TLED 435 Shakia Mosley

Critical Summary #4

Numerous comprehension tactics have been found to be extremely helpful

in studies of proficient readers. These tactics come in a variety of complexity
levels. The following tactics have been shown to be highly beneficial and lend
themselves particularly well to training from the variety of strategies that
researchers have investigated. During the course of reading a text, readers
engage in the process of generating and asking questions. It is especially helpful
for readers to be able to ask themselves pertinent questions as they read in order
to help them integrate knowledge, pinpoint major ideas, and summarize the
material. Asking the correct questions enables proficient readers to concentrate
on a text's most crucial details. Good questions can draw readers' attention to
their comprehension issues and inspire them to take remedial action. “Preservice
and in-service teachers devise questions that encourage students to read
content texts strategically.”
It's crucial to encourage students to think critically by asking them
questions. Lower-level questions and higher-level questions are the two broad
categories into which teachers' inquiries can be divided. Lower-level questions,
usually referred to as literal or factual questions, ask students to recognize or
remember facts that the teacher has already provided. Higher-level questions, on
the other hand, go beyond memorization and factual knowledge and demand
more effort from students to infer, analyze, and evaluate. These questions ask
students to modify previously taught material to construct an answer. The degree
of student thinking typically correlates with the level of the teacher's questions; if
the teacher consistently raises the bar for his or her inquiries, the pupils are likely
to do the same. Critical thinking can be encouraged through design strategies
like providing scaffolding and using debate-based learning, as well as through
facilitation strategies like using Socratic questioning and letting students take the
lead in conversations. Multimodal Learning Through Media: What the Research
Says (Fadel and Lemke 2008) states, "Adding visuals to verbal (text and/or
auditory) learning can result in significant gains in basic and higher-order
learning,".

Questions:
1. With the amount of reading done in social studies classes along with the
students who have all kinds of difficulties with reading, why are social
studies teachers expecting students to be so fluent in reading and writing?
2. What difference would it make if we did not teach critical thinking in the
classroom?
3. How were you challenged to use critical thinking when you were in school?