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 literacy strategies.
Topic: Adolescent Literacy
Carnegie Corporation. (2011). Adolescent Literacy. Alliance for Excellent Education, Dec. 2011, 1-4.
Summary: In the article, the statistics show the reader things including: amount of students lacking literacy skills, the percentage of jobs requiring these skills and the results of students’ score on high stakes testing. The statistics are overwhelming, but it makes it apparent that as future teachers this is crucial for us to focus on in order to get our students ready for the real world. They need literacy not only to graduate high school, get into college, and get a good job, but just in general to communicate in their everyday lives.
Classroom Recommendation: Being aware of this issue, I need to begin thinking about how I will incorporate strategies into my own classroom to help my students with literacy. This task will be easier for me because I am studying to be an English teacher, but I will still need to enforce why they need to learn these skills. I will start each day by introducing a “word of the day” to increase their vocabulary and help them recognize more words on their future standardized tests. Another skill I hope to give them is public speaking. I think it is important to not only be able to communicate, but to do so effectively and efficiently. I will do this by having the students share at least one of their assignments with the rest of their peers a week—eitAAher in smaller groups or as a whole.
Topic: Best Practices for ELLs
Rance-Roney, J. (2009). Best Practices for ELLs. Educational Leadership, April 2009, 32-37.
Summary: Issues of students with English as a second language are becoming more prevalent in today’s society and needs to be handled more appropriately. The author discusses how children in the ELL programs may all have the same issue of not fully understanding the English language in its entirety, but they all have different learning needs and have to be treated as such. Rance-Roney then demonstrates some specific examples of how certain communities and high schools deal with this issue effectively.
Classroom Recommendation: I have empathy for the students or immigrants who are thrown into English speaking schools and expected to perform as well as the other native students in the classroom. I think the author presented some great ideas for teachers and communities to help make this transition easier. The theory that I think would work best is creating a team of ELS professionals within a school district so that these students are not forced into a single classroom with a single teacher all day. Students need to feel as important and treated just as equally as the English speaking students in the school, while at the same time not excluding them from the social community as the entire school.
Topic: The Adolescent Brain
Wolfe, P. (2012). The Adolescent Brain: A Work in Progress. Mind Matters, June 2009, 1.
Summary: The adolescent brain is such an interesting topic to learn about. In this article, Wolfe thoroughly describes the changes and impacts situations and substances can have on the brain during this time period. The brain during this time is emotionally matured before the frontal lobe, which takes care of the decision making. Alcohol and/or substance abuse can have a serious impact on a child’s brain when pertaining to their learning and memory. Teachers need to take all of these things into consideration when teaching adolescent students.
Classroom Recommendation: In secondary education, we are all going to be dealing with prime time development of our students’ emotions and brain. In my future classroom I am going to keep in mind that my students will be going through a difficult time in their lives and it may not entirely be their fault for some of their impulsive decisions, but I am not going to let this be an excuse. Instead, I hope to utilize as much technology in the classroom as possible so this will entice them to pay attention and get more out of their learning. Along with this, I know how I felt as a teenager listening to the teacher lecture all day and it was very easy to get distracted. With this in mind, lecturing is appropriate on occasion, but I want to do more interactive and cooperative learning to keep them engaged. For example, letting them teach to the class specific parts of novels or other pieces of literature that we may be covering.
Topic: What Makes Teens Tick?
Wallis, C. & Dell, K. (2007). What Makes Teens Tick? TIME, May 2009. 1-9.
Summary: Wallis and Dell write this article on a doctor (Giedd) who is doing multiple tests on teens to discover things about their brains—his first conclusion being that the brain is not fully developed until age 25 at the least. In his experiments he liked to use twins to also test the theory of nature vs. nurture. He doesn’t completely discount hormones as the reason for teen’s behavior, but definitely states that it is mostly the brain’s process of pruning that is causing their disruptiveness. Another issue this article discusses is teen’s need for impulsive, risky decision making due to their drive for excitement.
Classroom Recommendation: Although this article is technically about the same topic as the previous one, there are different strategies and realizations that need to be made on the part of the future teacher. I think what is most important for this article is that in my classroom I would tie in novels with real life consequences for teenagers who make dumb, risky decisions. Hopefully this will help them relate to the book easier and apply the lesson to their lives. My big goal for this is to keep them out of trouble as much as possible, while having fun with their learning simultaneously. Another way I would incorporate the changes in their brain would be to give them instant gratification or punishments for completing assignments. This way, it would create an excitement or adrenal rush for them and would play on their desire for impulsive decisions.
Topic: Safe Schools for Adolescents
Inlay, Linda. (2005). Safe Schools for the Roller Coaster Years. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, April 2005, 41-43.
