Week Eleven: A case for proper spelling

This week I read an article on NPR's website about an interview they did about whether or not proper spelling should matter anymore. The article was aptly tag lined Duz Prawper Speling Mader Nemor. I have to admit I was shocked that people were even considering getting rid of or loosening spelling and grammar rules. I think as future English teachers my peers and I were probably all a little shocked at reading this article. In both reading and writing, two core skills developed in an English classroom, spelling and grammar are the backbone. You cannot read or write a coherent piece of text without following the standards and rules of both of these English conventions. I think it would be impossible for a teacher or any other person for that matter, to read a piece of writing that did not follow the rules we have been taught in school. 
In the article Lee Simmons, a copy editor, argues that "standards are what make communication and understanding possible." In order to communicate effectively with your audience you have to use the standards and rules set in place for spelling and grammar to assure that everyone will understand you. Since we have all been taught the rules and standards through formal schooling we are all presumably on the same page. I agree with Simmons because I think there are so many variations in text language that we could never all be on the same page. To convey something as simple as laughter there are several variations including haha, hehe, lol, lmao, lmfao, and rofl. I am sure I have missed many more because text lingo is constantly evolving and changing. Even though I am a part of the millennial generation I still find myself confused at some of the new abbreviations that pop up in my inbox.
In addition I think the formality of standard English conventions are what display professionalism to others. Students need to learn the rules of spelling and grammar in order to succeed in higher education and any future jobs. While text lingo is fine when communicating with friends you need to show that you are professional and intelligent when speaking with your boss, co-workers, or perspective clients. Teachers might soon become lax in their grading or spelling and grammar errors but I don't think it would be possible to affect change in the language used in professional settings like companies, law firms, or hospitals. It is unfair to our students to allow them to make simple mistakes now when they won't be allowed to in the jobs they apply for in the future.

Week Ten: HOT Blogging

This week I read the article “HOT Blogging” by Lisa Zawilinski. When I think about incorporating blogs into my classroom I also worry that my students’ interest will fade. As with any learning activity that is going to be used over time, teachers need to think of ways to keep students’ interested. Blogs are important to incorporate because they allow for literacies to continue outside the classroom. They create a bridge between school and home. They provide an authentic audience for students because the entries they post will be seen by classmates, other peers, and anyone else who accesses the blog site. This is similar to the blogs we post for this class because our peers read what we post as well as our teachers. It is more personal than writing in a bluebook during class and gives students’ ownership.

All of the teachers at my school have a class website through the school that serves as a classroom news blog that is mentioned in the article. They post homework and assignments on the site for parents to see as well as students. I think the type of blog I would use the most in my classroom is literature response blogs. I would have students write an entry based on the day’s reading or the reading they were going to do for homework. It would get the students involved with the reading outside of school. The prompts I used would be critical thinking questions to promote higher order thinking.

One idea from this article I really liked was having students include posts about their outside of class reading. Often times in school students have to give book talks on their independent reading books. I have seen this many times at my internship and it is a requirement for students to stand up and orally present a summary of a book and their rating of it. I think it is good to have students do this but I frequently see their peers disinterested during the presentations. Perhaps an alternative or a supplement to this could be having students blog about the book. It would give them a chance to craft their summary and opinion of the book without the pressures of an oral presentation. They could also include multimedia resources on the blog like pictures, clips, and interviews. To get students to review each other’s summaries and look at the blogs a teacher could require students to read and review another’s choice. For example, first trimester all the students would select their own independent reading book and write a blog post review. For the next trimester the teacher could have students read their classmate’s reviews and based off of them select a book to read and write their own review. They could relate back to the original review and say whether they had a similar or different opinion and whether their rating was the same or not. This would allow students to reflect on other’s posts and synthesize new comments and ideas.

Overall I think teachers need to consider using blogs because they provide so many opportunities for enrichment outside of the classroom. Although it may seem like a daunting task they are easy to set up and user friendly. The article includes many types of blogs that can be used in a variety of classrooms not just Language Arts.

