all classic masterpieces that span time and space. It has accumulated thousands of years of human thinking and wisdom about life.
This set of books is specially selected for students by a reading research organization called the Classics Foundation. There are novels, information, social and science versions. There is a series for each grade. . Among the series they are using for seventh-grade students are "Harrison Bergeron", "A Christmas Carol", "The Day of the Butterfly", "The Diary of Anne Frank", "Game Over", "Winx Club", etc. 11 A masterpiece.
This set of books also designs many targeted teaching activities based on the text, such as exclusive questions and activities, intensive reading activities during the second reading, inquiry-based teaching activities, vocabulary activities, and writing. Response activities, curriculum standards connection activities, creative writing, and more are great for teachers, parents, and students to read and use.
When talking about reading a book, the teacher said that this is not only a need for classic reading, but also a need for students to cultivate reading habits and lifelong learning. The reading of a book itself is a long-term reading, and students will read it over several weeks. Over time, students will develop a hobby and habit of reading during the reading stage that will continue throughout their lives.
When I left the classroom, a small poster on the wall caught my attention, which said the top ten reasons for reading: reading is to understand history, to explore the world of oneself, to plan the future, and to travel far away. , in order to create new things, in order to make rational decisions, in order to gain happiness, in order to exercise thinking, in order to connect with the world, read because you can! This is the charm of reading.