Presentation Reflection

I gave my presentation on using guided worksheets with a BDA included for a short story unit. This worksheet focuses on characterization and is used after the class has been introduced to lit circles. I feel the presentation went well and that I accurately described how useful the worksheet is in a classroom.What I should have told the class during my presentation is that the evidence I gave on the True Story of the 3 Little Pigs would have been written during the class. It would have been modeled for them instead of having it finished when coming to class. 
I used this worksheet as part of my lesson plan during my field experience at Johnson High School. The students responded well to it and were able to apply the worksheet to the analytical paper they wrote at the end of the unit. This worksheet is helpful for them because it focuses on a specific part of the short story and forces them to give evidence for their findings. It is also a good reference when returning to the story when writing a final paper.

Reader Response 10

Reader Response #10

Learning with new literacies is a topic that I am a little nervous about executing in the classroom. I am not all that tech savvy and I am a bit behind the curve on knowing where to go to find great online sources. This chapter helped ease me in to using technology and online resources in the classroom. I felt the main idea in this chapter is that the students have access to the information and as teachers we have to show the students how to apply the information in the classroom. How do students take all this information that is readily available to them and use it to actually learn something? Reliability, bias and distinction are all important when using the internet. I think most students would be able to spot a hoax as blatant as male pregnancy, but I doubt they realize that not everything on Wikipedia is honest or factual. After going over the rules on evaluating websites the internet becomes an indispensable teaching tool. Group learning is such an important part of school because teenagers are social and learning socially creates so many opportunities for greater critical thinking and collaboration. Webquests and other internet inquiries are both strategies I could easily apply in the classroom. I really like the idea of the students creating Webquests, having groups exchange Webquests and then reporting on the findings as a final assessment. The part I think I will struggle with is balancing technology with traditional methods. As long as standardized testing is used time will have to be spent on teaching to the tests. Most schools do not even take standardized tests on computers, it is still done on paper filling in bubbles. We are stressing technology in schools, but very rarely give students the opportunities to apply these strategies.

I like the way the chapter stresses how new literacies are considered nonlinear. The elements of new literacies are so different from print format. Each reading experience is different for every reader; even the same reader twice. The information is updated faster and access to sources is readily available. As the chapter states, this is a great opportunity for scaffolding information. Using audio recordings, definitions, hyperlinks, graphics, videos, interactive exercises and other background and foundational knowledge that is already imbedded in the text is an easy way to fill in gaps for students. The chapter calls this “branching options” and stresses the importance of these functions. When used appropriately these learning extensions can help struggling readers understand not only the reading, but the concepts as well.

After reading this chapter I feel a little more confident about using technology in the classroom. I just hope I have the opportunity to apply it.

Reader Response 9

Reader Response #9: CAR Chapter 5, CAW Chapter 10

Chapter 5 focuses on lesson planning and instruction. The quote by Eisenhower at the very start of the chapter is one I have heard often and being the spouse of an Army officer it is a quote I have seen in action. This chapter brought attention to the idea that planning is the most important part of teaching. Plans can sometimes fail, like we saw in the video in class, but a good teacher has contingency plans. The beginning of the chapter is all about modeling, scaffolding and guided practice. These strategies are a way to ensure that lessons are going to be successful. The chapter also talks about B-D-A centered lessons being key to ensure students are comprehending and learning the material. B-D-A is a good assessment tool and a way to check in with students to be sure everyone is learning and comprehending the material. The teacher is able to quickly look at where everyone is and can then decide where to go from there. Unit planning is one of the most difficult parts of lesson planning. Taking a concept and breaking it down in to parts can be difficult. The chapter stresses making sure to have objectives laid out clearly for yourself and for the students. These objectives guide the lessons and help the students know what to look for and what to focus on. The rest of the chapter focuses different learning strategies. I especially liked the section on collaborative learning. I want to be the teacher that talks less and listens more. I want my students to think critically and discover answers instead of me giving the information. All the group strategies mentioned in the chapter are all helpful. Learning as a group helps facilitate individual learning. Once the cooperative learning happens it is easier for the individual to take the strategies learned in the group and apply it to his or her learning process. The biggest take away I got from this chapter is that the teacher is the facilitator and guides learning, but there is a lot of preparation and planning that goes in to this type of learning.

