College - Author 1

College of Liberal Arts

Department - Author 1

Modern Languages and Literatures Department

Degree Name - Author 1

BA in Modern Languages and Literatures

Date

3-2012

Primary Advisor

Karen Muñoz Christian

Abstract/Summary

For my senior project, I have partnered with another MLL major, Rebecka Runyon, to read and analyze children’s books in Spanish at Pacheco Elementary School. Marlie Schmidt, a reading specialist at Pacheco, explained to us that Pacheco has a new manner of teaching how to read. This method has been broken into six different strategies: Making Connections, Asking Questions, Mental Images, Inferring, Evaluating, and Synthesizing. Each of these strategies is a tool that helps readers comprehend what they are reading. As there are many Spanish books in their school library, but very little help provided to analyze them, our job is to distinguish which reading strategy is best represented in each Spanish book. A teacher will then check one of these books out of the library to teach from. In each reading strategy category, there will be numerous books Becka and I analyzed. Because of the amount of books, we have rated each Spanish book in accordance to their preferred category. The teachers will then teach each strategy individually using the books that we have analyzed.

Rebecka and I went to Pacheco Elementary every Tuesday and Thursday morning for one to two hours to read and categorize children’s books in Spanish. During our process of analyzing and categorizing each book, Rebecka and I discussed with each other how to rate each book from 1-4, 1 being a poor example of the strategy and 4 being an excellent example. During our process of analyzing each of the books we read, Rebecka and I journaled our experience with the books and their strategies. We then researched other teachers’ views of this method of teaching how to read and finally wrote an example of how we analyzed a children’s book.

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