Summary: This article helped further my understanding of making a school setting safe during adolescence. The River School sets a great example of a democratic education where the students are allowed to play out their experimental stage and make their own mistakes. They have listening groups which help foster meaningful relationships and bring the students together, rather than picking on one another. This is a great school for teens for growth and discovery of their identity.
Classroom Recommendation: To help maintain the idea of a democratic education, in my classroom I would have the students begin by working collaboratively to create a set of rules for the class; what they find to be important. Together we would agree on them and this way, students would feel they had a part in the rules and hopefully leaving the responsibility in their hands. Since this is such a time of finding themselves, I might have them read books like The Outsiders, Cut and Stargirl. These books would be extremely relevant to the students and would help them to feel safe in their environment because they would see that it is normal to be going through these emotions. I could then create listening groups where they discuss the novel and then relate it to their own lives.
Topic: A Case for Schools
Blum, Robert (2005). A Case for Schools. Educational Leadership, April 2005, 16-20.
Summary: This article is arguing for the same type of safe school for children that the last one did, but goes into more specifics of how schools in general can make this happen. They are suggesting that schools should not separate students on different “tracks,” which a lot of high schools do. Another thing that was interesting is that this author believes when working collaboratively in groups, students should be rewarded on their progress, even if it was not the top performance. The biggest case this article makes is that schools need to have an environment where the teachers and students feel connected in their learning.
Classroom Recommendation: I think after learning more and more about how the adolescent brain works best, it is crucial for my future students to feel as though they are in a safe environment in my class. I know it may seem like a younger teaching strategy, but it might be a good idea to have certain rewards for when students do well or answer questions in class. This might get them more engaged and see that I recognize when they put effort into their learning. Also, I could get them involved in outside community service type projects to help get them involved. We could do this while reading the novel I mentioned in my previous article, Stargirl. The character in this novel is very concerned with the environment and community and we could have a discussion about how community is important in our classroom to help bring the students together.
Topic: Rethinking the Role of Literacy in the Content Areas
Heller, R., Greenleaf, C. (2007). Rethinking the Role of Literacy in the Content Areas. Literacy Instructions in the Content Areas, June 2007, 7-14.
Summary: Reading this article as a recently graduated high school student, I felt I had an insider’s perspective. The author is arguing that each content area has specific skills according to their reading and writing. Students cannot be taught the same literacy skills to write a lab report and a historical term paper. The article gives teachers certain strategies to have their students practice pre-reading, while reading and post-reading in order to help get them engaged and take away more from the difficult readings.
Classroom Recommendation:This is an extremely important article for all future and present teachers to read, so that we can understand that the readings our students are tackling are not easy and they need help switching gears from their other content areas. Since I am going to be an English teacher it is crucial for me to instill strong literacy skills that my students can apply to other subjects as well as their future careers. In order to accomplish this I will have constant reading comprehension assessments; even if all they have to do is answer a few short answer questions or complete a chart while reading. I think having these type of activities really help a student stay focused and it is more likely they will understand the information.
Topic: An Introduction to Analytical Text Structures
Stempel, Amy. (2010). An Introduction to Analytical Text Structures. Hot Topics in Adolescent Literacy, 2010. 1.
Summary: This article gives a condense explanation of multiple types of analytical writing, The author believes that students have too much practice in narration, but not enough in analytical or explanatory writing. The article lists six types: compare-contrast, cause-effect, problem-solution, concept-definition, goal-action-outcome and proposition-support. She gives the definitions of each style and clear examples of each.
Classroom Recommendation: I love this article because it is great for English teachers. Teaching writing is not an easy task, but when definitions and examples are laid out for students sometimes it can be easier for them to understand and master. To get my future students practicing these styles and getting them comfortable with analytical writing, I would do a lesson including all six types of writing. I would have an activity to go with each writing style so the students would become accustom to them all. For homework, they would have to pick one of the styles and write a longer paper to demonstrate their new knowledge.
Topic: Summarizing to Comprehend
Marzano, R. (2010). Summarizing to Comprehend. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Mar. 2010, 83-84.
Summary: There is no better way to write about this article than a summary. Marzano is advocating that summarizing information from texts is one of the best ways for students to comprehend, but some strategies are more effective, such as: classifying what’s important, familiarizing students with multiple text structures, helping students recognize layers, encouraging graphic representations and reviewing essential terminology. All of these strategies are helping students to understand different aspects of texts in all content areas.
Classroom Recommendation: It’s important as English teacher for us to install these strategies early in student’s minds so they can apply them to all of their future reading. In order to do this, whenever students do reading in my course, I would have them pick a specific strategy to keep notes in their notebooks or journals as they read. They would have to pick a different strategy for each text they read so that the student would be able to learn multiple techniques for comprehending strategies. Also, I would check these notebooks every month to ensure that the students are completing the assignment. This, at the same time, would also keep track of the student’s reading which is just as important as understanding the text.