Week Eight: During Reading Strategies

This week we are working on creating lessons plans using during reading strategies to further understanding in a Multicultural Young Adult novel. I found a few things challenging about writing this lesson plan. I first had difficulty choosing a novel for a 9th- 10th grade Language Arts class because most of the multicultural books I have read deal with serious issues that would not be appropriate for these grade levels. For example, in college I took a class entitled Black Women Writers but most of the novels we read that I considered like Beloved, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and For Colored Girls were centered on heavy issues like rape, murder, and infanticide. I didn’t want to do House on Mango Street because I thought it would be overdone by my classmates. I finally found a graphic novel titled Persepolis which centers on a 10 year old girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It is the memoir of author Marjane Satrapi who is the novel’s main character. If you are looking for a new book to read I highly recommend it and if you are skeptical about the value of graphic novels give it a chance! It gives a totally different perspective on Middle Eastern culture and society. It’s also great for students to read because of the negative stereotypes that have become associated with people of Middle Eastern descent since 9/11.

The other issue I had with this lesson plan was the time constraints and balancing strategy with content. I found it difficult to work with a 45 minute class period because there was so much I wanted to cover within this novel. The during reading strategy I chose was character map and I wanted to have the students chart the development of Marji, the main character, as she ages from 10-11 in the beginning of the novel. I found it difficult to balance teaching the strategy with teaching the content of the novel. I wanted to have a good modeling component for the strategy but I also wanted to get into the issues of the novel and how they affect Marji’s development. This was where time was my enemy because I tried to accurately plan out my components so that it could actually be an effective lesson taught in the time allotted. I don’t think I got to discuss as much of the novel as I wanted to but I think that teaching character maps was important for future use in my hypothetical classroom. As the novel progresses Marji grows from 10 to 14 years old and at each age the reader can see how her identity is shaped by not only her parents but the tumultuous environment of Iran. Using the character maps will allow students to see the differences between Marji as she grows up and the development of her character overall.

Week Six: Digital Learning Day

When I initially scanned the blog posts on the NWP website one in particular caught my eye, Digital Learning Day: Collaborative Romeo and Juliet Blogging Community. I can remember reading Romeo and Juliet in my ninth grade English class and I was intrigued to see this teacher's new perspective on the unit using technology. After reading her post I realized the entire unit was based on some form of technology whether it is blogging, tweeting, or using voicestream to record students acting out the play. The unit was done in conjunction with another school that used the same projects so that students could connect with other kids reading the play. The voicestream recordings were shared between the schools which allowed for another level of collaboration and connection.

The idea of a blogging community reminded me of what we are doing right now in our Reading and Adolescent Lit class except this teacher employed it as a substitute for quizzes and had students blog from a characters point of view. In the article the teacher includes one example of a student’s blog as Tybalt which allowed for them to set up a Facebook style profile for the character with the character’s name, picture, hobbies, favorite song, and secrets and fears. I thought this was a very interesting way to get students involved with both the text and the characters’ perspectives. I think the blogging community could also substitute as a form of journal responses if you used it in a different way by having students blog as the character saying what happened during the scene or act they read in class.

                I really enjoyed reading this blog post and I thought the teacher had a lot of great ideas for utilizing technology in the classroom. If you don’t get to read the whole post here is an important quote that I took away from reading it, she describes the school that she teaches at, “Technology is not viewed as a separate entity needing a specific time to be etched into the classroom for use, in fact it reminds me a lot of the dichotomy between reading and writing; technology infused curriculum is the norm here, a natural part of pedagogy and student learning.” I think this is where we are heading in the future in terms of bringing technology into the classroom. It will soon be a natural part of teaching and not seen as something that we need to try to incorporate.

Week Five: Chapter 5 Learning to Make an Inference

In Chapter 5 Kylene Beers cites two classroom interactions, one with an 11^th grade Honors English class and another with an 11^th grade English class with struggling readers (pgs. 66-68). I found the difference in the discussions to be startling. I was first surprised at the quality of the Honors students’ discussion. Although it got a little silly at times the kids were feeding off each other and responding to other’s inferences. There was very little teacher prompting which is ideal in a classroom discussion. They were able to get a lot out of a small portion of a text. It was very student centered because they took control of the discussion while the teacher merely prompted and observed. On the other hand the struggling readers immediately shut down after reading the text. Although there was only one teacher prompt cited at the beginning the discussion went nowhere. It seemed once one student got confused and frustrated the rest chimed in their similar confusion as well. They had a hard time making inferences because they were only looking for what was directly stated in the text. Since the text said nothing about a movie or tickets they dismissed it as a possibility. The last sentence of this transcription, said by a student, struck me the most “This is stupid” (pg. 68). When working with struggling readers it is amazing how quick this phrase gets uttered and the shutdown immediately follows. It can be the most challenging to work with these students. I cannot count how many times I have heard students say that phrase while working at my internship. Unless you can figure out a way to get them engaged and understand the assignment you’ve lost them. That is one of the most helpless feelings for a teacher.

