Vocabulary

Vocabulary is essential for reading. This chapter gives great strategies for building vocabulary. Students are constantly learning new vocabulary. Receptive vocabulary is greater than expressive vocabulary. I have noticed in my tutoring sessions that vocabulary can become a great struggle for students. I am constantly trying to directly and indirectly build my students vocabulary. While reading I will ask him what he thinks a word means and if he doesn't know I will provide him with a kid-friendly definition. The lack of vocabulary can make the students less motivated in all content areas and I can relate to that. When I began the teaching program I felt like I had made the wrong decision because the vocabulary was so different than anything I have ever came in contact with. While there are still certain vocabulary I am unfamiliar with I have become more confident. My receptive is still stronger than my expressive, but it improves every day. I just have one question: How do you motivate students to want to learn vocabulary?

Chapter 5 why ask?

The first thing in the chapter that really struck me was when the author was talking about the way teachers ask questions. The author was going on and on about how important the way you ask questions are to facilitate learning and in my head I'm thinking, "stop beating the horse". Then I read the phrase, "However, in organizing lessons, teachers are inclined to plan thinking activities where the learners; potential to question the text is diminished because the teacher dominates the questioning". I paused and thought about this for a second. That has been absolutely true from the time I began school until I graduated highschool. It was not until college that I began to start thinking as an individual and questioning things. Before then I just thought about what the teacher wanted me to tell her so I can get an A. So once I made it to college, I am required to think and argue. I can remember in my politics class when my teacher asked the class the write a paper arguing a point. I still wrote what I thought he wanted to hear or what I thought he wanted in order to get an A. Reading through these strategies really helped me understand how I can teach students to become better thinkers and how to question things they normally wouldn't think about questioning.

Getting it down: Making and taking notes across the curriculum

I have never been taught how to take notes in the school environment. I am an avid notetaker. I take notes on everything. Notetaking is consistently changing for me as I continue discovering myself as a learner. I observe how my fellow classmates take notes, I observe how my teachers set up powerpoints and I make up my own notetaking strategies. I think that it is an awesome idea to teach students how to take notes because most people have no idea how to design their notes in an effective manner and it ends up being a bunch of words on a sheet of paper. Some of the strategies that were in the book I have never heard. I wish I had known this strategy when I had to do my research papers during school. This strategy seems like an amazing way to organize ideas and supporting details while reading. I found this chapter to be a very good resource for teaching students different notetaking strategies, but I have found it hard to really think of any thought provoking conversation from it.

Graphic organizers

I loved our last class. We had so much fun and I do not think I will ever forget those chapter in the book we read. I have done readers theatre with students in the past, but never in that way. I gave the students a few sentences to read and the created a little skit and performed it in front of their peers. I loved how we took the chapter and put it into our own words. This strategy helps you to analyze the text rather than simply remembering it. The way we did it in class took it from a DOK 1 to a DOK 3-4. I think with younger children they will have to be prompted more and a "I do, we do, you do" strategy would have to be incorporated into that type of readers theatre because children lack that creative bug and more wrapped around giving the teacher what they think she/he wants rather than creating their own personal expression. I noticed this in a 5th grade classroom when the teacher told them to create a new cast that would help other 5th graders with compound and complex sentences. She explained the criteria and split them into groups and they just sat there starring at each other like lost puppy dogs.
The Chapter-
Quote: The science of teaching may be knowing what to do; the art of teaching lies in knowing when to do it. This quote in the book stood out to me because I have never really looked at teaching in that light. You always think of teachers as that person that knows their content, but a person can have all the knowledge in the world with bad timing and learning will never take place. Think about it, if the teacher has the knowledge but no idea how or when to present it then no one learns.
Question: Alright author, You have explained graphic organizers in great detail with various strategies. My question is how do I use these pre-reading/pre-activity strategies in an elementary classroom? I am able to implement these graphic organizers after the information has been presented, but how do I do it before we talk about without giving the students all the information they will gain before we read or discuss?
Personal connection: I connected to this chapter because I absolutely LOVE graphic organizers. I use them all the time in my learning process. They help me store information into my "long term folder". I am a visual learner so organizing information into a picture rather than words help me grasp information more effectively. I loved the different strategies used in the text and will be useful to me in my future classroom.

Read alouds and shared reading

The article in my opinion beat examples to death. I felt like the article was very repetitive and to be honest I was tired of reading the same material over and over. The things discussed in the article are very important to developing a good reader. Throughout my clinical experience I have not seen teachers engage students in read alouds or shared reading. The article discussed how teachers should not allow students to view the teachers because they will answer questions based on the pictures they see. I noticed this today when I was in clinicals and as I was reading the book to my tutor student, he was relying on the pictures to answer the questions I was asking him as I was reading. I noticed this very quickly and I can thank this article for that. I never thought about this before, I thought the pictures were just a fun part of the book. Most of the things discussed in this chapter I was familiar with thanks to Mrs. Walker from intermediate block. Now the book was equally as boring to read, but I found several things interesting. The first thing that really struck me was when I was reading how the math teacher used math literature books to help students review for a final. I never read anything other than a math book in math class. The same goes for history and science. I do not think people understand how powerful literature can be in classes other than the language arts. Literature can be a fun way to get students involved in the learning.
The only question I had from the reading is "What is the most effective read aloud strategy?"

Writing to learn

I never thought that a person could write to learn. I have always written to express my thoughts and feelings or because I had to. After reviewing the article and the chapter I realized that I use to write to learn all the time. I guess I never realized that I was actually learning and challenging myself. I loved some of the strategies listed. I definitely plan on implementing some of these strategies in my classroom. In the chapter the author gave examples of how writing can take place in classes other than language art classes. I think that writing is very important in figuring out what you do not understand as a learner. Also it is an amazing assessment tool for the teacher. These different writing strategies give teachers a fun and easy way to assess where each student is on their educational journey. I really enjoyed some of the writing prompts in chapter 8. These various prompts were interesting and would help the students from getting bored. I know that I would get bored if every single day I had to write in the same consistent manner. It is our job as teachers to spice things up. As far as my feelings on the two, the article was easier to read than the chapter, but the chapter gave more strategies. The strategies were better strategies in my opinion.
My questions:
• How does a teacher find time to teach various note taking skills?
• What skill is pre-writing addressing?

Making a case and a place for effective content area literacy instruction in the elementary

This article made me want to keep reading. I was so drawn to the discussion the writer was discussing. The article deals with the importance of teaching students how to read to learn.
As I was reading this article, I took myself back to last semester when I observed a second grade classroom. I was trying to remember if students were exposed to expository text. I remembered the students peer reading excerpts dealing with lightening. The students spent more time trying to decode words so their comprehension of the text was hindered. I was presented with the opportunity to help the students with their assignment. The students and I read the text once in order to learn all the words the text presented. I proceeded to ask the students questions about the text and they were unable to remember the facts. I asked the students to read the text aloud with me and I asked a serious of different questions, and they were able to answer the questions. I feel like it is important for the students to reread informational text because it contains so much valuable information. The students were participating in reading, listening and viewing.
The writer did an excellent job explaining why the need for introducing expository text at an earlier age is important. Submersing children in this type of literature is important for success in reading throughout a student's educational journey. The writer says this causing students to become more engaged in reading because it triggers curiosity and I absolutely agree with this statement. Young students are extremely curious about the world and how things work and by introducing them to expository text, teachers are providing them with rich learning experiencing.
Many questions arose when reading this article
1. What are differentiated instruction strategies for teaching students how to read to learn in lower elementary?
2. How can students learn to read at the same time they're reading to learn? I thought comprehension had to be achieved before students could read to learn.