12.1 Microthemes

When and Where I Found It:
I found this word in Jessica's assigned article: "Writing to Learn the Curriculum: Tools for Comprehension in Content Area Classes" (Duggan & Knipper, 2006). The authors described the term microthemes as a writing strategy. The article states that microthemes are a strategy "in which students are asked to draw together key ideas in their own words from a reading assignment, demonstration, experiment or lecture" (p. 466).

Citation:
Duggan, Timothy, J. & Knipper, Kathy J. (2006). Writing to learn across the curriculum:Tools
for comprehension in content area classes. The Reading Teacher 59(5):462-470.

What It Means: For once I am not using dictionary.com!!!! According to the Duggan and Knipper (2006), microthemes is a writing activity that is done after students read, listen to a lecture, or finish an activity. As stated above, students are asked to assemble the main ideas of the assigned activity in their own words and record these summaries on note cards to create study cards or quick review cards.

Level of Familiarity: Prior to reading this article I had never heard of this word before. After reading the article, I have a general understanding of what the word means and could guess how to implement this strategy into my classroom.

Should I Want to Know This Well? I think that I should know this word because I think that microthemes can be used in the classroom (any content area) to help students synthesize and clarify key concepts of a text, lesson, demonstration, etc. I think that it's really important that students learn to summarize in their own words (which is a key component of this strategy). As a classroom teacher, I wouldn't mind trying this out in my classroom!

Should Others Know This Word Well? Who and Why? I think that educators and literacy specialists should know this word and understand how to implement this stratgy in the classroom. As I stated above, it does have benefits and could definately help students who are struggling with summarizing, recalling, clarifying, etc.