Text Complexity and Disciplinary Text

The Hinchman text compared text complexity to small children playing soccer, and I think it is a fabulous analogy.  When they first begin playing soccer (or reading), they are only able to concentrate on one skill/strategy at a time.  As children mature and become better readers (or soccer players!), you must add skills and strategies to their repertoire so that they can become better, more engaged readers.  If children are not challenged when they read, they cannot and will not grow as readers.  Teachers must consciously balance challenging texts with their non-challenging ones, but they must also model specific strategies to help their students, especially with content-area texts.  Setting a purpose for reading, examining text structure, and monitoring comprehension are vital for students to understand more complex, content-based texts.  Each discipline area has unique vocabulary and text structures, and students must have a navigator to help them make their way through them until they are proficient enough with the strategies to do it themselves.

Text-to-text: 

The strategies outlined this week in the Jetton text were expanded versions of the ones presented last week in Chapter 4.  The strategies were also similar to the ones outlined in Chapter 8 of the Hinchman text.  All the readings stressed the need for a purpose for reading, and that is vital for every reader to establish.  All the strategies are designed to help with comprehension which is vital in more complex texts.

Text-to-world:

I think that just as any good coach pushes his/her players to become better people and better athletes by challenging them, a good teacher must do the same for his/her students.  Allowing students to remain stagnant readers because it's easier for them and they enjoy it only sets students up for failure in education.  They must be challenged and engage with a variety of texts in order to become proficient and be able to interact with highly complex disciplinary texts.

Text-to-self:

I thought the table in the Hinchman text on page 103 was extremely useful to help identify text complexity.  I actually had the opportunity to talk about with a student after he chose a low Lexile level book.  We looked up the Lexile level online, then looked up where it ranked on the chart.  When he realized that it was in the 4th-5th grade level (he's in 8th), he agreed that he would find another book that was more appropriate for his level.

Questions:

1. When incorporating Internet-based documents into the curriculum, should students be allowed to freely search for the information, should they be given guidelines or specific sites to search, or should they be given direct links to find the information?

2) What are some of the effective strategies that you use to engage students in non-fiction articles?  I've used the RAP IT with limited success, and wondered if anyone had tried any of the other strategies?