Chapter 3

For me this chapter was very important because many students lack comprehension. I believe that it depends on how the teacher teaches the lesson for the students to understand or not. Teachers can’t just assume that all the students will get the lesson. He/she have to realize that different students learn with different strategies and if he/she needs to go a little bit beyond for the student to comprehend they have to.

There are many effective ways of teaching , and it does take time. The textbook stated “ It takes time to show kids how, but it is time well spent.” Teachers need to be patient and creative to get the students full understanding. For me the gradual release of responsibility is extremely important. If the instructor starts out by modeling and slowing allow the students to become more independent by the end of this process they will understand the concept and will be able to work at a higher level by themselves.

Textbooks and trade books

I used to always think that teachers had to follow exactly the lessons on the textbooks. I used to think that the students had to learn exactly the information on the textbooks. However as I got older I realized that using different texts increases the quality of the lesson. I see textbooks as boring books with a plenty of information that I may not even need. Textbooks sometimes also make it hard for the students to understand the lesson and it is even harder for them to make connections.

Trade books are of great importance in a class. Students need to have available to them, to help them understand the lesson and for them to also familiarize themselves with different types of texts. As a teacher I want to be able to provide to my students these sources. That is why I am already starting to build my class library. I collect all different types of books and different types of texts to use in my classroom.

Learning About Manson: A collaborative lesson with a struggling reader

I thought this article was very interesting. I had never heard of the strategy that they used to help a student that has a hard time reading. Mason’s teacher worked collaboratively with other teachers in the school to help him with his reading struggles. Instead of only his teacher working with him, they created a team. All of the teachers worked with him and after observing and working with Manson they would discuss and come up with a way to help him. I thought it was interesting because she was able to get different perspective and different ideas. I just found the whole idea a little confusing because they all observe him on the same day. I would rather have each teacher work with the student on different days and then meet up to come up with a strategy.

Chapter 8

I really enjoyed chapter 8 because I think that many students when reading don’t fully understand the text being read. Students have to learn that while reading thy have to be processing their brain. It is essential for the students to learn how to question, predict, and make assumptions while they are reading. The book states that “questions are the master key to understanding.” When finding the answers to these questions, the students will have a different and more evolved comprehension of what was just read.

Students have to be taught to think before the reading, for example making predictions. During the reading, stop and think about what was read and continue to make predictions of what will come next. After reading check if they still have questions and if so look back and try to find the answers. With this they will have a full understanding of the text.

Reading and writing connection

Teaching reading and writing is not an easy process, but like I said it is a process and it does take time. I think that reading and writing go hand in hand. It is impossible to teach one without the other. Students who read more become more familiarized with good vocabulary and good writing and so tend to write better. As an adolescent I used to barely read books and that had a negative effect on my writing. I always had a hard time writing and making my writing a good writing.

Teachers have to find a way to motivate the students. Maybe instead of asking them to read a certain book, allow them to choose a book of their interest, because that will motivate into reading it. Also if the students are not a fan of books they can read a magazine or other types of texts. Another option would be to allow the students to choose the topic in which they will write about. Sometimes when a topic is provided the student might not connect to the topic and end up not writing well about it.

Reading Post #6

              After doing the Jigsaw activity in class, I wanted to read the whole article, Learning About Mason:A Collaborative Lesson With a Struggling Reader by Catherine Compton-Lilly. I have never heard about a collaborative lesson, and it seems to be a positive approach to help struggling readers. I think that it is important to build good relationships with other teachers in your school to form a network. Within this network, you can go to someone for advice and ask questions. I feel that this is very beneficial because you have teachers on all different expertise levels with different types of training. With having these various perspectives, you can have many options for teaching strategies. This information is essential for us as new teachers.
              
              In the article Mason was the student that was struggling with reading. His teacher saw that he had a lot of dependence on prompt words to solve a sentence and he had an inability to remember words in writing. His teacher decided to have a collaborative lesson with four other teachers. After the process of observing and collaborating, they came to a teaching strategy that would work for Mason. 

