93577 - Workshop on Textual Analysis (B)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the lab activities, the student:

• is able to apply the concepts covered in the integrated course within a simulated learning environment;
• is able to critically reflect in a group on the proposed topics.

Course contents

Reading for Understanding: the Most Effective Strategies

Reading, understood not as simple decoding of signs, but as the construction of meaning, is a complex activity that involves multiple linguistic and cognitive processes. The workshop aims to explore how to support comprehension in school practice, through targeted strategies and teaching tools.

During the sessions, students will have the opportunity to work with texts of different types and purposes, in both print and digital formats. The proposed work will make it possible to focus, on the one hand, on the complexity of the linguistic and cognitive mechanisms involved in comprehension; on the other, to explore effective strategies and teaching activities to support pupils, at school, in the process of understanding.

Particular attention will be given to vocabulary expansion, considered a fundamental element to strengthen.

In particular, the focus will be on how to help pupils understand the meanings of words and expressions, recognise both directly stated information and that which requires inference, identify the relationships of textual cohesion and coherence, and reconstruct the overall meaning of a text, or that of specific parts.

Readings/Bibliography

The bibliography will be provided during the laboratory activities.

Teaching methods

Work will be carried out in small groups using the provided materials.

Assessment methods

The final evaluation will consider:

• participation and cooperation during the lessons,
• the ability to present content (clarity and reasoning) and the capacity for reflection (relevance, breadth, and depth of concepts and connections) demonstrated in an individual final report (max. 2 pages) analyzing the links between the laboratory activities (including group work) and the Indicazioni Nazionali per il Curriculum (MIUR, 2012).

The final evaluation will result in one of the following grades:

+1 (very good)
  0 (good)
-1 (sufficient)
unsatisfactory (not sufficient: in this case, the laboratory must be retaken).

Teaching tools

PowerPoint presentations to be projected and provided in copy, and texts for practical work.

Office hours

See the website of Silvana Loiero