Chapter 10 and 11
1. Engagement and social interactions in reading are keys in successfully learning to read and developing as a reader.
It is really great when students discuss what they have read. This happened to me a lot when I used to teach high school. Not only did it really help a lot of my students when we held discussions on the characters in The Great Gatsby, but just to see how much some of them got into it was really rewarding. In my current after school program, which is all boys, I chose a really high-interest thriller to read, and it got some kids who absolutely hate reading begin to enjoy it and also discuss it with their classmates.
2. As literacy coaches visit the teacher’s classroom, they establish themselves as part of the classroom milieu.
a. This is absolutely the best type of professional development. Often teachers need to sit through some meetings or seminars in which only a fraction of the information is useful. But to have a helping hand right in the room would be so great; the coach can directly help you individually with what you need to work on and how to improve instruction.
3. In other study groups, the literacy coach organizes book clubs to help teachers use in-depth thinking, discussion, and strategic processing in their classrooms.
a. My principal often does this. A few times so far this year she has introduced books to the faculty to read together so that we have and share a sort of “common knowledge.” They aren’t really on literacy, but the same idea holds true. For example, one of the books was on bullying, which is a very important theme for a middle school faculty.
4. When developing lessons for your student, it is important to determine what kind of teacher support he needs.
a. The student I am working with for my project seems to need a lot of teacher direction. I had him in my class for 13 weeks, and now that I have completed the QRI with him, I realize that he may have a lot of bad habits that he needs to break. By modeling good reading behavior, this will hopefully help him strengthen his ability to do better with more difficult passages.
5. Writing makes learners reconstruct their understanding and thus prompts a more thoughtful response.
a. At the end of my first lessons with my student I plan on having him write a response that is directly connected with the chapters read. In the story the character faces a very difficult situation, and my student is going to write about a time that he felt the same way. I do this a lot with my students because most of my curriculum is based on writing skills. I have become very happy with the way a lot of my students are taking information from articles, shorts stories, etc. and are putting it into a well-organized response.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Chapter 9
Chapter 9
1. When material is too difficult, students cannot construct meaning or flexibly use reading strategies. Students will become flustered and decrease their attention, and just try to make “sense” of the words.
a. I learned this the hard way during my first year of teaching in high school. I was given a list of novels I could teach for each grade level. I taught 10th grade inclusion classes, so the reading level of many of my students was very low. But according to the curriculum, I had no choice but to begin the school year with Lord of the Flies, which most of my students enjoyed, but it was very difficult for some of my special education students to read on their own. We struggled through a lot of books last year, but I think in the end it gave a lot of my lower level students a confidence boost.
2. Some publishers are taking classics, such as novels by Jack London, and are re-writing them so that a lot of different readers can enjoy the books.
a. While having a lower level text of Lord of the Flies would have definitely helped some of my students, I am not sure that I agree with this practice. A lot of the texts publishers are doing this with are classics, and many can be considered a form of art. I am not saying that I don’t want lower level readers to have access to a wide range of texts, but the book lover in me just can’t stomach this practice. Either way, I probably would have sucked it up and just taken the lower level format of LOTF and used it.
3. Using a 300 word passage and deleting 50 words is a good way to match a reader to a text. The reader has to fill in the blanks with words that he thinks will make sense.
a. I really like this method because it seems like it can also serve as a good literacy strategy and not just a way to match books to readers. For instance, if we are in the middle of a novel, I could delete some dialogue between characters and have the students fill them in using their knowledge of the characters. I tried doing the one in the textbook, and it was even a little bit of a challenge, so I think this would be a great strategy for students.
4. If the topic and story line is engaging, then the book is usually easier to read.
a. This is so hard to pull off in a general education classroom. At the end of last year, the only book that was available for me to teach was A Separate Peace – and if you know anything about this novel then you know an urban population isn’t going to take too well to a text about private school kids. It was such a terror getting through it that I never want to see that book again! On the other hand, I feel that my 11th graders really liked MacBeth and The Great Gatsby because there was a lot of action and drama in them.
5. One of the best ways to determine interest is by letting students choose the book they want to read.
a. This is another very difficult strategy to pull off in a general education classroom, but it has been done well before. Lit circles were a great success in high school. The class was divided into several groups, and each group had their own novel that they all chose. Each student in the group usually had a different task, and there was a list of questions that could pertain to all of the books that they needed to answer. This was incredibly interactive and supported a wide range of literacy skills.
