the first reading

This is my first blog which means that I'm new to being the one doing the blogging although I have read some and found them quite interesting. Our teacher Mr. Wong asked us to incorporate technology into our learning experience and I guess felt that having a blog would be one of the best ways to do it.

As for the reading that we had to complete for tomorrow's class, I found it interesting enough. I was surprised to learn that most people, teachers mainly, were as torn as to how to teach children how to read. It was surprising that so many have such a wide view on how and what should be taught and also when it should be taught. For example, should you begin to teach children phonics first or have them memorize full words and/or phases? When can children begin to comprehend reading material at a level where it actually transforms into learning from the material? These questions and many more arose as I was reading and they were asked by the author as well.

While I am hardly qualified to give advice on this topic as I am by no means an expert, I cannot help but think children should be taught using a variety of approaches and not just one. Why can't the basic-skills-and-phonics approach be blended with the whole-language approach? Wouldn't this indeed suit a wider range of learning styles? Wouldn't this produce children who read better younger? I could not help but see the difference in what makes a person an expert and what makes them an intermediate when I thought of these questions. We all know that an expert is a person with a whole wealth of knowledge in an area of interest, however does that mean that person will be a great teacher?

I find that often the answer is no. In fact if an expert has so much knowledge on a subject I think that it becomes second nature to him. Meaning that the way that they think about the material is on a different level than a student who is just learning about the topic. In other words, it can be difficult for a person who has so much insight on a particular subject to look back and remember how they felt when they first began to build this knowledge. Since they already know about the topic they may have a hard time relating the smaller intricacies to an audience who has no prior knowledge of the topic. This frustrates not only the teacher, but also the students who are now struggling to learn. In this sense all of the knowledge the expert has has failed them because they are unable to relay any of that knowledge to others.

I suppose this is where an intermediate teacher has a slight advantage over someone who is simply an expert and does not understand how to teach. As the intermediate is learning the material, they are able to keep in mind the audience whom they are teaching. Since the material may be new and interesting for the intermediate, they think about what helped them to learn and retain the information and in that way have an easier time relaying the information back to the students. Of course this is not to say that one should not amass expert level knowledge in a subject, it is simply a matter of knowing how to share the information with others.