             I really like this collaborative lesson idea, but it left me questioning certain aspects of the process. When there are multiple teachers observing the classroom and going in and out, wouldn't this be stressful for the students? What if the one targeted student found out it was them that was being observed, how would that make them feel? Lastly, how can the school allow four teachers to miss their class and sit in on another class? Overall, I feel like this strategy is very beneficial, but there is alot involved with it. I also wonder how often this strategy is used due to the complex nature of it. 

"Reading to learn article"

Students usually prefer to read story books, which are fiction books. We would most likely see a child with a storybook rather than a magazine, newspaper, or other form of non-fiction text. This article is about how when we read to learn we usually think of non-fiction texts. I believe that students usually prefer fiction books because of the way that they are written. Story books are usually written in a way that catches the student’s attention. Most often the students choose only based on the cover, so just by providing an interesting illustration it will catch the student’s attention.

Story books are also easier for students to make connections. Things that happen in these books are typically things that happen to most children. This will make the students find it more interesting. I also think that students aren’t as familiar to the way non-fiction is presented. Many non-fiction texts aren’t interesting when you first look at it. A newspaper for instance would not have an interesting enough picture to catch a child’s attention.

An advice I would make would be for teachers to make non-fiction texts available to their students. Include in their library non-fiction materials for the students to familiarize themselves with it. Also to choose wisely because there are non-fiction books that have interesting illustrations and that can be motivating, instead of a page that just has an extreme amount of facts.

Reading Post #5

                   Out of all the readings for this semester, For an Effective Reading Program, written by Dr. Marlow Ediger was the most valuable to me. I found my self strongly agreeing to all of the points brought up in the article. I feel like student motivation is integral to successful learning and teaching. I know from personal experience that if I am not motivated, or feel that I am doing something without a purpose, I am not going to do it. On the other hand, if I am interested in something I pursue it and become a perfectionist. This self motivation provides many opportunities for authentic and active engagement. I believe that in order for students to remain motivated, they need to be and feel successful. Part of this is staying within the zone of proximal development, and not making reading programs too simple or too complex. Successful programs need to be flexible in order to fit the needs of students on all different learning levels.
                  
                   I really like the part of this article that talked about controlling your classroom versus managing it. I like the phrase, "managing the classroom."  The word "manage," to me, means "to work with."  A teacher that always has a quiet classroom is not always the "best" teacher, and the classroom is not always the most successful one. I feel like teachers have this thought instilled in their heads.  The "control," of the classroom should NOT be a measurement of the quality of the teacher. In my future classroom I do not want to be the controller of it, but rather be viewed on the same level as the students. I want to ask them questions and for them to ask me questions in a class conversation. I want to guide their learning experience with my knowledge, but not be viewed as a controlling authority figure. I want our classroom to be relaxed and creative, but yet respectful. I do not want my classroom to be silent, but then again will the people that control me think that i am a bad teacher? I feel like many teachers struggle with this question and decide to play it safe with their quiet and controlled classrooms.

Reading Assignment #6 Literature in the Classroom

This article was about Cecilia and Julia, two bilingual teachers that responded to children's questions about literature. I liked the article and enjoyed seeing how experienced teachers like Cecilia and Julia answered some of these tough questions. The first questions asked the two teachers how they went about picking out books for their classrooms. They stated that the books had to be able to raise questions within a child's mind and that it makes them feel included. I feel that in order to read a book and finish it with a bunch of questions in your mind you would have had to have some sort of prior interest. I believe that keeping your bookshelves stocked various types of fun and interesting books will keep kids reading much longer than usual.