1. When material is too difficult, students cannot construct meaning or flexibly use reading strategies. Students will become flustered and decrease their attention, and just try to make “sense” of the words.
a. I learned this the hard way during my first year of teaching in high school. I was given a list of novels I could teach for each grade level. I taught 10th grade inclusion classes, so the reading level of many of my students was very low. But according to the curriculum, I had no choice but to begin the school year with Lord of the Flies, which most of my students enjoyed, but it was very difficult for some of my special education students to read on their own. We struggled through a lot of books last year, but I think in the end it gave a lot of my lower level students a confidence boost.
2. Some publishers are taking classics, such as novels by Jack London, and are re-writing them so that a lot of different readers can enjoy the books.
a. While having a lower level text of Lord of the Flies would have definitely helped some of my students, I am not sure that I agree with this practice. A lot of the texts publishers are doing this with are classics, and many can be considered a form of art. I am not saying that I don’t want lower level readers to have access to a wide range of texts, but the book lover in me just can’t stomach this practice. Either way, I probably would have sucked it up and just taken the lower level format of LOTF and used it.
3. Using a 300 word passage and deleting 50 words is a good way to match a reader to a text. The reader has to fill in the blanks with words that he thinks will make sense.
a. I really like this method because it seems like it can also serve as a good literacy strategy and not just a way to match books to readers. For instance, if we are in the middle of a novel, I could delete some dialogue between characters and have the students fill them in using their knowledge of the characters. I tried doing the one in the textbook, and it was even a little bit of a challenge, so I think this would be a great strategy for students.
4. If the topic and story line is engaging, then the book is usually easier to read.
a. This is so hard to pull off in a general education classroom. At the end of last year, the only book that was available for me to teach was A Separate Peace – and if you know anything about this novel then you know an urban population isn’t going to take too well to a text about private school kids. It was such a terror getting through it that I never want to see that book again! On the other hand, I feel that my 11th graders really liked MacBeth and The Great Gatsby because there was a lot of action and drama in them.
5. One of the best ways to determine interest is by letting students choose the book they want to read.
a. This is another very difficult strategy to pull off in a general education classroom, but it has been done well before. Lit circles were a great success in high school. The class was divided into several groups, and each group had their own novel that they all chose. Each student in the group usually had a different task, and there was a list of questions that could pertain to all of the books that they needed to answer. This was incredibly interactive and supported a wide range of literacy skills.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Chapter 7
1. The student’s mediate reading level determines at which reading level the student can be taught. This is based on Vygotsky.
a. It is interesting to see how what I just did with the word lists to determine my student’s independent, frustration, and instructional reading levels is based on such solid research. Although the book uses a different style of vocabulary than my QRI, all of the goals and procedures for diagnostic literacy instruction is essentially the same. I like that is is such a structured, step-by-step approach to teaching, and not some philosophy or theory that is difficult to put to work.
2. Prior to instruction, the diagnostic teacher decides on certain task conditions that will enhance learning for the student.
a. The list of questions provided by the text that demonstrates what I will be doing myself is incredibly helpful. Essentially, it shows me how to plan and implement a diagnostic lesson, right down to how I am going to have the student read the text. This may be a little bit of a challenge since I have never really instructed one-on-one before. I am used to large group education, so I ask myself a very different set of questions before going into a lesson with a full classroom.
3. During instruction, the teacher’s hypotheses are dynamic. Modifications of hypotheses can occur as the teacher responds to the student’s needs.
a. This is another reason why I like this approach, especially since it is one-on-one with a student. I have discovered during my own general classroom instruction that I need to reformat my lessons to meet the needs of my students. With my Writing class at Wheatfield I realized that when I spoke about certain parts of speech within a sentence, not many students knew what I was talking about. I then planned several lessons around the parts of speech so that we can all be familiar with the vocabulary. I will be excited to do the same with my tutoring with the student, since I will discover more and more about his reading level as I work with him.
4. When evaluating Terry, another passive reader, the diagnostic teacher decided to use think-aloud again.
a. This part of the text went through the steps of a typical diagnostic tutoring session with a student. This section was helpful because I am starting to get a feel for what this literacy project is going to look like. It is going to be helpful to use the text to determine which strategies to implement, but it will still be strange directing my lessons to only one child. Hopefully, this will be easier and more efficient than a class of 25, and also more rewarding.
