Vocabulary

                           In my experience, vocabulary can be very challenging for students to understand. When I was in elementary school we only used dictionaries to look up vocabulary word's definitions. That was always so boring and did not make vocabulary interesting. During my tutoring session my student spends the most time trying to understand the vocabulary words. It is definitely the part of the session that we spend the most time on. Students need to be constantly building their vocabulary. It is good to make connections that are deeper for the student than just the vocabulary word definition. If a student does not understand the vocabulary that is in the text they are reading, they will be less motivated to read it because they do not understand it. Teaching vocabulary works the best by using many different strategies. The more ways a student can see the vocabulary words used in different context then the more they will recognize and understand the words.

Chapter 5

What I can remember about my teacher asking questions in elementary school is that I did not want her to pick me to answer it. I don’t think any of my teachers ever asked questions that made us really think and dig deeper for answers. The questions that were most asked were for the right answer and if you got it wrong, it was embarrassing. Higher order questions were not what I remember being asked in school. Reading about structured questions were interesting to me, because some of the strategies I have never thought of before.
I found the information on questions based on rhetorical styles very interesting. I like each of the categories talking about questions about logic, the writer, and about emotions. By asking students questions related to these rhetorical styles it will help develop the student’s thought processes and understanding. I think using Bloom’s taxonomy will really help teachers decide what questions are on an appropriate level. These organizations of questions are really good to use in a classroom to challenge
I really like the Quilt framework because it helps the teacher consider what might happen before and after the question is asked. I think it is useful to prepare the question first, and then end the process with reflecting on questioning practice. The language we use in the classroom can affect the students’ responses and the way students think. There are five things to include in our questions that would benefit the students best. These may include noticing and naming, identity, agency, flexibility and transfer, and knowing. This chapter has really made me realize that questions are very important and need to be addressed in particular manners to best benefit the student.
“The language we use in the classroom “constitutive…it actually creates realities and invites identities.””
How do you incorporate all of these great techniques without over questioning students on one thing?

Chapter 7 Note taking

I want to start out by saying that I was never taught how to take proper notes. To be completely honest it was not until this school year that I learned about the different ways to take notes. I know for a fact my grades in college would have been a lot better if I would have been taught these ways sooner. I have never been a fan of note taking because I could never keep up with the teacher talking and would most likely never look at my notes again to study because they were a catastrophe.
While reading chapter seven I learned so many new things about note taking. They also explain how note taking and note making is different. With note taking you are writing from a lecture given and you can not go back for more information. With note making you are taking notes from a book or text and can later go back for more information by reading it again. This goes to show how important note taking is, you must get the right information and enough of it the first time, because most of the time you can not go back and get it again.
When I become a teacher I will organize my lectures in ways to make it possible to take notes. It is very important for teachers to understand how to present the material if they expect students to take notes. I feel that if they organize their material correctly and present at a reasonable pace, then every students could practice their great note taking skills. This chapter gives really great examples and suggestions for note taking in all of the major subject areas. I wish I had this chapter way back in High school!

Chapter 6

“Organizers are visual illustrations; a tool to help students understand, summarize, and synthesize the information from texts to other sources.” I really like the definition they have given to organizers here. I think they are very helpful for students to break down a big picture and really understand the parts of the information. Like we all know, not all students learn the same. Organizers are great for those visual learners. I am personally a very big fan of organizers because it helps me see everything broken down and how it is related. Instead of understanding all of the facts in a paragraph form, I can organize them into a chart and really see and understand the facts. When I read a text I do not always comprehend what I read, but by using organizers to choose the main points and ideas it helps me understand and see it all come together to make sense. Whenever I think of graphic organizers I always think of concept maps, but there are so many different organizational ways to lay out your information. I think students need to learn how and use flow charts, diagrams, maps, matrices. If teachers use these in their lessons students will learn to focus on the important things while reading text.


Question: Sometimes charts and visual organization is not the best way for a student to show what they know about a subject. When using organizers as an assessment tool, what is the best way to use them and still be fair to all types of learners?

Text Talk

My personal experiences of read aloud activities in school are both good and bad. In school I always had a fear of reading aloud in front of the class. When we would do read alouds in class, I would follow along very closely in fear I would have to speak, so even though I was scared the benefit was that I paid attention and followed along. If the text was not in front of me to follow along, then I would daze off and not keep up with what was being read. I know this is just me, but I feel like other students might feel and do the same things as I did.
I think that asking questions that cause students to describe and explain text ideas is a much better idea than just having them recall words from the text. I think it is important for teachers to select texts that students can relate to. If the students are interested in the topic, then they will pay more attention to what is being read aloud. I think the text talk approaches to the components of reading are really great. I will use these for my future classroom.

Chapter 8 and Article

I found the section in Chapter eight about applying three types of knowledge to be very interesting. It explained that “Writing to learn requires that students use different kinds of knowledge at different times.” The three types of knowledge are declarative, procedural, and conditional. These types were defined in the book and I found them very interesting because it was something I have never heard before. I also really enjoyed reading about the different writing strategies that can be used in the classroom. These gave me great new ideas that I can document and use in my future teaching lessons. It is so important that students learn to write not only in English class, but all other subjects as well. I thought all of the ideas about writing in math and science were really good and they could really help student’s understandings of the subject matter. I think every teacher should get a copy of this article and read this chapter, then the students would have a better benefit with writing.
When I was in school, writing seemed like a boring chore than anything else. My experiences were the same as everyone else, I had to copy my spelling and vocabulary words multiple times each. That was never fun and really took my creativity from me when it came to writing. It wasn’t until seventh grade that I became interested in writing. My English teacher had us keep a spiral notebook that was our journal. At the beginning of every class she either had a topic prompt about something we have been learning about in not only her class but our other classes as well. We would have to explain things or answer questions, but it encouraged us to think and improve our writing skills. If we would have done this in every class we could have benefited so much more!
1. How would I implement all of these strategies to my students without over doing all the writing?
2. Where could I find even more strategies that would work in multiple subject areas?

"Content Area Literacy in Elem Grades" Response

     This article was very informative with the ideas about incorporating content area literacy instruction in the elementary grades.  The idea that students learn just from text books these days is totally false.  The times have changed and there are so many more technologies available and being used in schools today that students are becoming familiar with them earlier than in the past.  Elementary schools should provide a heavier emphasis on content literacy instruction earlier than fourth grade and not just for textbooks.  If students are not taught in their early years of school how to comprehend a variety of texts, how will they become independent readers in and outside of school?  Textbooks are not updated every year unlike magazines and newspaper articles, the material that is read from these are so different.  I liked the idea that informational texts motivated more children to read.  This is true because then students could be more interested in learning and reading.  If students were not provided with outside source reading materials in the classroom, wouldn't they be more sheltered in their knowledge and understanding of life?  This article really opened my eyes about text books in classrooms.  I never thought about students being restricted by reading textbooks until now.