Text Familiarity
Beyond the value of infusing culturally relevant literature into the classroom to reflect diverse populations, a benefit of using stories with familiar elements is to activate prior knowledge. The content discussed and the themes addressed in the books suggested provide a context through which print may be more comprehensible to some children who are learning English. In a study measuring information recall and comprehension based on context, readers not only read the passage more quickly when it related to recognizable situations, but they comprehended more of the passages about their own cultures (Steffensen, Joag-Deve, & Anderson, 1979). Some tales, such as Jin Jin and the Rain Wizard (Chang, 2009) incorporate English retellings of traditional Chinese folktales, offering an identifiable context in which to scaffold language (Gibbons, 2015). Additionally, a narrative containing elements of familiarity provides a meaningful context for children to understand concepts from other content areas. For instance, Grandfather Tang’s Story (Tompert, 1990) supplies a framework for mathematical reasoning related to two dimensional geometric figures (see Photo).
The value of asking questions to engage students is ever helpful, and may certainly be key in having students think deeply about literary themes. For these particular selections and those with similar themes, some questions that might be helpful in activating metacognitive ideas include:
How did the story make you feel?
How do characters in the story act?
Do the characters remind you of yourself or of people you know?
What about the characters and story are the same as your own experience?
What about the characters and story are different from your own experience?
A great repository of reading response questions grouped according to difficulty may also be found at: http://msevansclass5.blogspot.com/p/reading-reflection-questions.html
A great repository of reading response questions grouped according to difficulty may also be found at: http://msevansclass5.blogspot.com/p/reading-reflection-questions.html
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