Directed Reading-Thinking Activity

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Directed Reading-Thinking Activity

The Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA) comprehensively guides the students through enquiring about a text, making of predictions then through the text to refute or confirm the predictions that had been made earlier. This process is used to encourage the learner to be both active and thoughtful readers. The learners’ activeness is attained when he or she is involved in answering the questions that the teacher asks regarding the plot development of the story. The learner is influenced to be thoughtful when he is required to give his or her views concerning what will happen next in the story. When the objectives are achieved, comprehension level will be high. The skill of comprehension is very important since it helps the learner through the academic process both presently and later on as well. It activates the prior knowledge of the student and helps in the strengthening of reading and critical thinking skills. The student is also encouraged to monitor their grasp of the text during the reading sessions.

During this activity, all the three students actively participated and creativity was observed in the predictions that they made. All the students had something to say and they shouted answers at the top of their voices so that I could listen to their ideas. When one student said a prediction that they didn’t support they insisted that I listen to all their predictions before I could continue with reading the story. They had fun during the reading when they realized that some of their predictions came true so they laughed about it in excitement. I also noticed that the loss of attention that occurred a few minutes into the other classes was not experienced as the students were attentive all through. This positively reflects on the concentration boost that the students had been given due to the directed reading-thinking activity.

The predictions that the students made were very creative displaying both comprehension and critical thinking. Some of the predictions were accurate even though the students had never read the story before. This shows that they were following the story and could analyze what would transpire next in regard to the plot development. I am happy with the effectiveness of the DR-TA format as it has produced tremendous results. Moreover, I can use this activity when dealing with a small number of students and its effectiveness will be almost or even the same as that when I use it on teaching a group of students. This means I don’t need to worry about which number of students to use the activity on since it is always effective.

Breaking the reading into small pieces gave the students ample time to process information and give good feedback too. The learners’ minds are not that advanced therefore breaking the reading into small pieces would help them understand the plot of the story and also be able to give appropriate predictions. I also adjusted the amount of reading based on the difficulty of the text and this helped get the students get comfortable I think incorporating writing into this activity is advisable.

The students would write their predictions down and then reading them out loud so as to improve both their writing and reading skills. The first student to write down a complete sentence on the predictions would be the first to read their predictions. This helps introduce competitiveness in the classroom as the students struggled to emerge the first at writing their predictions down. DRTA, I noticed, creates a huge impact on the literacy skills of the learner. They were also to create a picture of the characters in their minds then draw them and give them names. This helped boost the creativity of my students as they were drawing from their imagination.