Topic: Representing Knowledge Nonlinguistically
Marzano, R. (2010). Representing Knowledge Nonlinguistically. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, May 2010, 84-86.
Summary: Robert Marzano presents an important teaching strategy in today’s society: nonlinguistic representations. He states that most people understand that humans take in knowledge both linguistically and in the form of images. The readers gets a full grasp of how to teach new information in this way because Marzano breaks the article down into five categories: they come in many forms, must identify crucial information, must be explained, they take a lot of time and should be revisited. Laying out an informative article in this way is helpful to the reader because it keeps the important information easy to follow and simple to understand.
Classroom Recommendations: I think this is a great idea and that more teachers need to also follow this way of thinking. We already know that every student learns information in a different way—then why not let them explore all of the ways to learn? In my classroom, I want to make sure that the students who learn visually or through nonlinguistics, have the opportunity to express that. To do this, I would want to let the students take notes in any way they see fit, but I foresee an issue with this. As Marzano states in his article, presenting information in pictures takes a lot of time. Keeping this in mind, the students could take notes with words in class and then for homework have to represent the information through pictures or graphics. This way, the students are still thinking about the lesson when they go home and putting it into a way that they can understand it. The next day in class, each student could share and explain their nonlinguistic representation to the class.
Topic: Cues, Questions and Advance Organizers
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (2005). Cues, Questions, and Advanced Organizers. Focus on Effectiveness, 2005, 1.
Summary: The focus of this article is for teachers to be more aware of the questioning techniques and strategies that they use throughout a lesson. The author is stating that these questions can help focus a lesson and provide students with a deeper understanding of the material. The article also suggests that teachers need to have high level questions, but to be sure to leave enough wait time for students to respond. The greatest part of the article is the importance that questions can help teacher understand what students already know about a topic.
Classroom Recommendations: Questions and cues are such a critical role in all subject areas of teaching. Without these two things, not much learning, if any at all, would be taking place. Although research shows that most teachers ask between 45-150 questions in a 30 minute period, I want to be sure that in my classroom, all questions are meaningful and promote further learning. Not only do I want to use the strategy of questioning, but I also think it is important to show these questions in the form of advanced organizers because it will also get visual students engaged. I hope to also utilize think, pair, share activities because sometimes it is difficult to have enough “wait time” with questions. This way, students can have fully enough time to answer the questions and talk out the possible solutions.
Topic: The Learning Power of WebQuests
March, T. (2003). The Learning Power of WebQuests. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Jan. 2004, 42-47.
Summary: This is a great article to read as a future teacher, especially in today’s society with technology moving at the rate that it has been. The main focus of the article is to get students involved with research, but in a more interactive way through WebQuests. Teachers need to take more responsibility when creating project inquiries because we need to be more aware that students can copy and paste answers. By doing this, the students and the teachers are getting little benefit. The author is pushing for more open ended and in depth research where students must share their ideas instead of simply splitting the project among the group.
Classroom Recommendations: This article’s suggestions can really be applied to any content area and that is what makes the message so great. For English specifically though, WebQuests can be used to help students relate texts in class to either current events and/or situations they are already comfortable with. For example, when students read To Kill a Mockingbird, I could have each group of students work on a more present Supreme Court Case. They could each do a WebQuest researching these different cases and have to present them to the class. In order to make sure they were all participating and engaging in their learning as best as possible, I would be sure to frame the project in an open-ended way where students would have to work together to do the project.
Topic: Adolescent Literacy
Carnegie Corporation. (2011). Adolescent Literacy. Alliance for Excellent Education, Dec. 2011, 1-4.
Summary: In the article, the statistics show the reader things including: amount of students lacking literacy skills, the percentage of jobs requiring these skills and the results of students’ score on high stakes testing. The statistics are overwhelming, but it makes it apparent that as future teachers this is crucial for us to focus on in order to get our students ready for the real world. They need literacy not only to graduate high school, get into college, and get a good job, but just in general to communicate in their everyday lives.
Classroom Recommendation: Being aware of this issue, I need to begin thinking about how I will incorporate strategies into my own classroom to help my students with literacy. This task will be easier for me because I am studying to be an English teacher, but I will still need to enforce why they need to learn these skills. I will start each day by introducing a “word of the day” to increase their vocabulary and help them recognize more words on their future standardized tests. Another skill I hope to give them is public speaking. I think it is important to not only be able to communicate, but to do so effectively and efficiently. I will do this by having the students share at least one of their assignments with the rest of their peers a week—eitAAher in smaller groups or as a whole.
