Beans, Buns, and Fun

Bean's Main Points
From what I gathered from the Bean article, teachers need to get their students from reading at a surface level. There are too many times when teachers are forced to somehow summarize, explain or simplify a difficult article, when in fact the student should be sharpening their critical reading lens. When teachers give this simplification, it deludes the student's chance of achieving a deep reading technique. By giving the students an understanding that some of these texts are meant to be difficult, and that it would be surprising if they would even understand 50 percent of it, we can lower their anxiety levels by helping them understand that confusion is part of the process. As teachers, we need to be empathetic, and relay that empathy towards the students so the students understand the weight of the reading is meant purposely. Ways for helping students read these text is to have the forget about highlighting, and whenever they feel the urge to highlight, have them write a quick sentence on the margin of the page. This will help the students have an easier time absorbing the information that seems convoluted.

Bun's Main Points
Bun want's people to read like a writer so people stop taking things at face value. He relates these ideas to people wanting to have directions for everything, and that there is a constant need to know how something is done. "When we read like writers we understand and participate in
the writing. We see the choices the writer has made, and we see how the writer has coped with the consequences of those choices (75). By reading like a level, we become more engaged with the words that we read, thus know that there is a specific reason why the author made the choices he/she made in conveying their message. This will allow the reader to further engage with the reading, and participate and possibly implement these techniques within their own writing. When reading like a writer, we are able to try and define the intended audience and purpose for the piece of writing, which will then give the reader a greater sense of understanding why the author made certain choices for the community they are writing for.

Bean and Bun
I enjoyed the Bean article, because I saw many things that I could relate to. I have been in these theory classes where I seemed lost, but I suppose that is sort of the point. We need to make our way through the confusion and try to come to terms with the information given. The way that Bean proposes to teach students through the teachers own personal experiences seemed like a good idea. There are too man times when I had a hard time in understanding where to underline, speed-read  of skim certain passages. Even the concept of taking notes on a dense article can feel intimidating. But knowing how your teacher goes about with these articles is very beneficial, it gives empathy towards the students, and allows them to understand that these articles are difficult. In terms of the Bun article, I found the RLW approach beneficial as well. I have learned in the past that while reading pieces, there is a selective audience that many theorist write for. So there is meant to be confusion to a certain extent, especially if you are outside of the audience. So by trying to define the audience, the reader can then understand the choices why the author wrote the way that he did.