I agree with many of your points related to the importance of knowledge in comprehension and making meaning from text. I see that when students have knowledge they make meaningful connections to the texts they are reading and make robust inferences. Just yesterday I had a golden teaching moment when a student used his knowledge about Javan rhinos to make inferences about the similar plight of the quetzal bird. Coming from a student, not directed by me, laid the groundwork for me to develop the understanding of my group further. An organic approach led to a deeper understanding! My question to you is regarding "skills" and "strategies". I am not sure I understand this issue completely. I am looking for answers... We do teach students to understand main ideas in texts, details that support those ideas, author's claims, how to break the text down into meaningful chunks based on if they notice the text is organized around the frame of comparing and contrasting, a sequencing of events, etc. What's wrong with that? I read that teaching strategies is "not in anymore" and I am not sure. Perhaps you could write more about that. When students are tackling complex texts, we want them to do so, and we teachers "help them to understand it". We use strategies to scaffold complex texts through close reading and other pedagogical moves. Clarify for me what you think about the use of strategies for teachers to help students access complex texts that build knowledge. What tools am I offering my students to tackle complex texts as they build their knowledge to close “the knowledge gap”?
I have written a lot about the role of strategy instruction. I'm providing a link below to the most recent post I've written on the topic, but -- TL;DR, it's not that teachers need to choose between building knowledge and teaching strategies. It's a question of what is in the foreground. It works best to put content in the foreground and bring in whatever skills or strategies are appropriate to help students understand and analyze the particular content at hand.
I agree with many of your points related to the importance of knowledge in comprehension and making meaning from text. I see that when students have knowledge they make meaningful connections to the texts they are reading and make robust inferences. Just yesterday I had a golden teaching moment when a student used his knowledge about Javan rhinos to make inferences about the similar plight of the quetzal bird. Coming from a student, not directed by me, laid the groundwork for me to develop the understanding of my group further. An organic approach led to a deeper understanding! My question to you is regarding "skills" and "strategies". I am not sure I understand this issue completely. I am looking for answers... We do teach students to understand main ideas in texts, details that support those ideas, author's claims, how to break the text down into meaningful chunks based on if they notice the text is organized around the frame of comparing and contrasting, a sequencing of events, etc. What's wrong with that? I read that teaching strategies is "not in anymore" and I am not sure. Perhaps you could write more about that. When students are tackling complex texts, we want them to do so, and we teachers "help them to understand it". We use strategies to scaffold complex texts through close reading and other pedagogical moves. Clarify for me what you think about the use of strategies for teachers to help students access complex texts that build knowledge. What tools am I offering my students to tackle complex texts as they build their knowledge to close “the knowledge gap”?
I have written a lot about the role of strategy instruction. I'm providing a link below to the most recent post I've written on the topic, but -- TL;DR, it's not that teachers need to choose between building knowledge and teaching strategies. It's a question of what is in the foreground. It works best to put content in the foreground and bring in whatever skills or strategies are appropriate to help students understand and analyze the particular content at hand.
Here's the link to the post:
https://nataliewexler.substack.com/p/clearing-up-misconceptions-about-26a