Important while Reading, Jennifer Wolff

I think everyone picks out different things that are important while reading. I also believe this can be based off of several different reasons as well. One main reason could be one's background knowledge. Not every student has the same background knowledge, so one may think something is more important than another classmate. For instance, say one student is preached at home about proper manners during dinner, yet another student is allowed to eat in front of the television or on the floor. While reading, if a passage explains not chewing with your mouth open, the student that has learned this previously may think this is a very important idea, whereas the other may just skim past it. This was a very small example, but I think it definitely proves that one's homelife may affect how he/she reads a book, or paragraph. Furthermore, I think if the students know something they are looking for, they will be more likely to think the same things are important. For example, in Stacey's class on Monday we read a passage about a house. First she told us to underline anything we thought was important. Some students underlined important names in the paragraph along with places. However, while reading I noticed things that stood out that were different than names. I saw sentences that hinted to the possible robbery that could happen later on in the story. This is what stood out to me, so I underlined all the potential hints into the robbery. I simply did not think names were important because they were not going to help me once the house was robbed. This may be different than most students; however, I thought I needed information that was going to help me in the long run, not names and locations.
I think this is important for teachers to realize. Not every student is going to think the same, and a teacher needs to be able to look at a passage and see every possible outcome. This may be difficult; however, with a lot of work, I think any teacher can master this.