Presentations for 4/11

Reading the book Nonfiction Matters taught me a lot about doing nonfiction inquiry projects.  I feel that I am prepared to implement a nonfiction inquiry research project in my classroom.  This book gave me a lot of helpful tips, examples, projects, and basically a step by step outline for what I should do and what I should have my students do.  The point of the presentation was to show my fellow classmates how to do these projects in their own classrooms.  I believe the handout we gave would be very helpful because it is a week by week breakdown of how to format a research project and also the handout was filled with tips that the book continuously referred back to.  They can use this handout; however, it would be beneficial for future teachers to read the whole book to get examples and models and learn the mistakes not to make.  

The presentation for Wondrous Words was very informative.  I felt that I knew what the book was about and by reading it I believe that I will get tips and strategies for how to inspire creativeness.  The activity they had us do is something I definitely want to use in my classroom, it was a fun and interesting way to get the point across and it seems like the students really enjoy it.

Review for Presentations

The presentation for A Note Slipped Under the Door was overall a well given presentation. However, I felt like I did not know enough about the book and they could have given a bit more information about it.  They only really talked about imagery in the book and guided their whole presentation around it.  Their activity however was very fun and would be something that I would like to bring into my classroom as a future teacher.  Their handout had a lot of information on it but it was not presented in an interesting way, it was basically just a bunch of words on paper.  The presentation for Readicide was full of information.  After the presentation I felt like I knew what the book was about.  However, I did not like their activity; I felt like they did not clearly state why we were doing what we were doing and that it did not have a meaningful purpose behind it.

Review for Presentations

The presentation for A Note Slipped Under the Door was overall a well given presentation. However, I felt like I did not know enough about the book and they could have given a bit more information about it.  They only really talked about imagery in the book and guided their whole presentation around it.  Their activity however was very fun and would be something that I would like to bring into my classroom as a future teacher.  Their handout had a lot of information on it but it was not presented in an interesting way, it was basically just a bunch of words on paper.  The presentation for Readicide was full of information.  After the presentation I felt like I knew what the book was about.  However, I did not like their activity; I felt like they did not clearly state why we were doing what we were doing and that it did not have a meaningful purpose behind it.

Genre Theory

Thwaite, Anne. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy. Jun2006, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p95-114. 20p.

This article is about genre writing in primary schools.  The research conducted was on a third grade classroom in an economically and socially disadvantaged Western Australian primary school.  There were 21 students in the class, all from a variety of different backgrounds.  The study took approximately ten weeks, which included weekly three hour long visits from the researcher.  Most of the schools in Western Australia follow a literacy program called First Steps, which includes a version of the genre theory.  “The Australian version of genre theory derives from work commenced in Sydney in the 1980’s.  Reacting to the ‘personal growth’ model of writing… it aimed to specify the linguistic features of particular types of writing in order that students could be specifically apprenticed into the writing styles they would need to master for success at school and beyond.”  The six genres most commonly used in primary and secondary schools all follow a single method and curriculum cycle.  First you prepare; decide which genres are most appropriate for each of the units you are working on and determine the student’s previous genre knowledge.  The second step is modeling; show the students models of each of the different writing styles and their schematic structures and discuss the social situations in which the text will be used.  The third step is joint construction; in either groups, partners, or the entire class, come together and write an example for that specific type of genre.  Finally is the independent construction of texts, students should be prepared to model the different types of writing on their own.  Teachers implement this curriculum cycle in many different ways.  During this case study the teacher described how she does not teach the genres separately; instead, she goes according to the theme.  She described how she teaches recount first because she believes that it is an important foundation for writing and she puts a huge emphasis on narrative writing because it allows them to explore their imagination and it gives them the opportunity to gain confidence in their writing.  The schematic structures of the genres are being implemented in the form of frameworks and plans, commonly displayed in classrooms.  According to this case study the schematic structures of the genre was the main emphasis compared to the social functions or the language feature. “Procedural aspects of writing seemed very important in this case, especially to the students. ‘Filling in the boxes’ seemed to sometimes become a goal in itself.” This article showed me that there are different ways to translate and implement the genre theory into your classroom.  After the students have mastered the schematic structure of the genre it is important for them to explore and get creative with the genre in different social contexts, etc.

