"With this strategy students will have a chance to: remember, understand, analyze, evaluate, and create. Students work in teams of four to answer four questions about an article they read, a chapter from a novel, or a video they just watched (or whatever you want to assess). After careful analysis of their teammate's work, students will come up with a summary of each question to share with the class."
"Reading Rockets has gathered some of the most important research and reports here in one place....Whenever possible, we've provided a link to a free, online version of the research article, study, or book. In other cases, you'll find a link to a publisher, journal, or online bookstore where you can purchase the resource. You may also want to check with your university or public library, which often have access to online databases and journals where research articles and reports can be found."
Finding effective ways to teach today's student population is perhaps the greatest challenge facing literacy educators in the United States. As classrooms become increasingly diverse, educators struggle to find curricula and pedagogical strategies that are inclusive and affirmative yet facilitate the development of academic and critical literacies.
How might you apply some of the researcher's findings in your own (current or future) practice? Do you know of teachers who have implemented aspects of this type of critical literacy?
How might you apply some of the researcher's findings in your own (current or future) practice? Do you now of teachers who have implemented aspects of this type of critical literacy?
Prof. Clinton,
In my own future practice the application from this article that I found most useful was teaching popular film and media in the classroom. In the new core curriculum I know that one of the standards includes comparing text to its corresponding film and evaluating and analyzing the changes that directors have made in adapting the text to film. It would just be a matter of finding a more current relevant film that has a corresponding novel that is grade appropriate and having students study the book before watching the film. I also see value in evaluating music lyrics in a poetry unit.
As of right now the host teacher that I am working with hasn't done any of this. She abhors poetry and pretty much refuses to show films in class, although we haven't had much opportunity to since our school assigns readings based on lexile and right now there is no way to have a whole class read the same novel since their reading levels are all so different. I think with the core curriculum standards rolling out next year we'll really have to.
Ross, A. & Fisher, D. (2009). Talking in class builds English learners' proficiency. California English, 14(4), 10-12.
This week in class we touched on the importance of "talk" in the classroom and so when I found this article I thought it was a great connection to what we discussed in class. The article talks about the importance of purposeful talk in the classroom and how it allows students to be actively involved in the learning process. Two of the key components that must first be done by the teacher are to set a purpose and model the academic language and thinking that is needed to complete the task. After the purpose is set and the modeling is finished, student must have time to work with their peers. It is during this work time that students talk with one another using academic language and create meaning by being active learners. For me this article reminds us that "talk" in the classroom is a necessary part of the learning process for all students, not just English language learners. My classroom was always a place of active learning, a place where students were encouraged to talk about what they were learning and I found that when students could talk with their peers, they could explain the subject in a way that was meaningful and peer friendly. I also like that this article discusses ways that teachers can facilitate student talk such as, reciprocal teaching, collaborative posters ( I have never heard of this technique, but love it), and learning stations. I think that this article would be a great one to share with staff and school leaders, especially those that frown on "talk" in the classroom because there is too much learning to be done and not enough time.
This website text is about teachers learning to motivating students during this new era of standards. Student's psychological needs are some of the most important aspects of education. We want to understand why some students come to school prepared to learn while others are not. Why are our dropout rates at the rate they are? With standards on the rise and all of the other factors associated with a student's education coming into play we can be leaving our students at a great risk. Knowing what their needs are can help ease this risk. With this knowing how to motivate students, their need for competence, need for belonging, need for feelings of usefulness, satisfying the need to build optimism, and need for feeling potency can help not only students but schools overall. They are all part of the CBUPO Theory. This is not easy to achieve but it is possible.
Journal Article #1
Summary: Student's identities are formed through their social interactions and their literacy experiences. Literacy identity is often narrow: "good reader", "poor writer", etc. These are very inflexible descriptions and can lead students to be stuck in roles instead of growing their literacy skills. This article explores the development of identity through both students social interactions and their literacy experiences. Through three studies, it shows how these two concepts are interconnected. This article also discusses how literacy is a form of language and communication, how people interact because of literacy and the way that people define and construct themselves in order to accomplish life goals. This article also explores the role that teachers have in forming their students' literacy identities. It gives examples of three different and diverse classroom experiences with teachers who have different approaches to teaching literacy.
Link to PDF: http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1218&context=gse_pubs&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fstart%3D30%26q%3Dliteracy%2Bschools%2Beducation%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D1%2C23%26as_ylo%3D2010%26as_subj%3Dsoc%2Beng#search=%22literacy%20schools%20education%22
Citation: Hall, L. et al. (2009) "Teacher Identity in the Context of Literacy Teaching: Three Explorations of Classroom Positioning and Interaction in Secondary Schools." Teaching and Teacher Education. Vol. 26(2). p. 234-243.
This was a great read that I came across in the SVSU library. Just a note, to see it you may have to enter your username and password which is the same as your svsu email and password.
This article is uplifting, encouraging, and seems like teachers could attempt just a few of these for maximum success in engaging those hard to engage readers.
Found this website during our TEMS314 class.
It is a great site that students can use to help them create persuasive websites. They log in using a specific teacher code, and their work is saved on the site, allowing the teacher to check it as the students work.
It seems pretty neat, and I'd love to try it someday in my own classroom.
This site contains lessons and techniques to use in grades 5-8. It provides you with ideas how to help students improve reading skills. Although strategies are targets to one content area most of them can be used in several. This site gives a lot of the same strategies that were given in chapter 5 of our textbook.
This article gives a listing of authors and books that would be of interest to someone who wants to learn more about science. It also gives a breakdown of what their books are about. This information is interesting to me because I am a science teacher. Not all students want to learn more about science, but I have had some students ask for recommendations for books they could read. I really like that I now have the ability to do so. I can already think of a few students who I know would like to read several of these books.
This article is all about how the diet of a student impacts their ability to learn. It is a very interesting article. Many people don't understand what kind of an impact nutrition has on learning. This article explains some of the ways that diet impacts learning and ways to make corrections to students' diets to improve performance. This is an article that is just good to read for general knowledge. I would love for many parents to read this article knowing what some of my students are ingesting on a daily basis.
This article that I found I thought was very useful with new teachers developing classroom rules and procedures. Without the proper classroom routines and procedures in place a teachers classroom can be much different than they would want it to be. Noise levels, classroom wandering, and time being wasted can all occur. These things can be fixed but not by just announcing that no talking, staying in your seat, and staying on task are to be expected. These must be taught. The use of visual cues such as stop and start hand gestures as well as a gesture to say stop and start over if the procedure was not done correctly. By practicing the routine to mastery, students become aware that you are trying convey that this practice is important to their behavior. Establishing high standards is easier than having low standards. To show this, one must realize that reinforcement for bad behavior must come from the peer group. Research has reportedly shown that effective teachers show that they use the first few weeks of school teaching classroom rules. This is being proactive in your classroom.
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