5. The diagnostic teacher needs to determine how much modification to do to a text before teaching it to a student. If too much modification is needed, then the text may be too difficult.
a. This is the part I think I may have some trouble with. I have never really had to go looking for texts before; I have always had them handed to me by the school. I will have to first try to find something that interests the student and then determine if is in his instructional reading level. I just don’t want to get something that may be too difficult – this could result in a lot of extra work and wasted time.
a. It is interesting to see how what I just did with the word lists to determine my student’s independent, frustration, and instructional reading levels is based on such solid research. Although the book uses a different style of vocabulary than my QRI, all of the goals and procedures for diagnostic literacy instruction is essentially the same. I like that is is such a structured, step-by-step approach to teaching, and not some philosophy or theory that is difficult to put to work.
2. Prior to instruction, the diagnostic teacher decides on certain task conditions that will enhance learning for the student.
a. The list of questions provided by the text that demonstrates what I will be doing myself is incredibly helpful. Essentially, it shows me how to plan and implement a diagnostic lesson, right down to how I am going to have the student read the text. This may be a little bit of a challenge since I have never really instructed one-on-one before. I am used to large group education, so I ask myself a very different set of questions before going into a lesson with a full classroom.
3. During instruction, the teacher’s hypotheses are dynamic. Modifications of hypotheses can occur as the teacher responds to the student’s needs.
a. This is another reason why I like this approach, especially since it is one-on-one with a student. I have discovered during my own general classroom instruction that I need to reformat my lessons to meet the needs of my students. With my Writing class at Wheatfield I realized that when I spoke about certain parts of speech within a sentence, not many students knew what I was talking about. I then planned several lessons around the parts of speech so that we can all be familiar with the vocabulary. I will be excited to do the same with my tutoring with the student, since I will discover more and more about his reading level as I work with him.
4. When evaluating Terry, another passive reader, the diagnostic teacher decided to use think-aloud again.
a. This part of the text went through the steps of a typical diagnostic tutoring session with a student. This section was helpful because I am starting to get a feel for what this literacy project is going to look like. It is going to be helpful to use the text to determine which strategies to implement, but it will still be strange directing my lessons to only one child. Hopefully, this will be easier and more efficient than a class of 25, and also more rewarding.
5. The diagnostic teacher needs to determine how much modification to do to a text before teaching it to a student. If too much modification is needed, then the text may be too difficult.
a. This is the part I think I may have some trouble with. I have never really had to go looking for texts before; I have always had them handed to me by the school. I will have to first try to find something that interests the student and then determine if is in his instructional reading level. I just don’t want to get something that may be too difficult – this could result in a lot of extra work and wasted time.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
1. During familiar text time, students get to practice new skills and reading strategies while reading a familiar text. This works like a safety net for making and correcting mistakes.
a. This is a great strategy for both individual work and a class as a whole. For an entire ELA class, it seems that this would work well when introducing new reading skills or even something like literary elements. When I taught Animal Farm, I had my students work in a task rotation activity using familiar children’s books to help them focus on the elements of a fable, as well as some literary elements we had been working on, such as symbolism and metaphor, and a new one for them, allegory, which is integral to the novel. This activity with the familiar children’s stories at first seemed like it was below their level (to them), but then they realized that many of the things they were doing with these books easily transitioned over to really helping them with the novel.
2. Self-assessment directs the students’ attention to the use of various strategies and the effect their implementation has on the reading.
a. This idea combined with the chart for self-assessment of reading strategies is a great tool that I have never thought of using. While I have had students do plenty of activities that involved reading strategies, I’ve never had students actually reflect on their own reading skills and ask themselves questions about it. This would make any student fully aware of their thought and strategy process while reading the text that day. A chart like this would go great while doing independent reading during 10 minutes of class time, especially if combined with meaningful questions or a study guide.
3. When showing a student a new strategy to help him with his reading difficulty, the teacher also gives the student a rationale for including this skill in the program.
a. I am beginning to realize how organized and structured this reading program is, and I really enjoy it. I like that after figuring out what difficulties the student posses, I know that I can easily find and use some strategies to help with my student’s inefficiencies. The example of realizing that the student has a miscue problem and then having her ask herself what word would make sense in the context of the reading paints an excellent picture of how this process is going to work.