Formulaic Writing

            Mark Wiley introduces The Jane Schaffer Approach to Teaching Writing as a successful method that teachers should use when teaching writing.  This approach is a nine week, step by step program that teaches students how to write a multiparagraph essay.  It is basically a formula for writing an essay.  Each paragraph follows a specific format, besides the introduction and the conclusion.  The introduction paragraph must consist of a thesis statement.  Body paragraphs include a topic sentence, two concrete details followed by two commentaries, and a concluding sentence.  The body paragraphs should be more than one hundred words in length and the introduction and conclusion paragraphs should be more than forty words.  Jane Schaffer says, “The formulaic nature of this unit does not bother us because students may leave it once they understand it.  Some students leave the format early in the process; others choose not to leave it at all because they like the structure and say it helps them know what to do with a blank page.”  This quote reminded me of high school, my teacher used a different formulaic method to teach us writing; I still use it till this day.  I found it very beneficial; however, it may not be for all students.  In Wiley’s article he mentions that some teachers did not agree with the formulaic method because it removes the need for students to judge for themselves on how to shape their essays.  This also pertains to me because I now have difficulty straying away from the formula I learned in high school.  Our formula was very specific.  The introductory paragraph consisted of a topic sentence (question, quote, anecdote, or statement), the next sentence would be to either answer the question or describe the quote, anecdote, or statement, then tag (title, author, genre), and finally the thesis statement.  The three body paragraphs used the formula say, mean, matter; in separate paragraphs you would write about what your essay says, what does it mean, and why does it matter.  The conclusion paragraph was a compilation of say, mean, matter.  In the article Wiley writes, “Teachers, while acknowledging that students must move beyond the Schaffer method if they are to continue improving, were nevertheless left wondering what to do next.”  The Schaffer method provides only a foundation for students to learn writing.  I believe all teachers should use formulaic writing when teaching students how to write an essay because I found it very beneficial; however, I never learned how to move past that.  There are benefits and non-benefits to using formulaic writing.

Why Johnny Can't Read

Molly O'Connor

Leanna Longoria

• 1955: Why Johnny Can't Read: And What You Can Do About It, by Rudolf Franz Flesch
• 1988: Why Johnny Can't Read, but Yoshio Can, by Richard Lynn
• This article is about the difference between American schools and Japanese schools. It discusses the evidence of Japan's high educational standards. It allows discusses how European children scored about halfway between the Japanese and the Americans.
• 1997: Teaching Johnny to Read
• Congress directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to increase its understanding of learning disabilities and how reading develops. The agency financed a series pf studies that have followed about 2,500 young children, some of them for as long as fourteen years.
• 2012: Why Johnny Can't Read: Redux, by Steve Nelson
• When it comes to school, we've designed an entire educational system around the assumption that children will begin to read at the same time.  Some research suggests that placing children in advanced settings for their developmental age may actually delay their mastery of reading and comprehension.

Co-Authoring Classroom Texts

            Larson introduces this article by comparing teaching writing to students and learning how to play a sport with no coach or actual play time.  In other words you can teach a child the fundamentals of writing but you can’t teach them how to be an author, just like learning how to play a sport, you can know the process of how to do something but until you actually go out and practice, you’re never going to master the sport.  This article is about authorship; instead of just teaching students how to read and write, students should interact with their classmates, teachers, and literature in order to grasp the true meaning of literacy.  Maier’s classroom is a perfect example of hand-on learning.  She has over 6000 books in her classroom as a resource for her students.  When I become a teacher I hope my collection exceeds hers.  Her students begin reading three to five books a night and at the end of the year they are reading ten to twelve books.  This surprised me because ten to twelve books seems like a hefty amount of reading for first graders.  However, some students read less depending on the difficulty of the book.  Despite the other subjects such as math or science, Maier has put a great influence on literacy.  She devotes 90 minutes of her class time on reading and writing every day.  90 minutes is a lengthy amount of time compared to the time spent on other subjects throughout the day.  The thing that surprised me the most was how Maier created a sense of community in her classrooms.  The article states that her and her students had lunch together every day, she knew their pets, their parents’ names, and they knew as much about her as she did about them.  Maier would even use her own personal stories to write narratives with the class.  As a future teacher, I hope I have a strong connection with my students.  The time and devotion Maier has for her students is incredible; she arrives an hour earlier than all her students and does not leave until four or five in the evening.  I plan on devoting all of my time as a teacher in order to benefit the students.

