Most of us catechists are appreciative to have excellent catechetical textbooks from which we can draw forth the content of our rich Catholic heritage. That’s a fancy way of saying that in our lessons, we plan to have students read from the textbook. The problem is, that can become very routine and boring. Fear not! There are ways we can break up the routine while still reading from the textbook. I covered some of these ideas in my most recent webinar, Growing as a Catechist, but I thought it would be helpful to take a closer look at these strategies, as well as a few others, in hopes that we can incorporate them into our overall approach. This fourth strategy is called, “Paired Interviews.”
PAIRED INTERVIEWS
Arrange students in pairs and assign half of the text to one and the other half of the text to the other.- Provide an interview sheet with questions such as:
- What is the main idea of your section?
- What is a key word from your section and what does it mean?
- What is the most inspiring sentence from your section?
- What is one idea from your section that all Catholics should know or do?
- Before they read their assigned section, have them look over the interview questions so that they know what to look for as they read.
- Have them read their assigned sections silently, highlighting the information needed for their interview.
- Then, have them take turns interviewing one another about what they read, using the interview sheet.
- Then invite the pairs to share with the large group, reporting on what their partner read as you highlight and emphasize important information.
Great ideas!!!! I am going to pass this on to my DRE. 🙂
Amazing Grace, by all means, pass it on!
Do you not think you should be encouraging catechists to go beyond the textbook? The reason textbooks are boring to students is that people don’t learn by reading about the content, people learn by doing. For young children, this means they need to be acting on their environment, through manipulatives, for example. For adolescents, this can mean through group discussion or debate, and especially from real life situations. Though the above suggestion does perhaps allow for more discussion, it does not seem to be open-ended or encourage independent thinking, and is so highly dependent on the textbook so as to squash all creativity. The routine does not need intermittent ‘breaks’ but needs to be totally reimagined.
Amelia, thanks for your thoughts. Actually, I’ve been posting these suggestions for how to read from the textbook to balance a post I put up a couple of weeks ago about doing creative activities. (See https://catechistsjourney.loyolapress.com/2010/05/05/did-i-hear-you-ask-about-activities/)
Some catechists thought I was “dissing” the use of textbooks altogether in favor of activities, so I’m just trying to balance things out. We all have different styles. Some catechists are thrust into situations where they have been given no support or training…only a textbook. For them, I’m trying to offer these suggestions as ways of mixing things up a little until they get their feet under them and learn how to go beyond the text. The one area I would disagree with you is where you suggest that people don’t learn by reading but by doing. I would say that kids learn best by doing BOTH. Sure, kids can debate issues, but they also need to learn their faith heritage. Our quest is to bring their experience and that faith heritage into dialogue: reading AND doing!
I have not read once from the textbook in 6 years, but yes, for those thrown into a classroom with no teaching experience, knowing how to read from the textbook productively is going to be absolutely necessary.
Please post more ideas and suggestions about this. I’m ready for Part 5! 🙂
Amazing Grace, I’m glad to hear that you’re enjoying these ideas. I have to say that these 4 were the only ones I was planning on posting….I’d have to dig a bit deeper into my bag of tricks to find more! 🙂 What I do recommend is that you Google the phrase “reading strategies” to find some ideas that we can adapt from reading teachers who post lots of good ideas for helping kids read better. One idea that I see a lot of is called “popcorn reading” which looks like fun. If I come across any more strategies, I’ll surely post them and I invite readers to share some of their ideas as always.
I forgot that I read from the Bible a good bit, but only a few lines at time before asking the kids a question, such as:
Why’d didn’t Jesus just….?
Why did that aggravate the Pharisees?
And then what happened?
Why did God say that?
Why was Adam sad?
Why were the Apostles hiding?
I think that sort of thing can work with a textbook, too.