Teaching Reading in the Content Areas of History - Article Example

? Teaching Reading in the Context Areas of History and Other s of the This research paper explores the available literature review on teaching reading in various disciplines particularly in the context areas of history. Reading forms the basis of comprehension and retaining knowledge gained in classrooms. If reading experience is made interesting and fun for students, they do not find history lessons boring at all. Student-teacher collaboration and cooperation is essential in understanding the relevance and significance of historical events. Students should be encouraged to use their analytical and logical reasoning while reading history. While lectures and tutorials have their respective importance in conveying theoretical knowledge; yet visual aids and tools enhance the comprehension level of students. Keywords: reading, teaching, history, analytical, reasoning, logical etc. Reading is the first and the foremost way of communication between teachers and students. Reading opens the avenues of knowledge for the students, with or without the guidance of teachers. One of the main aims of reading is to understand and process the information and teachers can make reading either fun or boring experience for the students. `Reading has a unique significance in the context areas of history. Historical evidence and the hierarchy of events are represented to the readers in their text books in a number of ways. Pictorial, graphical, and illustrative aspects of history text books make the subject matter appealing to the students. However, interactive reading can have multiple benefits in enhancing the levels of comprehension. A number of scholarly articles and publications have been reviewed in this research paper, in order to study the implications of interactive reading particularly in the context areas of history. 1. Reciprocal Teaching Reciprocal teaching has been really effective in increasing comprehension levels of the students. In ‘Hands-On Reciprocal Teaching: A Comprehension Technique,’ Stricklin focuses on the technique of ‘Fab Four’ and its importance in comprehension. Reciprocal teaching is based upon four strategies: predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarizing. Each strategy is crucial to comprehend any subject. Reading should be made an innovative experience for the students and visual tools like charts, props, book marks, sticky notes and paper-plate dials help make reading a fun and interesting experience. Discussion and documentation are also important in reciprocal teaching because students learn through each others’ points of views and keep a record of whatever they have learnt for future reference. Teachers have three primary responsibilities during a reciprocal teaching session: Before reading, activate prior knowledge of words or ideas students will encounter during reading.During reading, monitor, guide, and encourage individuals or groups in their use of Fab Four. After reading, encourage student reflection and ask students to share which strategy helped them the most and why. (Stricklin, 2011) 2. Working with Materials rather than Memorizing Facts ‘I can do this: Revelations on teaching with historical evidence’ explores the common approach in teaching history, which is memorizing dates and facts; but history students need more than that. They need excitement and passion in order to learn about history and comprehend the significance of events. By having students work with materials rather than memorizing parts of the text book, by having students understand and participate in the process of historical thought, and by having a system to analyze student’s historical work, a type of learning where students are engaged in historical inquiry holds great promise for the future teaching of the discipline. (Burenheide, 2007, p.60) 3. Handling PowerPoint Wisely The article ‘Ban the Bullet-Point! Content-Based PowerPoint for Historians’ reveals how PowerPoint can act as a great or a worse tool in classrooms. Maxwell suggests that history teachers should use PowerPoint wisely and tailor it according to the requirements of their class. One of the greatest mistake teachers make is that they read out the slides. They have the main points of the lecture written on the slides and the students simply jot them down and do not care to listen to the lecture. Power point slides can serve as a supplementary point of interest; a focus at which wandering attentions can gather. Students can and do multi-task. The challenge facing instructors is not to get students to focus exclusively on the lecture, but to get them multi-tasking on academic material. (Maxwell, 2007, p. 42) The author suggests that content on the slides and in the lecture should complement each other- but the PowerPoint slides should be in no way a summary or the key points of the lecture- they should refer to some interesting or unique facts about historical events; or may contain comments of the teacher. 