This week's reading was about using graphic organizers in the classroom, mainly, to help students comprehend; therefore, I created a graphic organizer of my own to help me comprehend what I was reading.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Week 5: Read Alouds
I enjoyed this week's readings because they gave extremely useful information on read-alouds. Read alouds are without a doubt one of my favorite strategies to use. They are enjoyed by both students and teachers. Not only do they help students become better readers but also help develop oral language, which was the focus of the article Text Talk: Capturing the Benefits of Read-Aloud Experiences for Young Children. I favored this article over the chapter reading mainly because it focuses on the primary grades, which is the grade level I would like to teach.
Text talk, in my opinion, is a well developed strategy that makes the already good read aloud even better. It focuses more on getting students talking about the text in more than one word answers with the ultimate goal being that students will better comprehend the text as well as develop oral language and vocabulary skills. Teachers use open-ended questions and scaffold children's responses to their questions with hopes of probing students to talk about the topic. Something interesting about this strategy is that fact that some pictures are withheld from the students' view and are not shown until after students have given the answer the teacher is looking for. The idea is that students will not be able to answer the question by looking at the picture. Another interesting point is that teachers determine if students are responding to questions using background knowledge and if so, they help the student to seperate that knowledge from the story information.
The chapter gave many ideas for using read alouds and focused on using them in the content areas. I think this really helps to motivate students. I can remember my english teacher doing shared reading in my classes which exposed me to a lot more literature than I would have ever read on my own. Listening to him read was always fun because he made the books come alive, but, at the same time, we were still learning.
Two questions from this week's readings:
1. What exactly does the article mean by "decontextualized language"?
2. When it is not appropriate to use read alouds in content area classes?
Text talk, in my opinion, is a well developed strategy that makes the already good read aloud even better. It focuses more on getting students talking about the text in more than one word answers with the ultimate goal being that students will better comprehend the text as well as develop oral language and vocabulary skills. Teachers use open-ended questions and scaffold children's responses to their questions with hopes of probing students to talk about the topic. Something interesting about this strategy is that fact that some pictures are withheld from the students' view and are not shown until after students have given the answer the teacher is looking for. The idea is that students will not be able to answer the question by looking at the picture. Another interesting point is that teachers determine if students are responding to questions using background knowledge and if so, they help the student to seperate that knowledge from the story information.
The chapter gave many ideas for using read alouds and focused on using them in the content areas. I think this really helps to motivate students. I can remember my english teacher doing shared reading in my classes which exposed me to a lot more literature than I would have ever read on my own. Listening to him read was always fun because he made the books come alive, but, at the same time, we were still learning.
Two questions from this week's readings:
1. What exactly does the article mean by "decontextualized language"?
2. When it is not appropriate to use read alouds in content area classes?
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Week 4 - Writing to Learn
This week, I read the article Writing to Learn Across the Curriculum: Tools for Comprehension in Content Area Classes by Knipper and Duggan, as well as Chapter 8 of the text by Fisher and Frey Powerful Pens: Writing to Learn with Adolescents. I found that the overall description of writing to learn in the two pieces complemented each other well because the Fisher and Frey piece gave an example of what writing to learn actually looks like in each subject while Knipper and Duggan actually put that description into words. The explainations given in both the article and the text were parallel. I enjoyed the fact that both gave a wide variety of strategies to use in content area classes, many that I was not familiar with.
As I read, I wondered how much better of a writer, reader, thinker, and learner I would be today had my content area teachers used writing to learn. Both passages said that many content area teachers feel that writing is only the job of the language arts teacher, and sadly, I had those type teachers. It seems like such a powerful tool for both student and teacher. It is a means of, essentially, becoming a better thinker and learner and coming to know yourself as a thinker and learner (metacognition). It is also a means of allowing the teacher to see how the student thinks and if he or she understands what is being studied. With an understanding of writing to learn, I now wonder why all teachers wouldn't make this a part of their curriculum. To me, it is simply good teaching.
After reading the articles, I am confused on whether or not writing to learn pieces should be graded. Knipper and Duggan obviously think they should be because they discuss rubrics and checklists; however, Fisher and Frey state that "writing to learn prompts and tasks are not focused on perfect writing" (pp. 142). This leads to one of my questions:
Should writing to learn pieces be graded? If so, to what extent?
My second question:
If I happen to teach a content area class in a school where other teachers do not use writing to learn, what ways can I ease my students into the concept?
As I read, I wondered how much better of a writer, reader, thinker, and learner I would be today had my content area teachers used writing to learn. Both passages said that many content area teachers feel that writing is only the job of the language arts teacher, and sadly, I had those type teachers. It seems like such a powerful tool for both student and teacher. It is a means of, essentially, becoming a better thinker and learner and coming to know yourself as a thinker and learner (metacognition). It is also a means of allowing the teacher to see how the student thinks and if he or she understands what is being studied. With an understanding of writing to learn, I now wonder why all teachers wouldn't make this a part of their curriculum. To me, it is simply good teaching.
After reading the articles, I am confused on whether or not writing to learn pieces should be graded. Knipper and Duggan obviously think they should be because they discuss rubrics and checklists; however, Fisher and Frey state that "writing to learn prompts and tasks are not focused on perfect writing" (pp. 142). This leads to one of my questions:
Should writing to learn pieces be graded? If so, to what extent?
My second question:
If I happen to teach a content area class in a school where other teachers do not use writing to learn, what ways can I ease my students into the concept?
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