I felt that Julia had a great response when she was asked about how she prepares for implementing literature into her classroom. She stated that it was important to come to class prepared. As the teacher, you must read the book before your kids and develop questions to help provoke their critical thinking. If you don't read the book before you read it to your kids it can turn out to be very bland and not engaging at all. This really struck home with me because during winter break last year I was subbing for a 4th grade class whose teacher was going to be out for a week. I subbed the whole week and during the first two days, we had finished the book that the teacher had left for us. I decided to pick up a random book from the bookshelf in my house that appeared to be grade level appropriate. When I started reading however, the book was not a good fit for the class. It contained A LOT of words the kids did not know, and had too many vulgar words. During our reading time after lunch, I reading the book, struggling as I tried to make up words on the spot to substitute for the curse word, and stopping to explain what a particular word meant nearly after every sentence.

One of the last questions addressed how to deal with a mono-lingual student that speaks a language other than English if you as the teacher only speak English. The two teachers responded that it was important to let the child talk and express themselves to you even if it's not in a language they understand. They mentioned that it's sometimes easy to tell what a child is asking you based on their body language. Soon enough, you'll start to remember some key phrases that the child uses over and over and can begin to teach them how to say these phrases in English. Personally, I think it's extremely important to keep an open mind when dealing with ESL learners and make use of any resource you can.

Reading Assignment #5 Including Students with Special Needs in Writing Workshops

After reading this article I was impressed by how the teacher Nancy was able to incorporate changes in her classroom to no longer make students with special needs fall academically behind or be socially isolated. I particularly liked how she kept a record for one-on-one formal conferences that all the students had with the teacher on a regular basis. I thought that this was a great idea because it doesn't single anybody out in the classroom. Oftentimes when you are in a classroom with a few struggling learners you'll consistently see the teacher calling over a select few children. Before you know it, rumors are being spread about that child not being able to keep up. In an atmosphere like that, it isn't hard for a child to be socially isolated. However, in a classroom where the teacher is attending to every student on a regular basis and students never felt like they were being singled out.

I enjoyed reading about the way Nancy was able to help Michelle become a better writing. I've always believed that seating arrangements made a big difference in the classroom but feel that it matters most when it comes to writing. In the article, Michelle was encouraged by her classmate, Alyson, to "just write the way you talk. Don't worry about anything." Even though Michelle was struggling I feel that Nancy made the correct decision by sitting back and trying to let Michelle overcome her obstacles.

Although I stated that I agreed with the way Nancy handled Michelle's writing situation, I think that it would be tough for new teachers to do something similar. New teachers are surely to be under a lot more stress than Nancy. I don't know if I'd be comfortable with letting Michelle try and work out her problems if I felt that she was really struggling. What if she never worked out her problems? Then I would feel as if I just wasted two weeks. Aside from that, how would an administrator view me in my first few years if I told them I was letting Michelle have time to play with her word, get out her frustration, and reach a comfortable place in the classroom. I'm not sure if every district would be lenient on a matter like this.

I felt like one of the more important things that Nancy did was encourage her students to take risks. I remember being a young writer myself and purposely avoid words that I may have liked to use because I was unsure of how to spell them. Most of my teachers throughout my elementary school career would take off for spelling mistakes so I would make sure to only use words I was sure I could spell right. This resulted in my writing consisted of many simple fragments. I think it's important to take risks and let your students know it's okay to be a little messy.

Reading Post 4

HOT Blogging: A framework for Blogging to promote Higher Order Thinking


               Lisa Zawilinski discusses in her article the new trends of literacy on the internet that can be used in classrooms. I was really interested in this article because I feel that blogging is something that I will see in my student teaching experiences and use it someday in my classroom. I have seen the rise of the blogging trend in my college classes as well. I can remember when I first was introduced to blogging, I did not like it because it seemed impersonal to me. However, now there are so many blogging sites that are designed to give more personality to your writings. I feel that if blogging is to be used as a literacy tool in the classroom, a site that allows creativity to the blogs should be chosen. If students are going to be motivated to write, they need to feel comfortable and able to be themselves in their writings. It also makes it more interesting for the readers because they can see who the writer truly is. 
          "Classroom blogs bridge the ever-widening gap between out-of-school literacies and in-school literacies." I feel that this is the strongest statement in the article. As we discussed in class, technology and specifically social networking sometimes is viewed negatively in classrooms. I feel that as teachers, we can show how this type of technology can be used in a positive way. I feel that if students become aware of the correlation between in-school literacies and out-of-school literacies it makes the information learned inside the classroom more authentic. I also feel that the students may become more motivated because they have a real audience. With this being the situation, they may put more time and effort into their writings and view it more importantly.
             I like the acronym for HOT blogging (Higher Order Thinking). I feel like blogging subconsciously makes us use a higher order of thinking. Blogging not only gives us a real audience, but many different perspectives, critical thinking opportunities, and problem solving activities. As a future teacher, I want to master the steps of creating a successful HOT blog in my classroom. 

