Chapter 8

At the beginning Beers talks about the fact that simply having students answer questions about a text is not a thorough way of making sure students comprehend what they read. She goes on to show ways to help students formulate meanings and ideas from the texts they read. To take it a step farther than just understanding the meanings of the words. I can see how each strategy she describes could open up further critical thought, but I definitely prefer some strategies over others. I think strategies like Somebody Wanted But So are only good for shorter stories are very well structured plot wise. Scales could be used in almost all comprehension settings. I agree that students respond better to more opinion-based strategies. I am definitely not a fan of retelling. That was mostly what we did in school. Our teachers would pass out a worksheet with guide questions and we would   retell the story following the guide questions. In school I remember thinking how boring it was. I like text reformation, because it can work both ways. Like the mom and the daughter example, the mom can function as the teacher and reform a text to say it a different way so the student understands it better, or the student can come up with a story that relates to the text and tells it in a different way so it becomes more familiar and relatable to the student. I remember doing sketch to stretch in a lot of my classes in school as well. We also do it in our class with Dr. Pytash. Its not my favorite simply because i'm not an artist, but I can see how it works well and helps students take meanings from texts.