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?