Vocabulary---Huh?

Vocabulary is an extremely critical aspect of learning. As teachers, we are supposed to model rich vocabulary for our students, however if there are students with very limited vocabulary, we might as well be speaking in a different language. The home life of a student can affect the vocabulary knowledge from student to student. Students who come from a home in which they are read to and talked to a considerable amount come to school with a much larger background knowledge of words than those who have little contact with adults. When students have a gap in word knowledge they struggle in the comprehension aspect of reading. If a student only understands one third of the words in a text they will not have an understanding great enough to get any valuable information. Vocabulary depth varies from subject to subject; therefore students not only have to have a basic word vocabulary, but a subject based word knowledge. As with other things vocabulary can strengthen through practice. We as teachers need to incorporate a wealth of vocabulary into our classroom, through games and other interactive activities that students not only can enjoy but benefit from. Let’s make our students fluent in all vocabulary aspects through innovative teaching and interactive lessons. No more huh? We can turn the lightbulb on for them.

Notes=Holy Moly

Who knew there were so many ways to take notes! When I was in high school I only knew of one way, copy them straight from the board or the overhead projector. Note taking is a skill that I wish I would have learned early in my education because when I got to junior college I was constantly lost in lectures. The only way I knew how to take notes was to write down every thing that I heard; usually about ten minutes in I was so behind that I just gave up. However, that did help me develop very good listening skills since that was the only way that I could retain the information from the lectures. I still don’t know how to take notes properly. This is a topic that I am excited about learning since I can’t teach my students something that I don’t know anything about. It seems complicated on the surface, but once I really read in depth all of the information it definitely seems like a skill that would be useful. Now all I have to do is try it out for myself.

I am a master at “note making”. I can write more things on written text than the text itself. I like to make notes to look back at to remind me of my thought process when I was initially reading it. When I get through, no one else may be able to read it, but I will know it backwards and forwards. This is a skill that I also believe is important. If a reader needs to skim back over an article or something information is a lot easier to find if it’s highlighted, circled, or underlined according to big ideas or main points. It is more efficient than having to reread the entire article.

This chapter was very helpful to me

Q: When should you introduce note taking/making to students? Grade/Age

     How do you determine which style is most efficient for students?    

Mind-Mapping...dum, dum, duuummmm

Where to begin in the wonderful world of mind mapping/graphic organizers...First I personally had never even seen a concept map or graphic organizer until I came to Southern. This was after both high school and two years of junior college. Therefore when I got an assignment to complete one, I freaked slam out! I now can create one for a grade, but it does not help me at all to have one personally, mainly because I was never taught how to create them or what they are used for. This chapter helped me answer some of the questions that I never knew. I love a good play on words so the quote from the chapter that I would like to use is "With a little "Inspiration" and time in the computer lab, Marisol Acuna's world history class mapped out important concepts as they reviewed information on WWI." I would like to practice these skills in my own classroom so that my students can have something that I never got the chance to experience, hands on participation. I like that we had the option to be creative in this blog posting this week, even though I opted out; mainly because graphic organizers are not really my thing (personally).
Quick question: Where can I go (online) to get the experiecne I need with graphic orgainizers to be able to learn the concpet well enough to be able to teach it?

Read Alouds and Text Talk

At this point I am mentally and physically exhausted and typing this while holding a sleeping child, however I am going to give it my best shot. First and foremost read alouds give students a chance to hear fluent reading and voice intonation which they sometimes cannot get while reading silently to themselves. As a child my grandmother read to me everyday, that was "our" special time together and it is something that I will never forget. I think that is one reason that I love to read today. She was very expressed when reading and always gave life to whatever story we chose. By teachers incorporating rich read alouds into the classroom and stopping for text talks students are actively engaged in the story and thinking critically about each aspect. When students make predictions in the story they are placing themselves there and connecting themselves personally to the text. They get to experience new vocabulary first hand in context and not single words with definitions in the back of the book that have no meaning other that coping them for a grade. New words have so much more meaning when they are related to context and can be immediately discussed. Dr. Stacy opened my eyes to read alouds in a whole new way. I plan to use read alouds in my future classroom as often as possible. I know this is short, sweet, and to the point but that all I have in me tonight. 

Qs

How can you get every child involved in the discussion related to read alouds and not single the same ones out each time?

How do you choose the best books to use?

Writing to Learn

“Writing to learn requires that students use different kinds of knowledge at different times.” This one sentence stood out most to me. All students have knowledge, but can they access the appropriate knowledge when needed? By using the writing to learn strategies, teachers can easily see specifically what students do and don’t understand in a content area. Just because a student “knows” something does not mean they understand it or can think critically through the process of the information. One strategy in chapter 8 that I liked a lot was asking the students to write an explanation of a particular topic in a way that a younger child could understand. I think that this is a good strategy because students have to manipulate the knowledge they have into a simpler version, which in turn can help them relate and understand the topic better themselves.

In the Knipper and Duggan article, it not only kept stating that “writing to learn engages students” but also it gives students a chance to question what they know about a topic. Questions are contagious (as has been demonstrated in our class :)) but when they are topic related, students can gain a lot not only from their own questions but from the questions of their peers. The article gave several strategies and ideas about writing to learn and how the processes could be carried out. I feel like I could definitely incorporate some of those strategies into my future classroom. It was beneficial to see the different styles of “note taking” in the article. I for one never was taught to take notes so being able to see the different ways hopefully will help me in both school and in my classroom.

Questions:

Does writing to learn across the curriculum really help students to think creatively? (I can see how it would make them think critically, but not really creatively when they are limited to what they can write about)

How does pre-writing help students before they read about a topic, especially if they do not have any prior knowledge?

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

After reading this article I can understand the growing concern for content area literacy being introduced earlier in schools. In our ever changing society it is only realistic that our teaching strategies and concerns change also. If introducing expository text earlier in education will lay important foundations for students to build on then I agree that teachers should incorporate these materials into the classroom. However, I also feel that in our society teachers today are being pressured to "teach to the test" rather than the entire curriculum. I disagree completely with this concept. I believe in giving children every opportunity to succeed in education that can possibly be given and not limiting education to what is on a standardized test. 

In my experience, (which is not a significant amount) most textbooks are written above grade level comprehension. I feel like this is one reason why students rebel against reading their textbooks, they do not understand what they are reading. However, informational books on things such as animals or other subjects students are interested in would be a good way to begin with lower level elementary students. As mentioned in the article, teachers could read this type of text to students and model not only fluency but different strategies to help students become familiar with processing this different style of reading. Rich exposure can begin as early as kindergarten. As students progress to higher grades they can experiment with expository text in different ways, also incorporating these new skills into their writing. Also mentioned in the article, writing is not limited to one content area. All content areas can use informative writing as exposure to factual information. The information can be broken down into many different experience for students. There are many different ways to incorporate expository text earlier in education, it is just up to the teacher to provide the resources students need to expand their text knowledge. 

Favorite quote from the article: "Literacy is an avenue for the pursuit of information and the discovery of ideas" 

Questions: 

• Are standardized tests overrated?
• How do you model reading expository text to students?
• How can students learn to "read the world" if schools do not realize the importance of expository text in early education? What can be done to change this?