4. It is suggested that after the reading, the diagnostic teacher has a mini-lesson that demonstrates a new writing skill or format to coincide with the reading passage. This interactive writing helps the teacher and student create a meaningful piece of writing together.
a. I really like that immediately after reading, we go right into a writing assessment. I can use this opportunity to focus on a lot of different things, such as a writing format, techniques, or conventions. I teach a new writing skill every day, either focusing on technique or grammar, and we practice it in our essays and writing assignments for the entire week. For example, if I show students how to use an apostrophe, we will continue to use apostrophes for the rest of the week, and then I will ask them to work it into all of their major writing essays. But with this process I can now focus on other reading or writing strategies that I haven’t had the opportunity to work on yet, such as character sketching or using imagery.
5. Students are taught to match books to their reading level by using the “thumb” technique. They use their fingers and touch every word on a page they don’t know, and if they reach their thumb by the end of a page it is beyond this level.
a. This idea is great! I have never heard of it, but I am going to start using it for independent reading or my 12-1-1 students. This teaches the student to think independently and figure out for himself if this book is beyond his ability. I can just tell the student to either pick a moderate or challenging novel; if he has used three or four fingers, the book might just be challenging enough to begin using those reading skills that we have been practicing. If there is only one finger used, then we may need to try a more difficult novel. The student can judge for himself what would be best suited for his reading level.
1. During familiar text time, students get to practice new skills and reading strategies while reading a familiar text. This works like a safety net for making and correcting mistakes.
a. This is a great strategy for both individual work and a class as a whole. For an entire ELA class, it seems that this would work well when introducing new reading skills or even something like literary elements. When I taught Animal Farm, I had my students work in a task rotation activity using familiar children’s books to help them focus on the elements of a fable, as well as some literary elements we had been working on, such as symbolism and metaphor, and a new one for them, allegory, which is integral to the novel. This activity with the familiar children’s stories at first seemed like it was below their level (to them), but then they realized that many of the things they were doing with these books easily transitioned over to really helping them with the novel.
2. Self-assessment directs the students’ attention to the use of various strategies and the effect their implementation has on the reading.
a. This idea combined with the chart for self-assessment of reading strategies is a great tool that I have never thought of using. While I have had students do plenty of activities that involved reading strategies, I’ve never had students actually reflect on their own reading skills and ask themselves questions about it. This would make any student fully aware of their thought and strategy process while reading the text that day. A chart like this would go great while doing independent reading during 10 minutes of class time, especially if combined with meaningful questions or a study guide.
3. When showing a student a new strategy to help him with his reading difficulty, the teacher also gives the student a rationale for including this skill in the program.
a. I am beginning to realize how organized and structured this reading program is, and I really enjoy it. I like that after figuring out what difficulties the student posses, I know that I can easily find and use some strategies to help with my student’s inefficiencies. The example of realizing that the student has a miscue problem and then having her ask herself what word would make sense in the context of the reading paints an excellent picture of how this process is going to work.
4. It is suggested that after the reading, the diagnostic teacher has a mini-lesson that demonstrates a new writing skill or format to coincide with the reading passage. This interactive writing helps the teacher and student create a meaningful piece of writing together.
a. I really like that immediately after reading, we go right into a writing assessment. I can use this opportunity to focus on a lot of different things, such as a writing format, techniques, or conventions. I teach a new writing skill every day, either focusing on technique or grammar, and we practice it in our essays and writing assignments for the entire week. For example, if I show students how to use an apostrophe, we will continue to use apostrophes for the rest of the week, and then I will ask them to work it into all of their major writing essays. But with this process I can now focus on other reading or writing strategies that I haven’t had the opportunity to work on yet, such as character sketching or using imagery.