To help students draw inferences from a text I think a teacher should first teach what an inference is so that they know what they are supposed to be doing. A good introductory activity could be showing students movie trailers and having them describe what they think the movie will be about. By using a visual representation it is much less intimidating than a text but it still gets the point across. The teacher can first model what they want the students to do by showing a trailer and then scripting her thoughts, her inferences, about the movie. Then they can try it on their own. Students will infer who will be the main characters, the setting, the plot, etc. All of these things can be derived from a novel or portion of text as well. I think this would be an excellent bridge to learning how to use inferences with a text. This could work in a potential classroom because it relates to students’ lives. Kids make inferences all the time when watching movie trailers to decide if they will go see the film, they just don’t realize it. The teacher could show a variety of trailers that are popular among the students to pique their interest as well.  I think some potential challenges could be students losing sight of what they are supposed to be doing in the activity and merely watch the trailers. I also think some students will excel at this but then not see the connection between making an inference using the trailer and making an inference with a text. The teacher will need to be explicit in order to help students make the connection.  Another potential challenge could be that some students still just won’t get it which I think is a possibility with any activity a teacher implements. These students will require extra help and instruction from the teacher and possibly more examples modeled for them.

Week Four: Chapter 4 Explicit Instruction in Comprehension

Chapter 4 of Kylene Beers’ book emphasizes modeling directly and explicitly to students. I think guided practice is an excellent way to model for the students the strategies you want them to be able to use on their own. When teaching a new skill to students you first need to show them how you, an expert, would do it and model it several times. It is also similar to scaffolding because we want to give kids support so that they can build up to doing it independently no matter how many times they have to fail before getting it right. In lessons I have made for my teaching strategies in Language Arts class I used guided practice to model skills like context clues. In my future classroom I think I will continue to use this teaching strategy to help students learn.

At the beginning of the chapter Beers states “We sometimes confuse explaining to students what is happening in a text with teaching students how to comprehend a text” (pg 40). As Beers points out if you explain something to a student over and over again each time they will understand, but they become dependent on your explanation. If we teach students strategies they will be able to come up with their own answers independently and over time will be able to apply their knowledge and skills to other texts. Similar to chapter 2 it is critical to move students to becoming independent readers. It is better to take up a class period teaching a strategy than to merely explain the meaning of one text and move on to the next because by teaching a strategy you are giving students the knowledge they will need to do it on their own in the future. In the latter you are only teaching to one text rather than all the texts they may read in their schooling.

I think the class discussion technique that the student teacher Kate used, “IRE: initiate, respond and evaluate,” tends to be used frequently. I can recall subbing for one of the 7^th grade Language Arts teachers and reading through “A Christmas Carol” with the students. Now that I look back I think I was focusing on this strategy to generate discussion. The story was in a play format so the kids all had roles and read aloud. At certain points in the story I would stop to check for comprehension of the text and pose questions to the students. After a few answers they would continue reading. Although I didn’t have time to prepare for this particular lesson and reading I think it is easy to fall into this IRE pattern. The student teacher Kate also noted that “It’s just easier to, you know, just tell them what the story is about” (pg. 55). Although it may be easier to do this Kate then notes that by using this strategy “Well, I guess then they don’t get any better at figuring out how to figure out a story” (pg 55). In the future I think I will be more conscious of how I teach a text to students from reading this chapter.

Week Two: Creating a culture of reading

I think that it is important to create a culture of reading in the classroom because as Language Arts teachers we want to make students lifelong readers. In order to do this you need to provide students with the necessary skills and tools to access a text. To create this culture you first need to teach reading strategies so students can engage and connect with a book.
You also need to provide them with opportunities to read books that they are interested in. I think a classroom library would be essential to have to give students access to texts and the school library should also be visited regularly. Also i think a teacher could create lists of books with similar themes for students to choose from based on their own interests. Often a student doesn't realize that there are books that can relate to their lives. For example, Mike Lupica has written many great novels about sports which students love to read.
Going along with this I think independent reading logs and projects are a good way to promote reading outside of school. In my internship I have seen a huge push for independent reading. Students are required to submit a weekly log of their reading and each trimester they are required to complete a project on one of the books they have read on their own. I also think it is important as a teacher to show your own interest in reading to students. I think you could give book talks to your students to show you also read outside of class.