I read the Article, “Profile in Comprehension” by Applegate, Quinn & Applegate. This article was mainly about 8 different profiles that students fit into during reading comprehension. The 8 types of profiles are Literalists, Fuzzy thinkers, Left fielders, Quiz contestants, Politicians, Dodgers, Authors and Minimalists. I guess I didn’t really like this article because I don’t think that all students can be grouped into one category. I wouldn’t even know where to place myself because for me it depends on the subject matter. For subjects such as history I tend to be more of a literalist because I do not have a strong background in history, I just look for the correct answers. For science I tend to be more of a politician because even if I think something sounds right, it could be way off. I also did not like this article because all of the profiles were negative. There was not one profile that had a description of something positive like, “Uses prior knowledge and content in the text to create a logical answer.” The profile all had negative descriptions.
The article gave “Interventions” for each of the different profiles, but this did not help me much because half of the interventions I was not familiar with in the first place. It should have gone into deeper meaning of what a QAR, QtA and a Sketch to Stretch is and it would have made a lot more sense to me.
3 comments:
I thought the article was beneficial, however you are right. The article never said one of the 8 types of profiles was better than another. It would be extremely hard to try to help all students in a classroom who have different profiles. However, the article did give some good "interventions."
It is interesting that you mentioned how you did not know where you would place yourself because you answer differently depending on the subject matter. I never thought about that but I think you are right. I would answer differently for a literature comprehension question verses a comprehension question about a historical article. This is something to keep in mind.
I am glad to see that I am not the only one that thought this articole was negative and dissapointing. I think it is important to know what your students are missing in regards to comprehension and the article only focused on what they were doing wrong, not what they needed to be doing. It would have been helpful to profile an ideal comprehender, or state instances where certian comprehension profils are beneficial. For instance, the politician profile wouldn;t be so bad if you were reading informational text. I think that you are absolutely right when you say that students can have different profiles across different subjects. I think teachers should steert away from articles like these that try to catagorize students. People are way more complex to be able to tell if they are really one profile or the other.
I'll have to go back and look at the article again. I didn't think that they said that kids fit neatly into one category, but rather that they have different profiles at different times. However, that might just have been what I was thinking as I read it, not what the article really said. The activities listed really are good ones, but I agree that they banked on readers having a lot of prior knowlege that just wasn't there for you all. The good news is, most of the things listed are common enough that I'm sure you could look them up pretty quickly if you thought you had a student struggling in one of the ways described (none of them are overly complicated to implement). You are are right on the money when you talk about responding to different questions in different ways. FOr example, being a literalist is a positive thing if you are reading a recipe or directions for a science experience, but not as helpful if you are trying to understand how a character feels in a historical fiction novel. One of the problems kids often run into is that no one has taught them how to modify their strategy use for different contexts.
Post a Comment