5. Students are taught to match books to their reading level by using the “thumb” technique. They use their fingers and touch every word on a page they don’t know, and if they reach their thumb by the end of a page it is beyond this level.
a. This idea is great! I have never heard of it, but I am going to start using it for independent reading or my 12-1-1 students. This teaches the student to think independently and figure out for himself if this book is beyond his ability. I can just tell the student to either pick a moderate or challenging novel; if he has used three or four fingers, the book might just be challenging enough to begin using those reading skills that we have been practicing. If there is only one finger used, then we may need to try a more difficult novel. The student can judge for himself what would be best suited for his reading level.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Chapter 5 + 6 Learning Log
Chapter 5 and 6
1. As children read the same types of books repeatedly, they begin to recognize certain sound structures of language.
a. I notice this when I have some weaker students read aloud. With many middle school texts, it seems that a familiar structure is used to make the reading passage easier. Then, every once in a while a student may be reading a text aloud in class with some more complex sentences and they take pauses in the wrong spot in the sentence when one is not indicated. Also, many students may read right through a comma or a period without any pause. The sound is not the only problem here; it sometimes confuses the thought or idea of the sentence(s) for the child, and we often have to go back, reread the sentence, and then check for understanding.
2. Children at the transitional spelling stage (using phonics) usually have a vowel in every syllable, but the word is not always spelled correctly.
a. This seems to be the stage that most students are at. I remember learning how to spell from memorization quite a bit when I was young with spelling tests every week, but I don’t know if teachers at the primary level are using the phonics approach now or not. It seems to be very suitable to get the foundations down, but after many students get to the transition stage they hit a brick wall. In my opinion, students do need to approach spelling at a certain level with recognition of words, either repeated in a text or through some memorization strategy. I see a lot of my own students making the transition level mistakes and we have a tough time getting through this. I usually try to spell the word out for them on a rough draft, hoping that now they can both see and hear the word they can spell it correctly in the future.
3. Retelling a story is a strategy used to check if a student can understand the meaning of the passage as he reads it silently.
a. This is a strategy used at all reading levels, and I even find myself doing this from time to time as I read for pleasure. It is interesting to see how different students write such a variety of summaries, and also how each individual student includes certain facts or ideas and leaves out others. After all students write out their own individual summaries, as a class we can construct a final one, taking thoughts and ideas from all of the passages to get the main idea or theme of a story. Furthermore, when we continue reading a novel, I ask the students to retell what happened in the previous chapters to their partners so that we are all on the same page, so this strategy also clearly works with a larger, more difficult text.
4. If meaning processing is a major concern, the diagnostic teacher conducts a think-aloud assessment.
a. I feel that this is the most common type of strategy that I have used over the past two years. Many of my students in both high and middle school have been able to read the words in front of them, but they don’t think of the meaning or purposes “behind” the words. I have divided texts up into different segments, and it really begins to challenge most students to think about a text while they are reading and not after. I started by giving questions at the end of a reading, then over time moving questions into the middle of the passage. When using the former strategy, students have to do a lot of flipping and re-inspecting of the text, while the latter has them think about the small section they have just read and briefly review it. This way has them do less re-inspecting of the text and teaches them to rely on the main points they focused on while reading.
5. Sometimes a student’s interpretations fit what she already knows and not what the text says.
a. I have seen this with a few students over time. This happened the most when a student is given an open-ended question and is asked to answer it using textual evidence. I also have them do this a lot when writing body paragraphs for essays. They rely too much on their own thoughts and not enough on what is said in the text. I use a very concrete outline for body paragraphs that has them begin with a claim (topic sentence) and then back it up with evidence and details from the text. This way, the student is forced to use some ideas from the text, and I then have them finish up the paragraph with an analysis – what they think about the evidence and details. This puts all of the emphasis on the text and not their previous knowledge or opinion coming into the reading and writing event.
1. As children read the same types of books repeatedly, they begin to recognize certain sound structures of language.
a. I notice this when I have some weaker students read aloud. With many middle school texts, it seems that a familiar structure is used to make the reading passage easier. Then, every once in a while a student may be reading a text aloud in class with some more complex sentences and they take pauses in the wrong spot in the sentence when one is not indicated. Also, many students may read right through a comma or a period without any pause. The sound is not the only problem here; it sometimes confuses the thought or idea of the sentence(s) for the child, and we often have to go back, reread the sentence, and then check for understanding.
2. Children at the transitional spelling stage (using phonics) usually have a vowel in every syllable, but the word is not always spelled correctly.
a. This seems to be the stage that most students are at. I remember learning how to spell from memorization quite a bit when I was young with spelling tests every week, but I don’t know if teachers at the primary level are using the phonics approach now or not. It seems to be very suitable to get the foundations down, but after many students get to the transition stage they hit a brick wall. In my opinion, students do need to approach spelling at a certain level with recognition of words, either repeated in a text or through some memorization strategy. I see a lot of my own students making the transition level mistakes and we have a tough time getting through this. I usually try to spell the word out for them on a rough draft, hoping that now they can both see and hear the word they can spell it correctly in the future.