Chapter 10: Determining importance in text: The nonfiction connection

This chapter caught my attention because the first thing I thought about was: hm how do we, as teachers, emphasize the importance of nonfiction text to our students when they can not seem to find this type of text interesting. Give a student a library filled with nonfictional books and texts, and only one fictional book and they will most likely pick that fiction-text. why? Because it is more appealing to them, more interesting, more relate-able maybe? Well, chapter 10 explains the exact features that some nonfictional texts include in order to make these readings easier for them. Some of these features include: fonts, effects, such as titles, headings, boldface, colorful print, italics, bullets, captions, labels, signal words and phrases (in fact, in conclusion, most important, therefore, on the other hand, and more. These texts also often have illustrations and photographs which catch the eyes of the students. As the chapter mentions, trade books are filled with colorful pictures. Moreover, diagrams, cut-aways, overlays, tables, graphs and charts all help students interpret the information through different formats and for many, these are easier to understand rather than just looking at plain text. I know for my fourth grade students, the new books that they love to read are those "Diary of a Whimpy Kid" books and the reason why is because it does have so many illustrations in them and activities, puzzles, games, and journal sections that they get to fill out as they read along.
Now that we know how to get students to interpret nonfiction text better, how do we help students apply it and record their information. Well, chapter 10 mentions the idea of an FQR -- Facts, Questions, and Response "think sheet". According to chapter 10, the fact column will focus on what the child learned or important facts that were already prior knowledge. The questions column will highlight things that caused confusion during reading or information that the students had trouble understanding. And finally, the response section will be used as a reflection section where the students will record connections to other texts, or personal experiences. This break up is extremely effective; we actually use this in my classroom. It helps students organize their thoughts and ideas into sensible categories: what they know and important facts, any questions raised, and connections to real life. This strategy also helps students stay on task without being repetitive or boring. The students get a chance to explore the same content in three different ways. Making a text more appealing and easier to interpret will allow students to apply nonfictional text easier into larger ideas and conclusions.

Chapter 8: Questioning While Reading

Chapter 8 was, overall, a really helpful and interesting chapter as far as working with answering and asking questions in the classroom. I think every teacher has the fear of not being able to answer one of his/her students' questions. Not only that, but also, as students, everyone always has questions, so how does a teacher provided a comfortable enough environment so that both the teacher and student has an understood relationship of unlimited questions and answer vocabulary?These are all thoughts that came to mind before I dug into this chapter.
This chapter emphasized the fact that questioning helps the learner clear any confusions he/she may have and help him/her understand things that are foreign; this points is crucial, especially in an inclusive classroom. If a student does not ask questions, how will the teacher ever know if they are confused or lost. This reminds me of a time that one of my students was confused about teh assignment and we were about 10 minutes into the assignment and i was busy working with another student on his writing prompt. I turn to look at the desk next to me and Cassandra is sitting there staring into space, without a word on her paper. I walked over to her and she explained to me that she did not know what to write. It is times like these where you wished you would have addressed the students who were confused first, I asked her why she did not raise her hand and ask me what she had to do and she said that she was in the bathroom and when she came back everyone was already working on their writing. Situations like this can be easily prevented when there is an open atmosphere for asking questions in a classroom. Cassandra could have easily asked one of her classmates what the assignment was or raised her hand to ask the teacher, but there was obviously something stopping her from doing so.
Which brings me to my next point that Harvey mentioned in chapter 8, in order to create this comfortable atmosphere of asking questions, students would be encouraged to record and ask questions before, during and after reading. This, I'm sure, does not only apply to reading, but to all subjects, assignments and lessons. As the chapter portrays in its own manner, teachers should always encourage questions and deepening the thought of everything having meaning and purpose. Teacher should demonstrate questioning in the classroom in order for their students to have something to model. An strategy used to expands students thinking and questioning is question webs: where students put a question in the middle of the web, and they stem answers off of it from different sources in order to get all types of varied perspectives. These question webs causes students to think deeper. This strategy is extremely effective, along with other strategies mentioned in chapter 8, like reading to answer a question or reading with a question oin mind. In my fourth grade classroom we always emphasize to the students if you are reading a reading prompt, chapter or story that already comes with questions to answer after, always read the questions first. Why? because then you know what to focus on in the sorry and it already outlines the important points of the text. All of these strategies can easily be implemented in the classroom, and can make a huge difference in literacy component aspects.

