Professional Readings
To help us to understand what is going on in the educational field better, we were asked to read article weekly. Below you will see that for each article we wrote a brief summary and then applied the article to our future classroom incorporating the new strategies.
Topic: Mastery Learning
Guskey, T. (2010). Lessons of Mastery Learning. Association for Supervision and Curriculum, Oct. 2010. 53-57.
Summary: Mastery learning was introduced by Benjamin Bloom and is the concept of teaching students new information and tracking their progress at the same time in order to promote optimum learning at all times. In order to track their learning there were different techniques introduced: formative and corrective learning. Both of these were also crucial to this theory because it helps educators fix problems when students do not understand the material and it is reflected by their various assessments.
Classroom Recommendation: In my future English class, I hope to give some sort of quiz or paper every two weeks in order to keep the students on track and see how they are progressing. In particularly difficult lessons these formative procedures will be more important than others. I know some weeks this may be unrealistic, but I think it would help a great deal. Also, I would love to be able to incorporate some sort of vocabulary quiz or assignment each week in order to always keep the students’ diction increasing.
Topic: Writing in Math
Brandenburg, Luka. (2002). Advanced Math? Write! Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Nov. 2002, 67-68.
Summary: This article is awesome for future math students to read! As painful as some of this teacher’s strategies sound from a student’s perspective, I think they would work flawlessly. The author is arguing for more writing in math. The way she accomplished this was by making her math students write about the processes they were going through. The author hopes that this will help the students understand more what they are doing in math and in turn, help them to learn more efficiently. She does allude to the fact that this may be difficult for students to get involved in, so teachers should start small and set guidelines.
Classroom Recommendation: Although my subject is clear about the fact that students will need to write, I still think I could use some of these strategies in my classroom. The author’s advice about starting small is an important one because there will definitely be some students in my class who will not enjoy writing for various reasons. By doing so, I will have them keep an informal journal every week which I would collect and grade for incentive to do a thorough job. This will hopefully get the students to feel comfortable with their writing abilities before having to complete any papers and they will get a feel for what I expect out of their writing. I also think it is critical for my future students to have specific guidelines on their writing so they always know what their writing should include and how they can improve for next time.
Topic: The Words Students Need
Lawrence, J. White, C. & Snow, C. (2010). The Words Students Need. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Oct. 2010, 23-26.
Summary: Students are having a difficult time employing the vocabulary words they are learning because they don’t ever fully understand what the words mean. This article suggests that schools should create teams—word generation program—and this will help them use new words in all of their subjects. Along with this the students would use many different ways in order to learn new vocabulary. The author even states that students need to encounter words 12 different ways in order to fully recognize their meanings.
Classroom Recommendation: Vocabulary is extremely important in English because the words they learn in this class are words they are going to hopefully apply to all subject areas. In my school, I would definitely use the word generation program that the article suggests in order to connect the vocabulary throughout their courses. For example, if the students were learning Shakespeare in English, we could have Social Studies covering the Renaissance and Science also using words that relate to these topics. We could have the students required to use at least three of these words in each of their homework assignments. Once they use certain words, they need to move on and use others from the unit so that they are constantly applying new terms. The students could get extra credit even for using terms they learned in previous units.
Topic: Baiting the Reading Hook
Plucker, J. (2010). Baiting the Reading Hook. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Oct. 2010, 58-63.
Summary: I love reading to begin with, but the teacher in this article makes me want to be a student in her class. The ideas about reading are so great and appear to be extremely engaging for students who do not enjoy reading. The teacher makes sure to have a safe, fun environment for the students to get excited about reading. She picks out texts that students believe are “sick” (cool) to gain the student’s interest without them even realizing that they are learning. As a result, most of the students made major improvements with their reading.
Classroom Recommendation: Articles like these get me so excited to teach and apply these methods to my future English classrooms. There is no question that I want to allocate some amount of time to my class for reading time. Even if I can only put aside time once a week, it is so important because this may be the only time that I can monitor the students and observe them actually doing reading. I also would like to do something with the students keeping reading minutes and handing them in at the end of each week. They would need to complete 4 hours a week and it can be any type of reading: reading for school or reading for pleasure. One of the most important factors is that the students feel they have a choice in their reading selections because they will be more invested.
Topic: Getting Started: Manageable Literacy Practice
Ivey, G. (Year). Getting Started: Manageable Literacy Practices. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Nov. 2002, 20-23.
Summary: Gay Ivey is advocating for more integration of reading into content specific classrooms. It is important that students are being able to read things other than just difficult text books in classes other than their reading class. The author suggests that by doing things like this in other classes and introducing more student selected texts, will make students want to read more and therefore, understand the topic more clearly. Ivey gives some great suggestions on how to do this in other classes because he realizes that this may be difficult with the amount of time and curriculum the teachers need to cover.
Classroom Recommendation: Although I want to be an English teacher, it is still important that I have my students reading a variety of texts and allow them to have some reading time during class. I say a variety of texts because it is critical that the students are reading more than just the novel they are assigned at that time. Informational texts can be included to get more of a background on the topic is another important aspect that can help students comprehend information. Also, the inclusion of primary sources can add another perspective for the students that may help them relate the information. I would use all of these genres of texts to help the students have a wide range of understanding about a topic. Also, it’s crucial that the students are given time to read, To do this, I would do some read aloud activities with them where I would read to them, and then later they could have time to read independently. This would take up a lot of time, so unfortunately, this may not be done every day, but as much as possible!
Topic: Reading, Writing and Understanding
Jacobs, V. (2002). Reading, Writing and Understanding. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Nov. 2002, 58-61.
Summary: This article is a summary of all of things we have been learning in class over the semester. It nicely ties together all of the strategies for reading and writing that we have been taught. Jacobs is making the case that although we are secondary teachers, we still must enforce reading strategies because students may be able to read the words on the page, but it is more important that they comprehend the material.
Classroom Recommendation: Although it is all secondary teachers’ responsibility to reinforce good reading and writing habits, I think it is most importantly the English teacher’s job to make sure students are comprehending material in all of their classes. To do this, I would be sure to always incorporate some sort of strategy with my students for reading—whether it’s pre-reading, guided reading or post reading. I think these strategies are crucial for student understanding. If students do not understand what they are reading, they will not be able to participate or learn anything further. For example, when students read a chapter out of a novel, they will not simply answer mindless chapter questions that they could easily skim and find. Students need to be engaged in the reading and do something that they feel will be worthwhile. This is where fun strategies like summary frames or question games come into play.