3. Retelling a story is a strategy used to check if a student can understand the meaning of the passage as he reads it silently.
a. This is a strategy used at all reading levels, and I even find myself doing this from time to time as I read for pleasure. It is interesting to see how different students write such a variety of summaries, and also how each individual student includes certain facts or ideas and leaves out others. After all students write out their own individual summaries, as a class we can construct a final one, taking thoughts and ideas from all of the passages to get the main idea or theme of a story. Furthermore, when we continue reading a novel, I ask the students to retell what happened in the previous chapters to their partners so that we are all on the same page, so this strategy also clearly works with a larger, more difficult text.
4. If meaning processing is a major concern, the diagnostic teacher conducts a think-aloud assessment.
a. I feel that this is the most common type of strategy that I have used over the past two years. Many of my students in both high and middle school have been able to read the words in front of them, but they don’t think of the meaning or purposes “behind” the words. I have divided texts up into different segments, and it really begins to challenge most students to think about a text while they are reading and not after. I started by giving questions at the end of a reading, then over time moving questions into the middle of the passage. When using the former strategy, students have to do a lot of flipping and re-inspecting of the text, while the latter has them think about the small section they have just read and briefly review it. This way has them do less re-inspecting of the text and teaches them to rely on the main points they focused on while reading.
5. Sometimes a student’s interpretations fit what she already knows and not what the text says.
a. I have seen this with a few students over time. This happened the most when a student is given an open-ended question and is asked to answer it using textual evidence. I also have them do this a lot when writing body paragraphs for essays. They rely too much on their own thoughts and not enough on what is said in the text. I use a very concrete outline for body paragraphs that has them begin with a claim (topic sentence) and then back it up with evidence and details from the text. This way, the student is forced to use some ideas from the text, and I then have them finish up the paragraph with an analysis – what they think about the evidence and details. This puts all of the emphasis on the text and not their previous knowledge or opinion coming into the reading and writing event.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Chapter 3 Learning Log
Chapter 3 Learning Log
1. A diagnostic teacher creates a classroom that invites all cultures to engage in literate activities.
a. In my one tenth grade class last year I had a very diverse student population. I had students from the local area, Korea, Russia, and the Congo. This was my first time with such a diverse population, and I wasn’t sure how well I would do with them, let alone how the other students in the room would interact. Furthermore, I felt they might be challenged with the novels we read in class. One of the first things I did was learn simple phrases in all of their languages, such as hello and other greetings, to make them feel welcome. This interested other students in the class and prompted them to converse with each other more easily. Also, some of the novels we read, such as Anthem and Animal Farm, related heavily to some of their native country’s history. They could share how Russia, for example, looks back on the Russian Revolution while we read Animal Farm. Overall, it was a blessing to have so many different types of students with me in class.
2. When choosing a text, the diagnostic teacher considers not only an appropriate reading range, but also the extent of students’ prior experiences and cultures.
a. This idea is great, but it seems difficult to implement 100% perfectly in a lot of classrooms. Teachers in high school typically have a list of novels to choose from to teach, despite the fact that they may have students who are way below the designated list’s reading level. I remember beginning last year with The Lord of the Flies in a tenth grade inclusion class. I read this book in an 11th grade Honors course in high school, but it shows how different various schools’ book lists are. I tried to follow the above strategy and choose books that somehow connect to any prior knowledge that may have acquired in history class to make some novels more easily accessible. A lot of books are also chosen because they are good to use on state exams, especially the 11th grade Regents exam. All teachers in my school taught Of Mice and Men because it hit on a lot of themes that were regularly used on the exam.
3. The diagnostic teacher needs to increase wait time and know how to deal with inappropriate answers.
a. Wait time is something that I really need to work on. When I ask a question of a small group or the entire class, I have the tendency to pick on the first student who raises his or her hand. This isn’t fair to a lot of students. Just because they do not have their hands raised immediately doesn’t mean that they aren’t processing information – they may just have a different technique to their thought process. I think this comes from the fact that I sometimes feel rushed for time during a 40 minute period. However, I have been getting better at having students explain their thought process and how they came up with certain answers, especially since we have been getting ready for ELA exams recently.
