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Statement of Faith-Based Teaching and Learning

In this unit, students will learn how to better comprehend what they read. I will be

teaching an in-depth unit on how to activate your schema to become a better reader. I

believe that reading comprehension is a vital skill for students to have as they progress in

their education. In the second grade classroom there is a large focus on preparing students

for third grade. It is said that before third grade the emphasis is on learning to read and

once students enter third grade there is a shift to reading to learn. Therefore, it is

important to prepare students for this change in the coming year. I also believe that God

calls his people to strive to understand the world he created, a common idea in the

Christian faith that comes from Genesis 1:28 (NIV). This verse reads, God blessed them

and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over

the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the

ground. This verse is interpreted to mean that God calls his people to increase in number

and in knowledge and their understanding of the world. As students increase their abilities

to comprehend their reading, they will increase their abilities to understand the world God

created.

Teaching students to activate their own knowledge about a subject to help them

understand that subject, assumes that students have valuable knowledge prior to entering

the classroom, and that they are not empty vessels. This is an idea that Oaks, Lipton, and

Anderson support (2013). This is a very important aspect of this unit. Students will spend

a whole day reflecting on their own schema, on the things that they know, and have the

opportunity to learn from others and share with others about their own knowledge. This

activity will serve as an opportunity for students to recognize that their own knowledge is
meaningful, and a place to build more knowledge from. They also will be able to share this

information with others. Their work will hang in the hallway to serve as a reminder of the

knowledge that they have and can continue to grow. This is a very important

socioemotional piece of the unit where students will reflect on their attitudes and

perspectives about their own schema.

It is important to note that viewing students not as empty vessels, but as people

with valuable prior knowledge that they carry into the classroom, is a relatively new

idea. In the past, it was common for students to be viewed as empty vessels and teachers

were seen to have all the knowledge, that in the classroom they would transmit to the

students. Palmer (1998) describes this transmission of knowledge as a myth. More recently

in the realm of education, thoughts have been changing, and information is viewed as being

much more accessible, and understanding now acknowledges that students prior

knowledge is a key factor to their learning (1998). This unit acknowledges these changes in

thinking.

This unit also acknowledges that knowledge becomes meaningful in context, and for

students to make meaning of content, they must make connections to their own lives,

another idea supported by Oaks, Lipton, and Anderson (2013). The first lesson in this unit

gives students the opportunity to make connections from their own lives with the context

of text. In this lesson, students will hear a story about a young girl taking a trip to a cabin. I

picked this particular story to apply to the students lives because I know that most of my

students will easily find connections between this story and their own lives. Even if

students have never taken a trip to a cabin, there are many other points of the story that
students can find connections to (swimming in a lake or pool, driving in a car to a far off or

exciting place).

This unit will allow students to make connections with content they read, and

overall develop deeper understanding and comprehension abilities.

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