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Humor
We all learn by experience but some of us have to go to summer school.
Curiosity and Comprehension
Mr. / Girgis
Curiosity
Most
people have an innate curiosity about things and
ideas, people and events. When they read stories,
especially those concerning crime, love, or adventure,
they not only want to find out what is happening or has
happened, but they generally make some kind of guess
as to what is likely to happen next.
Where there is no such curiosity on the part of the
reader, a detective story becomes a pointless tale of
violence that
few intelligent people would take the
trouble to read.
A “discovery” approach
Learners guess or discover what will
happen next.
The teacher should train students in imaginative
thinking as much as in language skills, but it is surely
wrong to dissociate the
two faculties of thought and
speech.
Comprehension
Comprehension is powerful because the ability to
construct meaning
comes from the mind of the reader.
Therefore, specific comprehension
instruction—modeling
during read-aloud and shared reading, targeted
mini-lessons, and varied opportunities for practice
during small-group
and independent reading—
is crucial to the development of strategic,
effective
readers.
The reader begins to construct meaning by selecting
and previewing the
text. During reading, comprehension
builds through predicting,
inferring, synthesizing, and
seeking answers to questions that arise.
After reading, deeper meaning is constructed through
reviewing,
rereading portions of the text, discussion,
and thoughtful reflection.
During each of these phases,
the reader relates the text to his own life
experiences.
Types of reading:
1-Literal comprehension involves what the author is
actually saying. The reader needs to understand ideas
and information explicitly stated in the text including
what, who, where, and when of the passage.
The readers, who are at this level, believe that they have
adequately comprehended text if they can recognize the
content words and can understand most of the sentences.
Generally, the readers at this level only identify lists of
facts, definitions of concepts and other easily memorized
materials.
2-Inferential comprehension
Inferential comprehension refers to the ability of the
readers to establish, guess correctly the
logical inference
of the authors. The readers, at this level, must be
able to
order authors’ ideas coherently and find out the intended
messages conveyed by the authors in the passage.
Inferential comprehension is harder than literal
comprehension for the readers are not only recognize
the author’s ideas stated explicitly in the text, but they
have also to be able to guess the author’s intention either
explicitly or implicitly stated in the text.
Inferential comprehension includes text connecting
inferences which are required to integrate information
from different parts of the text and to establish coherency
and gap filling inferences in which information from
outside the text (general knowledge) is incorporated
with information in the text to fill in gaps in missing details
3-Critical comprehension
refers to deep comprehension of understanding a text.
Critical comprehension emphasizes
thinking ritually about
text meaning and intentionally making
connection
between text and relevant knowledge of the world
beyond that
text. Fisher (2001: 8) relates critical
comprehension to critical thinking.
It includes how to identify the elements in a reasoned
case, especially reason and conclusions, identify and
evaluate assumptions, clarify and interpret the ideas
and expressions, recognized unstated assumption
and values, render accurate judgment about specific
things, evaluate arguments of different kinds, analyze,
evaluate, and produce explanations, draw inferences,
and produce arguments
Comprehension Strategies
There are six main types of
comprehension strategies:
Readers connect
the topic or information to what they
already know about themselves, about
other texts, and about the world.
Ask Questions—
Readers ask themselves
questions about the text, their reactions to
it, and the author's purpose for writing it.
Visualize—Readers make the printed
word real and concrete by creating a
“movie” of the text in their minds.
Determine Text Importance
—Readers:
(a) distinguish between what's essential
versus what's interesting, (b)
distinguish
between fact and opinion, (c) determine
cause-and-effect
relationships,
(d) compare and contrast ideas or
information, (e)
discern themes,
opinions, or perspectives,
(f) pinpoint problems and
solutions,
(g) name steps in a process,
(h) locate information that
answers specific
questions, or (i) summarize
15 Interesting Facts About Education
Around The World They Don’t Teach
You In School
Did You Know?
1. The City Montessori School in Lucknow, India,
is the largest
school in the world in terms of number
of students, with more than 32,000 students.
2. The students in China receive the most homework
in the world. At an average, teenagers do a whopping
14 hours of homework in a week.
Consider yourself
lucky, you didn't have to!
3. Pakistan does not give children a legal right to free
education.
Only children between the ages of 5 and 9
are entitled to compulsory education.
4. Summer vacations in Chile start from mid-December
and end in early March. That's 3 whole months away
from school.
5. France has the shortest school year from August to
June and also the longest school day.
6. Children in Germany receive a special cone called
Schultüte, which is filled with pens, pencils, books
and snacks.
7. In Holland, children start school on the day they turn
4, which means that there's always someone new in
the class.
8. World's oldest school is in Canterbury, England.
The King's School, as it is named, was founded in 597
AD. The school is up-to-date with quality equipment
and supplies and provides modern education.
9. Kids in Japan are the most independent of the lot.
They travel to school alone, clean their own classrooms
and even carry lunch.
10. Turin has the smallest school in the world with only
one pupil. Confused if we should be happy for the child
or pity him/her?
11. Kids in Finland do not start school until the age of 7,
which is one of the oldest ages around the world to start
school.
12. Iran is one country where girls and boys are
educated separately till the time they reach college.
In fact, only women teachers take classes of girls and
male teachers for boys.