4. Interpretations of the Past ‘Beyond Reading Comprehension and Summary: Learning to Read and Write in History by Focusing on Evidence, Perspective, and Interpretation. Curriculum Inquiry’ suggest that interpretations of the past are important because they develop historical reasoning and understanding. Literacy experts have also signalled the need to help adolescents move beyond basic comprehension and written expression toward analytical thinking and logical reasoning. The International Reading Association (IRA) recommends that adolescents learn strategies such as “questioning themselves about what they read . . . recognizing how a text is organized  . . . judging their own understanding; and evaluating authors' ideas and perspectives. (Monte-Sano, 2011) The three basic reading strategies have been outlined in this article: annotating primary source readings; regular informal writing prompts; and feedback. 5. Reading Science and Mathematical Subjects ... in addition to comprehending text passages, students must be able decode and comprehend scores of scientific and mathematical signs, symbols, and graphics. Students also need to read and interpret information presented in unfamiliar ways--not only left to right, but also right to left (number lines), top to bottom (tables), and even diagonally (graphs). Further, students must learn how to read text that is organized differently than that in other core subjects. (Barton, Heidema & Jordan, 2002) Teachers need to adopt different strategies like giving prior knowledge and making students understand the conceptual relation of words to their meanings. By memorizing the meanings of the words from dictionaries, students cannot understand the main concept of the symbols or the words. Teachers should focus on survey, question, read, question, compute, question strategy. As cues are missing from the text of science and mathematics, therefore, teachers should make an effort to prepare graphic organizers, chapter outlines, and structured overviews before students begin to read. This would establish a connection between new ideas being presented to them. 6. Meta-Cognitive Reading Abilities In ‘Changing texts, changing thinking: Comprehension demands of new science textbooks’, Walpole stresses upon the need to change the conventional layout, presentation of science textbooks. The author thinks that as the world of children’s books have changed, therefore, science text books should match the trade book models. A teacher, reading aloud a text that asks children to stretch their calf muscles, can provide a powerful model of how to understand if she or he actually rises and stretches, inviting the children to join in. Then they can engage in a conversation about the relationship of that action to the evolving meaning of the text. Likewise, when a text asks a reader to think about how machines help in daily life, the teacher can stop reading and share his or her thinking, inviting the children to join in with suggestions. This modelling can be followed with meta-cognitive talk about how good comprehenders use their minds (and sometimes their bodies) to build connections while they are reading. (Walpole, 1999) According to Iwai, in The Effects of Meta-cognitive Reading Strategies: Pedagogical Implications for EFL/ESL Teachers,’ the importance of reading and processing information in the first or second languages is explored. Teachers can train their students to develop meta-cognitive reading abilities by starting the reading sessions with pictures. This would help the students develop basic ideas about the information being delivered in a better way. Once the students get familiar with the text, they can work independently without visual aid and thus improve their meta-cognitive abilities. “...meta-cognitive reading strategies are classified into three groups of planning (pre-reading), monitoring (during reading), and evaluating (post-reading) strategies, and each group has a variety of strategies that require readers’ metacognitive processing.” (2011) 7. Reading to Learn. “There was a tendency for students to attempt to align their responses to the notion of a ‘right answer’ rather than exploring a range of possible responses with each other.” (Railton & Watson, 2005, p. 185) Though the trends of reading have changed over the time for political, academic and other social factors; therefore, students had to grapple with the changing trends. The most important aspect of teaching reading should be to encourage the children to read to learn. Reading should not be a dull activity- rather it should be made interesting and interactive, so that students might take up reading as a permanent hobby. Styles & Drummond believe that parents should help their children in building interest in reading. “Our professional strengths in the political battles that still to be fought over the teaching (and learning and testing) of reading will come from our principled understanding of what we are fighting for.” (1993) 8. Importance of Role-Play Beidatsch and Broomhall explore student-centred learning in: ‘Is this the past? The place of role-play exercises in undergraduate history teaching’. Based upon participatory activities, games and role-play exercises, “the purpose of role-play activities designed and used in our research was not to suggest that students would gain some form of proximity to the past, but rather to use the activities in part to reflect on the differences in their experience of an historical event or dynamic (conceptual, social and so on).” (2010) 9. Active Engagement through Cooperative Learning Cooperative learning activities followed by discussions help students understand the content in a better manner and provide them the opportunities to look at a certain issue in a different light. “Some students noted that, even though they were apprehensive at first about sharing with peers in the lectorials, they persevered because of the benefits which they gained as a result of their par­ticipation.” (Cavanagh, 2011, p. 27) 10. Critical Thinking Skills “If educators only focus on content, the information taught might not be useful if one changes careers. However, if we focus on critical thinking skills, these will be useful no matter how many times individuals change careers.” (Kennedy, 2009, p.226) 11. Importance of Peer Learning “... there are also motivational and social outcomes. For example, interactions with peers are often more entertaining than listening to lectures, the students develop communication skills and self-knowledge and have the opportunity to initiate friendships amongst their peer group.”