4. The diagnostic teacher sets aside time for students to read for their own purposes.
a. Students do seem to really enjoy reading for their own purposes. I took part in a book club with several of my male students earlier this year to hopefully show them that boys like to read too. We read a teen murder mystery, and at the end of each section I would just ask them to share what they thought. I didn’t have any formal task or assessment for them, but we were still building literacy abilities and the boys really enjoyed it as well. They did not put up any sort of resistance to the process as some of them did during class time when things were more formal or structured.
5. The diagnostic teacher encourages self-assessment, which helps readers evaluate and recognize their strategy use.
a. When I do ask students how they arrived at an answer, the most common response is “I don’t know.” I really like the idea of the check sheet from the text. I have used something similar to this before, but it was with a student’s behavior. To have a student reflect on how they read that day and what his strengths or weaknesses were would really help students understand their literacy strategies. I can imagine this having a huge impact on certain students and it is definitely something that I am going to work into my course. For instance, as the students read an article in preparation for writing an essay, I could ask them questions or give them a list of different reading strategies and have them circle the ones they used in helping them complete their task.
1. A diagnostic teacher creates a classroom that invites all cultures to engage in literate activities.
a. In my one tenth grade class last year I had a very diverse student population. I had students from the local area, Korea, Russia, and the Congo. This was my first time with such a diverse population, and I wasn’t sure how well I would do with them, let alone how the other students in the room would interact. Furthermore, I felt they might be challenged with the novels we read in class. One of the first things I did was learn simple phrases in all of their languages, such as hello and other greetings, to make them feel welcome. This interested other students in the class and prompted them to converse with each other more easily. Also, some of the novels we read, such as Anthem and Animal Farm, related heavily to some of their native country’s history. They could share how Russia, for example, looks back on the Russian Revolution while we read Animal Farm. Overall, it was a blessing to have so many different types of students with me in class.
2. When choosing a text, the diagnostic teacher considers not only an appropriate reading range, but also the extent of students’ prior experiences and cultures.
a. This idea is great, but it seems difficult to implement 100% perfectly in a lot of classrooms. Teachers in high school typically have a list of novels to choose from to teach, despite the fact that they may have students who are way below the designated list’s reading level. I remember beginning last year with The Lord of the Flies in a tenth grade inclusion class. I read this book in an 11th grade Honors course in high school, but it shows how different various schools’ book lists are. I tried to follow the above strategy and choose books that somehow connect to any prior knowledge that may have acquired in history class to make some novels more easily accessible. A lot of books are also chosen because they are good to use on state exams, especially the 11th grade Regents exam. All teachers in my school taught Of Mice and Men because it hit on a lot of themes that were regularly used on the exam.
3. The diagnostic teacher needs to increase wait time and know how to deal with inappropriate answers.
a. Wait time is something that I really need to work on. When I ask a question of a small group or the entire class, I have the tendency to pick on the first student who raises his or her hand. This isn’t fair to a lot of students. Just because they do not have their hands raised immediately doesn’t mean that they aren’t processing information – they may just have a different technique to their thought process. I think this comes from the fact that I sometimes feel rushed for time during a 40 minute period. However, I have been getting better at having students explain their thought process and how they came up with certain answers, especially since we have been getting ready for ELA exams recently.
4. The diagnostic teacher sets aside time for students to read for their own purposes.
a. Students do seem to really enjoy reading for their own purposes. I took part in a book club with several of my male students earlier this year to hopefully show them that boys like to read too. We read a teen murder mystery, and at the end of each section I would just ask them to share what they thought. I didn’t have any formal task or assessment for them, but we were still building literacy abilities and the boys really enjoyed it as well. They did not put up any sort of resistance to the process as some of them did during class time when things were more formal or structured.
5. The diagnostic teacher encourages self-assessment, which helps readers evaluate and recognize their strategy use.
a. When I do ask students how they arrived at an answer, the most common response is “I don’t know.” I really like the idea of the check sheet from the text. I have used something similar to this before, but it was with a student’s behavior. To have a student reflect on how they read that day and what his strengths or weaknesses were would really help students understand their literacy strategies. I can imagine this having a huge impact on certain students and it is definitely something that I am going to work into my course. For instance, as the students read an article in preparation for writing an essay, I could ask them questions or give them a list of different reading strategies and have them circle the ones they used in helping them complete their task.