Reading Post 3

            Reading and Writing Connections

        " If reading and writing are to be communicative then the reader needs to read with the sense of the writer and the writer needs to write with the sense of the reader." 

                                                             - Timothy Shanahan

         

                I do not think that these two subjects should be taught separately. Even though reading develops before writing, both subjects can be used to strengthen each other. I think that teachers should highlight the relationship between reading and writing for their students. If students are aware of the importance of this relationship, I feel like they can more easily understand reading and writing.         

                

               I strongly agree with the part of the article that discusses the mechanics and processes of both reading and writing. It is integral that teachers view the reading and writing process as a developmental one. If we are going to teach students that reading and writing are gradual processes, we have to translate this in the classroom through positive teaching. Also, I believe that in order to show children the steps through these processes, they have to be motivated. Motivation comes from interest and self-drive, therefore students should be reading and writing about what they want. 

                 

              Journals are a great classroom activity, but I feel like the direction of the writing within them need to be given with an intentional purpose. For example, I believe that a journal activity should go beyond writing about how your day is going to something that is more opinionated.  By writing about strongly opinionated subjects students will have many ideas in their heads that they want to get down on the paper. Opinionated pieces of writing also shows students that writing allows us to express ourselves to readers, ultimately showing the close relationship and importance of reading and writing.

Reading Post 2

             Chapter 9 of the text, Strategies that Work, interested me because I personally have always been a visual learner.  I enjoy when books create images in my head as I read.  I feel that visualizing is very powerful because everyone may have the same ideas from the book, but the images in our heads differ from one another.  Visualizing and inferring are two strategies that are essential to becoming an active reader.  I believe that in order for students to be able to visualize and infer, they need sufficient background knowledge.  For example, if you are at an inner city school and are going to introduce a book to your students about farms, some of them may not even know what a farm is.  If students don't have any information to recall about something, then how are they going to picture it in their heads and make inferences?  This goes for teaching any subject, not just reading and writing.  
              
             The chapter discusses the use of descriptive words to help students make visualizations and inferences.  I feel that it is important to introduce students to descriptive words with the help of physical objects. For example, as a lesson you could introduce size words to your students (tiny, small, average, large, huge, humongous, etc.).   With these words you could show them objects to help them visualize the words when reading them in the text.  After reading this chapter, I came up with this lesson idea because I started to think about struggling readers. If they are given enough background knowledge to create pictures in their heads, 
then they can make predictions and ultimately be engaged in the text.
              
               I believe that teaching children to ask questions during reading in order to make predictions is not only an important reading strategy, but a life skill.  We are teaching students to make an educated guess of what will happen next in a situation.  This can be applied to cause and effect relationships in life.  For example, If Sarah refuses to study for her quiz, then it can be predicted that she will get a bad grade.  From these small examples, students can be taught to question life situations and consider the consequences.  As you can see, this reading strategy is essential to reading and writing, but also goes far beyond the books.