Esther Linnartz

EDU 3410-OL1
12 April 2015
Chapter 10 Essay
1. Primary teachers should definitely be concerned with teaching reading in the content
areas. They need to have transferable skills. To be able to transfer skills, they must have
practicing with different types of text. They have to learn skills that are meaningful to them. If
they are not meaningful to the student, teachers must show the students the meaning. Then they
will be able to understand and transfer the skills that they have learned. Within reading
instruction, the mechanics of non-fiction books need to be studied, things such as text features
(bold print, indexes, diagrams, graphs, pictures, headings, subheadings, blurbs, etc.). That way
students will be able to recognize and use them when they see them in other contexts. I taught a
second grader about the index at the back of one of her books and we picked a word and then
found it on all the pages listed. She enjoyed it so much that she found every word from the index
on the pages listed for it. Because of her experience, now she understands better what an index
is and how to use it.
2. When students reach intermediate reading instruction, the focus is no longer on
creating a balanced reading program, but on finding material. The burden of reading the material
and synthesizing it and comprehending it is now placed more directly on the student, whether
they are able to do that yet or not. Even if students are not ready to read to learn and still need
foundational reading instruction, the focus of the teacher has shifted to reading to learn
information rather than focusing on the basics while also reading to learn. I think in part, this is
because of standardized testing. Students are required to know a great deal of information and
one of the ways that teachers accomplish that is by abandoning reading instruction and focusing
on the accumulation of facts.

3. The teacher can use additional materials, from many different sources such as the
public and school libraries and websites such as Teacher Pay Teacher and Pinterest. All of those
will have great information and materials for studying and learning. Through those sites and
locations, the teacher can find similar materials that are free and easy to use. They can find
reputable sites online and use those to instruct their students. If the school or public library has
subscriptions so encyclopedias and e-texts, the teacher could make use of that. They could also
create groups that research one chapter of the text and then present it to the class. That way
the class could get the benefit of the text without the teacher disobeying copyright laws by
making copies for all students.
4. In science earlier this year, we were learning about the life cycles of animals. The
students had to read a non-fiction life cycle book and look for specific text features. The teacher
taught the text features that the students might encounter before sending them off on a treasure
hunt. She used a text and showed examples of the different text features that they might
encounter such as bold text, pictures with captions, fast facts or other notes outside of the main
text, tables of content, indexes, and diagrams. This way, they were able to find what they needed
while also making sense of the text. It was good to see the effect of the pre-activity lesson and
how it enabled them to use the text features that they encountered and how it enhanced their
understanding of the information contained in the books. When they found a text feature that the
teacher had taught about, they would become excited and come up to her to show her what they
had found. Because non-fiction informational texts are so different in the way that they are
presented in relation to fiction, students need additional help to understand how to read a nonfiction text. If they do not have instruction, students tend to just read the main text while

ignoring important information that is presented outside of the main text and diagrams that could
enhance their understanding.

Citations Page
Heilman, A. W., Blair, T. R., Rupley, W. H. (2002). Principles and Practices of Teaching
Reading (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.