Chapter 10 is all about writing assessments; both the students writing for assessments and the teacher writing the test. After my experience at Johnson High School I have found that the classroom has such a wide variety of skill level when it comes to writing. The teacher I have been observing has to cover all these different levels when giving tests and when teaching writing. She has a great ability to work writing into every day instruction. She told me that it took a lot of time for her to be able to seamlessly integrate writing into her curriculum. Students are reluctant to write when they are given writing assignments, but they are more enthusiastic when writing becomes an on-going process. An end of quarter analytical paper was worked on throughout the entire quarter beginning with reader response questions, outlines and focused free writing. The paper was then edited over and over again until a final draft was finished at the end of the quarter. The final draft happened without most of the students realizing they had been in the process of writing it the entire quarter. The teacher used scaffolding and took each new writing skill and developed them into a finished product. I saw in action what this chapter was discussing. It will take lots of practice and some trial and error, but I know it will create better writers.

Chapter 8: Building Vocab

Reader Response #8

Vocabulary is the key to reading comprehension. A reader needs a deep vocabulary to understand what is being read. As students encounter new vocabulary in content areas he or she begin to struggle if they do not have the strategies to decode new words. As we have discussed in class the traditional strategies for teaching vocabulary do not help a student long term. Not only do students have an overabundance of what they need to learn over the course of the day, teachers are competing with each other for that space in the students’ brains. The main point I took away from the textbook and the class discussion is to decide what words need the most in depth, direct teaching. These are the words we want to carry over from year to year and be able to use and understand without fail. These are the words that are part of a broader concept we need students to understand and apply to the content area. The textbook gives some very good strategies for vocabulary instruction and reading comprehension.

Graphic organizers are an uncomplicated way for students to learn vocabulary and apply it to a main concept. Graphic organizers help visually enforce making connections between vocabulary and concepts. It helps students find what is important and leave behind what is filler. I use graphic organizers in my notes when I am discovering a new concept or subject. It helps me organize my thoughts and is a good tool to go back to when I need to refresh or study. What I like most about graphic organizers is that they can be as simple or complex as needed; there is variety and each student can personalize them. The other types of writing to learn strategies mentioned in the chapter, word exploration, brainstorming, list-group-label, word sorts, and knowledge ratings, are also simple ways to form connections between the content and vocabulary. They can be executed with little preparation and do not take much time during the lesson, but go in depth.

The other vocabulary strategies mentioned in the chapter are a little more complex and take much more time than the previously mentioned strategies. I feel that they would work better for students who are already good readers and have a strong background in the content area. They seem to be better for in depth analysis of a concept; incorporating the vocabulary into the analysis instead of learning vocabulary first and then exploring the concept. I was overwhelmed by the magic squares strategy and could not see myself using this method. I see how it would be beneficial, but it felt too complicated for some of the students I have worked with. I can see spending more time explaining what they are supposed to with the squares than actually applying the strategy to vocabulary. The limited time in class would be better spent using a simple strategy that does not require a lot of time giving directions on how to use it. As a student I would immediately tune out because it is not the way my mind works. The concept circles, on the other hand, give as much in depth meaning to vocabulary as magic squares, but are so much simpler for students to use. There are many ways to use them and can be used individually, in groups or in a whole class.

Using context to decipher vocabulary is a skill that is being taught in elementary schools. My first grader already knows how to look for clues to words he does not know by looking at the words and sentences around it and looking at the pictures, if there are any. The chapter gives more complex strategies for context clues, but the idea is the same. We use what we already know to figure out what we do not know.  Depending on the skill level of the reader, different strategies can be used. I would think a student reading three grade levels below would be able to find meaning looking at the Latin root of the word, but they could break down a longer word into smaller words they already know.

All the strategies discussed in this chapter are helpful for all reading levels and can be used to help a struggling reader or an accelerated reader.

Culturally Responsive Instruction

Reader Response #7

Culturally responsive teaching is an area that has become very important in education and most schools seem to be struggling with incorporating it into the curriculum. Most teachers use supplemental materials to create a more diverse curriculum. I have been doing my field experience at Johnson High School in Saint Paul. It is a very diverse student body comprising of African-American, Asian (mostly Hmong), Latino and Caucasian students. The teacher I am visiting has a textbook, but does not use it except for choosing certain short stories or poems from it. She mostly uses trade books and professional journals to find stories that the students can connect to. She says that the textbook has very little in it that the students can relate to, especially with such diversity in her classroom. It does not seem very difficult for her to find material that the students are intrigued by and challenged by, but for whatever reason the curriculum that is planned out for her is lacking in this area. We are told that to get students excited about reading we have to hook them and activate their prior knowledge. This is impossible if they are reading something they have no connection to. This chapter has great ideas to help teachers be aware of the holes in the curriculum and how to fill those holes.