Book Club Selection

The book I chose to read is "Nonfiction Matters: Reading, Writing, and Research in Grades 3-8."  I chose to read this book because I think it will benefit me as a future teacher.  I believe that children should have a good understanding of the real world and allowing children to explore nonfiction prepares them for that.  As a teacher an important skill to have is to be able to teach children how to make discoveries and engage in reading, writing, and research.  Overall, I think this book will be beneficial to read.

The Ethnography of Literacy

            “Literacy would appear to be one of the few elements of education that everyone agrees to be a necessity of modernity.  The capacity to read and write is casually associated with earning a living, achieving expanded horizons of personal enlightenment and enjoyment, maintaining a stable and democratic society, and, historically, with the rise of civilization itself.”  I believe that literacy is very important as Szwed has stated; I could not even imagine not knowing how to read or write.  Every day you encounter reading and writing whether it is at school, billboards, television, texting, personal notes, or a simple grocery list.  Being illiterate in this day in age would definitely be a hardship.  Szwed goes on to explain how, “In contemporary complex societies we are well aware of the negative correlation of skills in literacy with lower socioeconomic standing.”  This shows how people who are less fortunate have fewer opportunities to learn how to read and write compared to those who are wealthier.  Szwed also explains how children who are not read to at home have trouble learning how to read, which I found surprising.  Szwed states, “what a school may define as reading may not take account of what students read in various contexts other than the classroom.”  I agree with Szwed, reading should not just consist of the schools standards but should include social context as well.  Children read different things based on their context and their interest in the subject.  For example, I would prefer to read The Hunger Games rather than my school textbooks.  Szwed explains how there are different styles of reading: silent reading, reading aloud, and speed reading.  I found this interesting because during high school one of my teachers emphasized the benefits of speed reading.  We would read the text and highlight a key word for every sentence and then go back and summarize the reading by reading the key words.  I found this technique to be very beneficial.  I was able to remember the material well and not get bored by reading because I was still being active.  Overall, reading and writing is an essential part of our educational system today. 

Curriculum is a Means, Not an End

“Curriculum is a means, not an end.”  In other words, covering the curriculum should not be the ultimate goal in education.  Instead, we should engage students in productive activities.  Dewey talks about the need for students to gain more experiences from the classroom.  He states that the classroom is designed for students to listen, but not work.  Individuals respond to their environment, the classroom should be a workroom for students that they can enjoy.  The classroom should be a place where children really live and get their life experiences from, it should not just be about the amount of knowledge a child could acquire.  Dewey goes on to describe activities in which children could really benefit from and how teachers should incorporate more productive activities in their classroom.  He took one activity that could be expanded into multiple activities, creating an integrated curriculum, which I believe could be very useful to bring into my classroom.

The School and the Life of the Child

            Schools are still designed to run the same way that they have been running for over a hundred years.  As Dewey states, schools are designed for the child to listen and there is not enough room for the child to work.  They have set desks and everything is arranged to handle as many students as possible.  In the Ken Robinson film we watched in class he described schools today as being ran like factories; children are separated into different categories by age and are then expected to know a certain amount of information.  Ken Robinson also agreed with Dewey on the fact that the education system is outdated.  The traditional classroom does not involve much room for experimentation.  However, many children learn more from hands-on activities.  Does this mean we need to change the way we run schools?  Dewey states that, “one may be ready to admit that it would be most desirable for the school to be a place in which the child should really live, and get life-experience in which he should delight and find meaning for its own sake.”  However, he then goes on to question how the child would get all the needed information and discipline if schools were in fact ran this way.  I agree with Dewey, the way schools are designed needs to be changed from a traditional classroom to an activity based classroom.  I also agree with the fact that children learn more from experimentation; they are able to form their own ideas and conclusions.  When I was in elementary school, I remember a large part of the day being lecture.  More experiences need to be introduced in the classroom so that students can take more away from it; however, lecture still needs to be an essential part of the classroom.  People continue to talk about our outdated school system; however, how do we go about changing the whole education system?  Where do we begin? What aspects about the classroom will remain the same?  Dewey ends the article with this message, “When nature and society can live in the schoolroom, when the forms and tools of learning are subordinated to the substance of experience, then shall there be an opportunity for this identification, and culture shall be democratic pass-word.”