Monday, January 19, 2009
First Class Blog
Hello everyone! I have created my class blog for EDU 572 and have attached my reading log from chapters 1 and 2 below. See you soon!
***My address is http://tmcarter-mcater.blogspot.com
***My address is http://tmcarter-mcater.blogspot.com
Mike Carter
EDU 572/Warham and Callahan
Chapters 1 and 2
1. As the diagnostic teacher instructs, she adjusts her original plan to ensure learning.
A. Teachers are always told that “preparation is key.” While a well-planned lesson typically ensures an active learning environment, teachers must also be able to adjust plans quickly. If a lesson is going according to plan, but then several students begin to lose understanding or struggle with a certain aspect, the teacher must change the direction of the lesson. This has happened to me many times. For instance, in my writing class at the beginning of this year we were doing a lesson on compound and complex sentences. While students seemed to grasp the initial idea of the lesson, it soon fell apart when I brought up the word “conjunction.” I explained what that part of speech was, but the only example they knew was “and.” So, the direction of that lesson changed, as well as the course in general. The rest of that lesson we learned about the parts of speech. Now, when a new semester begins, the course starts with the parts of speech to ensure that all students understand the basic vocabulary of the class.
2. A reader’s schema, or personal worldview, can determine how the reader views a text or ideas within the text.
a. When a student receives a new text to read, whether it is a novel, article, or poem, he or she may have a pre-constructed view of the subject matter. The example in the book about the child assuming that the book about baseball will center on a boy and not a girl is an excellent example of what can happen with many readers. Recently we read an article about gun control in preparation for writing a persuasive essay. During the pre-reading exercise, students looked at the title, the different sections of the article, and some key words. Many immediately figured out what it was about. Students began their own discussion on their views of gun control. I assumed that many of these ideas were based on their home and family situation, but it was amazing how many different ideas and reasons they had to back up what they believed. It was very intriguing for a seventh-grade classroom and they were very passionate about what they read. Although the article did not end up changing any of their minds (to my knowledge), I thought it was good that they were faced with some concepts that may have challenged their original mindset.
3. Teachers must go from asking literal comprehension questions to asking open-ended and non-literal questions.
a. This is a process that begins easy for many students but then begins to frustrate them because the answer isn’t in the actual text. I often hear students say “I can’t find that answer” when being asked an open-ended or analytical question. I began doing this more last year when I taught high school. Study guides or activities would at first ask literal questions to ensure that the students comprehended what was going on in the novel. As students worked through the activity, the questions were more non-literal. I sometimes use the 5 W’s strategy. I being what the who, what, where , when and later on in the questions I change it up by asking the why and how. I sometimes tell students at the beginning of the year that there isn’t any wrong answer to the latter questions, but over time I begin to ask them to provide textual evidence to support their analysis or idea. This is also a good strategy to use when writing essays since they need to include textual evidence and details to prove a thesis or claim.
4. Social interaction plays a huge role in literacy, and students have different preferences for how to interact in the classroom.
a. Socializing about a text is very important for all students. I have worked this into my classes at different grade levels in a variety of ways. When I taught 11th grade, at the end of a novel we would do collegial circles. This was completely student-centered and operated. Students would sit in a circle and all of them must come with three questions or ideas about the novel to share with the class to help start discussion (good examples were modeled). One student acted as a moderator; his role was to select students and keep things organized. This was tough at first, but over time students really got the hang of it and became very useful. Also, in middle school I now have students discuss ideas or questions with their partner and then present their answer to the class as a whole. I also have them work in smaller groups of 3-4 students to discuss open-ended questions on an article and develop a thesis statement for an essay. This keeps them socializing within a smaller audience and then gives them the support of a group when presenting their work to the class.
5. Many instructional techniques focus on developing literacy skills during reading and not after.
a. I love this strategy. While I do use a lot of post and pre-reading skills, it really challenges students when they are asked questions or given tasks in the middle of a text. While teaching novels, I may photo copy a section of it and have questions written in the margin. This makes the student stop reading and focus or think about what they have just read to check for understanding. I like this because it helps to tackle any problems that the student has while he is reading it and not after. Over time this strategy also helps many students to actively question themselves without my prompts. Students begin to make predictions, ask why characters do certain things, etc., while they are reading.
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