The biggest challenge for me will be figuring out how to actually teach to each culture to make sure all my students are learning. The textbook says that we have to adjust teaching styles and assessments to accommodate the different cultures in our classrooms. The textbook also tells us to learn the background information and cultural expectations to motivate the students. What I take away from this is that we have to know our students to become effective teachers. This understanding will also help teachers know what these cultures bring to a learning situation. Every culture can be tapped to enhance what is being learned in the classroom because each culture has different values.

I anticipate that my biggest challenge will be having ELL students in my class. This is a very unfamiliar situation for me because I did not go to school with any ELL students until I was in college and most ELL students are no longer struggling when they get to college. This is an area I will need a lot of guidance in and I am hoping my school is adequately staffed to help me in this new position.

This chapter helped me know what to look for in a classroom, in my curriculum and my students to help me become a culturally responsive teacher. I want to be a teacher because I want to experience learning with my students, all my students. I believe every student is capable of learning and I want to include all my students in the learning experience.

How to Create a Successful Reader

Reader Response #6

My biggest take away from reading Chapter 10 and the article “A Focus on the Essentials of Reading Instruction” was that reading is supposed to be an active experience, not a passive experience. Once this idea takes root many new options and activities are available to keep readers engaged in the reading experience.

In Chapter 10 the focus was on how to use the existing text to the advantage of the reader. When students understand how the text is structured it is easier to find the meaning and understand what to read. The textbook focuses on how to use the text to “facilitate” reading. The purpose of the textbook is no longer to copy the information from it and fill in blanks on a worksheet. The different ways to organize the information in the text to find the meaning are explored in Chapter 10. The graphic organizer that was used when I was in school was the linear outline form. This is not as helpful as other ways to organize the information found in the text. It is much more beneficial for students to use a graphic organizer to understand the text patterns. These graphic organizers ask an exploratory question and then must read the text to find the supporting information. I liked the problem-and-solution outline in figure 10.3. I thought it was an easy way for students to put their thoughts down and organize the ideas in the text in a way that makes it easy for them to connect the dots.

Note taking has also evolved since I was in school. It is no longer about copying information from the text, but used to summarize text in the students’ own words and ideas. It is used to respond to the text. I thought the reading logs, T-notes and Cornell notes were helpful tools, but I did not think the annotations are all that helpful. Instead of having set symbols for every student to use, I think it would be more beneficial for the student to come up with their own symbols. Otherwise, I think the student would be too caught up in the symbols and not really absorbing the information. The graphic set up of study and reading guides have also evolved since my time in school. The use of questions to force the reader to actively look for an answer is much better than having them copy facts from the text. Now the questions ask for critical thinking instead of just reciting information. If used correctly study and reading guides can be used to help with a final assessment of the text. The main ideas of the text and the student response are all there for the student to refer to. The suggestions in chapter 10 can be used to help motivate students to read; which is the first part of becoming a successful reader.

The article, “A Focus on the Essentials of Reading Instruction” summarized what we have been discussing in class on the best practices of active reading. I liked how they graded each practice. As teachers, I think we are all a bit of overachievers and we don’t want to get anything less than an A. We are motivated by the success of our students and the practices discussed in the article gave a good overview on how to successfully create readers in our classrooms.

Reflection on WTL Demo

Post Demo Reflection

The write to learn demonstration was a very good experience for me. I chose biopoems because I liked how you could be as creative as you wanted to, but it could be very analytical and used in many different content areas. When preparing for the demo I wanted to focus on the technique, not on what we were reading. I decided to use the Harry Potter example because I thought it would be a universal topic that most of us could identify with and require little background knowledge. I chose the first chapter of The House on Mango Street because it is part of a novel, but it is almost like a short story where it can stand alone. This made it easy to get a lot out of it without having to talk about it first. I thought my examples worked well, but it would have been better to demo it with more time. If I had more time I would have had the students pair up and write a biopoem about a character they both knew about, like a character in the last novel or short story we read. After I would have had everyone share their biopoem with the class. It would be interesting to see the different biopoems about the same character. Next, I would have the students read the first chapter of The House on Mango Street and then the students would write a biopoem. I think it would be good to have them do it in pairs again. Once they feel comfortable with using biopoems I think it would be a great tool to use in preparing to write any kind of paper and to help them with any kind of character analysis. I think it would also be a good starter for an entry in a writing journal or a prompt to use in the beginning of class. Using it as a reading break without making in to a poem would help assess comprehension also. I think my classmates took away that it is something they can use in any content area and it can be tweaked to use for their content area. It is flexible and gives the student control over how creative they want to be, but still comprehend the information needed.