(Finlay & Faulkner, 2005, p.33) “It is consistent with Hyland’s research into the perspectives of history students in which skills in handling unconventional source material such as visual, numerical or computer-based data are viewed as having relatively low value as was the case with expressing personal insight, views and judgements.” (Rogers, 2004, p.238) Comparative Study of the Reviewed Articles: The recent and ongoing researches in ‘teaching reading’ suggest that conventional methods of reading while delivering lectures or tutorials or podcasts should be replaced by more dynamic styles of interactive, cooperative reading. The articles reviewed in this research paper belong to cross-cultural academic backgrounds and almost all of them emphasize upon enhancing meta-cognitive abilities of the students. The traditional method of teaching where the students’ role is to receive and absorb the information only needs to be converted into reciprocal teaching. Visual aid is required to spark interest in the students while reading out history lessons. In-class debates or general discussion should be prompted by the teachers to excite the imagination of the students. Usually, students focus on learning and memorizing facts and figures rather than exploring historical evidences to interpret history. The aim of the students should not be to strive to give only the correct answers- but it should be to explore and learn through the process of interactive reading. Introduction to the reading material acts as a stimulus to prompt the students to do some preliminary reading before the lecture. This helps in establishing connection between their perceptions of history lessons with those of their teachers. Healthy class discussions and feedback in written form compliment the reading experience. Conclusion: The phenomenon of teaching reading is being redefined with the fast changing dynamics of the academic world. Students need to engage and relate to theoretical subjects like history and social studies etc. Apart from imparting conventional theoretical knowledge through lectures, teachers need to sharpen the analytical and logical skills of their students, so that they can explore, question, understand and interpret the past with the help of provided historical evidence. Reciprocal teaching strategy and using visual aids are really helpful in teaching reading within the context areas of history. References Barton, M., Heidema, C., & Jordan, D. (2002). Teaching reading in mathematics and science. Educational Leadership, 60(3), 24-28. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Beidatsch, C. & Broomhall, S. (2010) Is this the past? The place of role-play exercises in undergraduate history teaching. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 7(1). Burenheide, B. (2007). I can do this: revelations on teaching with historical thinking, The History Teacher, 41(1), 55-61. Cavanagh, M. (2011) Students’ experiences of active engagement through cooperative learning activities in lectures , Active Learning in Higher Education, 12(1), 23-33. Finlay, S. & Faulkner, G. (2005) Tete a tete: Reading groups and peer learning, Active Learning in Higher Education, 6(1,) 32-45. Iwai, Y. (2011) The effects of meta-cognitive reading strategies: pedagogical implications for EFL/ESL teachers. The Reading Matrix, 11 (2), 150-159. Kennedy, R. (2009) The power of in-class debates. Active Learning in Higher Education, 10 (3), 225-236. MONTE-SANO, C. (2011), Beyond reading comprehension and summary: learning to read and write in history by focusing on evidence, perspective, and interpretation. curriculum inquiry, 41,212–249. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-873X.2011.00547.x Maxwell, A. (2007) Ban the Bullet-Point! Content-Based PowerPoint for Historians. The History Teacher, 41(1), 39-54. Railton, D. & Watson, P. (2005) Teaching autonomy: ‘Reading groups’ and the development of autonomous learning practices , Active Learning in Higher Education, 6( 3),182-193. Rogers, G. (2004) History, learning technology and student achievement: Making the difference? Active Learning in Higher Education, 5(3),232-247. Styles, M., & Drummond, M. (1993). The politics of reading. Cambridge Journal of Education, 23(1), 3-14. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Stricklin, K. (2011). Hands-On reciprocal teaching: A comprehension technique. Reading Teacher, 64(8), 620-625. doi:10.1598/RT.64.8.8 Walpole, S. (1998). Changing texts, changing thinking: Comprehension demands of new science textbooks. Reading Teacher, 52(4), 358-369. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Read More