Word for Word; Vocabulary

While reading this chapter, the very first thing that pops out at me is "Struggling readers to not simply need more basic skills." This phrase just reminded me of what this class is all about: Students struggling in reading in the upper grades. This was interesting to read because this is the first time that this issue has been addressed since I've been in the education program. Our endorsement is in reading, and we've learned about different strategies on how to help a struggling reader. The only problem is that we are learning how to help emerging readers to strengthen their fluency and comprehension. This little paragraph has me interested in more ways i can help readers who are in secondary schools struggling. Reading about how giving these students basic skills isn't as effective is relevant to me as a future teacher because although they may be reading on a fourth grade level, they're not on a fourth grade level so instruction needs to be appropriate for the age level also.

It is very interesting to read that you can incorporate vocabulary into mathematics. This goes to show that you truly can integrate subjects in just about anything. Although they're still utilizing math vocabulary, giving them a consistent structure for defining and extending vocabulary is a good skill to embed in students for later vocabulary use during reading or language arts. Mr. Burrow's example of his mathematics journal page also lists a real life box. this is where the students tell where they see that word in the real world. This also creates an authentic way for the students to find use of using the mathematics in their lives. This is a good strategy to keep the students from feeling as if the subject they're learning is useless to them when the get older.

A quote that particularly strikes interest in me is that "The vocabulary demands on students skyrocket during the secondary school years, ballooning to an estimated 88, 500 words. Although academic language demands are high, it is estimated that everyday speech consist of only 5,000-7,000 words." It is interesting that students are expected to learn so many words when in truth, they'll only use up to 10% of those words in everyday conversations. this means that the words they're learning in secondary schools are not being utilized and vocabulary isn't strengthened using conversation. This brings me to a question that I'm concerned about: how to we get students to understand that a broad vocabulary is valuable to them if the see that they only use 10% of their words in conversation? It also makes me wonder how i would help strengthen the words they've already learned so that it stays with them rather than having them forget the definitions as soon as they've taken a test.

Why Ask? Well... Let's find Out!

When I began to read this chapter, I thought, "Well, duhh, questioning of course can improve comprehension." However, I was quite surprised to find out that the book talks about high order thinking questions and even gave bloom's six levels of questions. I've always known to utilize questions to probe students and activate prior knowledge, but it was interesting to see different levels of questions that can be utilized. I especially liked the QUILT framework because it breaks down what a teacher should be thinking about before, during, and after asking a probing question to ensure that it is a high order thinking question.

My favorite strategy would have to be the Question-answer relationship chart. This chart helps the students to first analyze the text and search. then it begins to tie in the student in by having the students do thinking on their own. This not only helps students to understand the material, it also helps the students to think beyond just the subject and relate the topic to themselves. I would definitely utilize this strategy in either social studies or language arts because these questions help the student think about text that they've already read.

I also thought the SQ3R strategy was very reliable and valid way to have students begin to evaluate text on their own. SQ3R would be very useful in reading narrative or expository text. This would be a fabulous way to have students to not only learn a strategy to comprehend reading, it also shows students a way to decipher a text and make notes of important events because the students are utilizing the headings as questions, then finding the answers to them.

Overall, i find the quote "By maintaining a balance between asking and answering questions, the teacher returns responsibility for critical thinking to the students." very powerful for the simple fact that text books today give the students step by step instructions on how to find the answer, that the students no longer need to think. By utilizing high order thinking questions, the teacher is not only helping the students learn, but also creating a way for the students to learn to do it on their own without help.

I now know that using questions to help the students critically think is important. However, when the questions are too hard and the students are looking back at me with a blank stare, then do I give them questions that are straight forward in order for the students to follow along? When is it appropriate and inappropriate for simple questions that do not require critical thinking?

Note Taking: Getting it Down

As I began to read this chapter, the first headline I read was "Why teach students how to take notes?". This instantly lead me to try to remember how I learned to take notes and realized that no one's ever taught  me how to take notes. I've had to learn on my own, which makes going through school harder than it should have been. This makes the debate on whether to teach taking notes or not a yes, hands down.

I especially liked the "general note taking procedures" they've listed in the book. Although it is now easier for me to take notes, I've never actually thought about the steps to note taking. This can become very helpful to students who are just beginning to take lecture classes.

Mr. Williams's note taking technique for mathematics, I believe, is a different way of taking notes, but it is also very effective. While traditional note taking is in linear form, labeled with numbers, letters, bolded fonts, etc., Mr. Williams's note taking is in chart form. This helps the students to clearly see what detail or definition is for which word.

