In the article, I have learned that in an effective teaching, we should “provide the students plentiful opportunities for practice and relearning.” Most teachers provide the students with a lot of practice. However, if the practice is mostly drill practice without meanings, relearning won’t occur. For successful learners, “practice” do “make perfect” because they have strategies to internalize the rules. Nevertheless, for struggling learners like my students, they see drills as drills and nothing will happen even after they have done 100 drill practices; let alone usually, two-third of them tend to copy answers from others. In order to make relearning possible for our students, it’s necessary to “equip students with strategies to think about their learning.” I feel excited when reading the author says, “It is particularly useful for ESL students who are often able to decode a text but do not fully understand what they have read.” These words give me confidence in teaching RT strategies to my students. I believe RT strategies are just what they really need. Besides, I also agree what Gilakjani (2012) has stated, “Using prior experience as a channel, readers learn new information, main ideas and arguments.” Many students misunderstand that one should be able to decode every word in the text in order to understand a text. Therefore, teaching them to activate their prior knowledge in reading comprehension appears to be more practical for them.

        Before this session, I have read the book about RT. Therefore, I have a general concept about what the 4 strategies in RT “probably” look like. Then, in the beginning of the semester, I tried to incorporate them into a unit teaching. Thanks for Pearl, after discussing with her, my RT unit lesson plan become much more applicable. Then, in this session, the 3 videos clarify a lot of my doubts in implementing RT in teaching a unit. What I feel impressive is that in the videos, students are using English, their native language, to do clarification. In this way, they are able to explain the unclear words/phrases in their own words. For my students, when they do clarification, it’s more like they are trying to find the translation of the unclear parts. Limited by their English speaking ability, it’s hard for them to use English to explain English. 

Ms. Careccia’s demonstration in the third video also impresses me very much. I admire her using of the scenario and the experiment to inspire the students’ interest in density and buoyancy. She also observes the students’ discussion keenly and points out the groups who are able to use the strategy well. I think that’s really a good example of peer coaching. 

So far, I think what I need more is the experience of using RT in teaching different genres and the experience of leading the students to use the 4 strategies effectively. I expect to learn more about that in the following weeks.