My favorite note taking in this chapter would also be in chart form. It is the note taking chart utilized in Ms. Butler's science class. This matrix for research helps the students to clearly see what they should be researching on while also keeping their resources organized, along with the information they found categorized into the separated topics.

My favorite quote from the text is "Many adolescent readers who struggle with reading possess inadequate organizational skills to store and retrieve information." This quote is very significant to me as a future teacher because I will be graduating with an endorsement area in reading. This quote is very critical to early readers in that without the necessary skills to take notes and pinpoint important information, these students may have a hard time during the comprehensions stage of reading.

While reading this chapter, I think about my third grade clinical classroom. How do I help students to learn to take notes if they're writing skills haven't fully developed? Is there a certain grade level note taking should be taught?

Graphic Organizers in the Classroom

This chapter talks about the importance of graphic organizers in the classroom. I completely agree with this chapter because I personally feel that I learn better by visually seeing how one topic relates to another, especially if the lesson is a lesson that can be drawn out into weeks. This helps students to keep track of what they are learning, reminds them of what they've just learned, and gives them an idea of what's to come next.

Growing up as in English Language Learner, I felt that it was important for the book to mention that they allow for complex ideas. It's easier for an ELL student to make connections to the lesson of they're able to dig into their schema of their own language and culture to better understand the lesson. This helps ELL students fill in gaps that language barriers may create in a classroom.

I think it's awesome that graphic organizers can be found and utilized in all different kinds of subjects. The better part is that graphic organizers are easy to make so if it's hard to find a graphic organizer that has all of the components you want it to, it's just as easy to utilize programs like Inspiration, or simply create one on your computer. Drawing and creating one by hand can also be done if one's short for time.

My favorite quote from this chapter is "Graphic organizers are one way for teachers to ensure that students can show their abilities." This quote speaks out to me because often times, students are not able to show their full potential in class because the class may only be lecture-type classes. Its hard for some students to learn just through lecture so a map usually brings the lesson to life for them because they're able to utilize their eyes, and not just their ears.

As I'm reading through this chapter, I noticed that graphic organizers are only students who can see. My question is, is there a way to create a graphic organizer through braille? In my clinical class, I have a student who is visually impaired. She can not see at all and I've been working with this student and found that it is very hard to describe certain things. Is there a way to create a graphic organizer that can help my student also?

Writing to Learn

While reading through this article and chapter eight, I realized that there was a lot that could be done to help students to learn by writing. Before reading the material, I did not know that incorporating writing into all subjects would be easier than it seemed from the get go. I liked how the book was able to break down how to introduce writing to learn in each of the subjects such as math, science, social studies, etc. Having the book give ways to incorporate writing to learn made it easier for me to see how to incorporate it in to different subjects rather than just telling me it was possible to do so without examples.

I also found that it was very important that the article discussed why teachers can incorporate writing to learn in their classrooms but choose not to do so. The reason would be that it is time consuming and reading a lot of writing everyday can boggle a days school time down. However, I liked that they gave suggestions such as using a rubric or a check list to lift some of the burden and making it easier on the teachers to be able to grade. This encourages me as a teacher to utilize writing to learn in my classrooms because I feel that it will not take too much class time out of the school day and it's not stressful if a checklist or rubric is utilized.

I especially love how writing to learn can help the students to utilized declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge rather than just one of the three. This is especially why I like the free write prompts. With the students being able to give their own opinions in their writing at times, this encourages students to think further about a particular subject rather than just knowing the facts. The examples of writing prompts is a fabulous way to have the students think while writing. I especially liked the "I am" poem because this has students thinking of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc.

As I've gained a better understanding of writing to learn, I am now encouraged to utilize it more in my own classrooms once I begin to teach. Writing to learn provides a win win situation for the students and the teachers and it should definitely gain more attention in the teaching world and in the classrooms.

Barbara Moss - Early Content Area Instruction

This article was very enlightening. Going through the teaching program at USM, I've always known that using the frameworks and curriculum was a way to guide the topics to teach throughout the year. However, like this article said, there isn't must emphasis on teaching the students to comprehend informational text. I feel that it is definitely a good idea to incorporate informational text into early elementary grades so that the students will learn to read expository text while learning to read. Having the students be familiar with how to decipher informational text helps set foundations for better state and national testing where information text is utilized.

This is also the first time I've heard of idea circles being utilized as a strategy to enhance student learning regarding informational text. I think it was a good idea to have the students work together to answer the questions after reading the informational text because it helps the students to feed off of each other information one student may have gotten but another may have not.

Questions:
With grades K-3 having so much in their curriculum, when do we find the time to actually incorporate informational text?

Is there informational text and books for children's K-1 to read in order to begin comprehension?