Topic: Best Practices for ELLs
Rance-Roney, J. (2009). Best Practices for ELLs. Educational Leadership, April 2009, 32-37.
Summary: Issues of students with English as a second language are becoming more prevalent in today’s society and needs to be handled more appropriately. The author discusses how children in the ELL programs may all have the same issue of not fully understanding the English language in its entirety, but they all have different learning needs and have to be treated as such. Rance-Roney then demonstrates some specific examples of how certain communities and high schools deal with this issue effectively.
Classroom Recommendation: I have empathy for the students or immigrants who are thrown into English speaking schools and expected to perform as well as the other native students in the classroom. I think the author presented some great ideas for teachers and communities to help make this transition easier. The theory that I think would work best is creating a team of ELS professionals within a school district so that these students are not forced into a single classroom with a single teacher all day. Students need to feel as important and treated just as equally as the English speaking students in the school, while at the same time not excluding them from the social community as the entire school.
Topic: The Adolescent Brain
Wolfe, P. (2012). The Adolescent Brain: A Work in Progress. Mind Matters, June 2009, 1.
Summary: The adolescent brain is such an interesting topic to learn about. In this article, Wolfe thoroughly describes the changes and impacts situations and substances can have on the brain during this time period. The brain during this time is emotionally matured before the frontal lobe, which takes care of the decision making. Alcohol and/or substance abuse can have a serious impact on a child’s brain when pertaining to their learning and memory. Teachers need to take all of these things into consideration when teaching adolescent students.
Classroom Recommendation: In secondary education, we are all going to be dealing with prime time development of our students’ emotions and brain. In my future classroom I am going to keep in mind that my students will be going through a difficult time in their lives and it may not entirely be their fault for some of their impulsive decisions, but I am not going to let this be an excuse. Instead, I hope to utilize as much technology in the classroom as possible so this will entice them to pay attention and get more out of their learning. Along with this, I know how I felt as a teenager listening to the teacher lecture all day and it was very easy to get distracted. With this in mind, lecturing is appropriate on occasion, but I want to do more interactive and cooperative learning to keep them engaged. For example, letting them teach to the class specific parts of novels or other pieces of literature that we may be covering.
Topic: What Makes Teens Tick?
Wallis, C. & Dell, K. (2007). What Makes Teens Tick? TIME, May 2009. 1-9.
Summary: Wallis and Dell write this article on a doctor (Giedd) who is doing multiple tests on teens to discover things about their brains—his first conclusion being that the brain is not fully developed until age 25 at the least. In his experiments he liked to use twins to also test the theory of nature vs. nurture. He doesn’t completely discount hormones as the reason for teen’s behavior, but definitely states that it is mostly the brain’s process of pruning that is causing their disruptiveness. Another issue this article discusses is teen’s need for impulsive, risky decision making due to their drive for excitement.
Classroom Recommendation: Although this article is technically about the same topic as the previous one, there are different strategies and realizations that need to be made on the part of the future teacher. I think what is most important for this article is that in my classroom I would tie in novels with real life consequences for teenagers who make dumb, risky decisions. Hopefully this will help them relate to the book easier and apply the lesson to their lives. My big goal for this is to keep them out of trouble as much as possible, while having fun with their learning simultaneously. Another way I would incorporate the changes in their brain would be to give them instant gratification or punishments for completing assignments. This way, it would create an excitement or adrenal rush for them and would play on their desire for impulsive decisions.
Topic: Safe Schools for Adolescents
Inlay, Linda. (2005). Safe Schools for the Roller Coaster Years. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, April 2005, 41-43.
Summary: This article helped further my understanding of making a school setting safe during adolescence. The River School sets a great example of a democratic education where the students are allowed to play out their experimental stage and make their own mistakes. They have listening groups which help foster meaningful relationships and bring the students together, rather than picking on one another. This is a great school for teens for growth and discovery of their identity.
Classroom Recommendation: To help maintain the idea of a democratic education, in my classroom I would have the students begin by working collaboratively to create a set of rules for the class; what they find to be important. Together we would agree on them and this way, students would feel they had a part in the rules and hopefully leaving the responsibility in their hands. Since this is such a time of finding themselves, I might have them read books like The Outsiders, Cut and Stargirl. These books would be extremely relevant to the students and would help them to feel safe in their environment because they would see that it is normal to be going through these emotions. I could then create listening groups where they discuss the novel and then relate it to their own lives.
Topic: A Case for Schools
Blum, Robert (2005). A Case for Schools. Educational Leadership, April 2005, 16-20.
Summary: This article is arguing for the same type of safe school for children that the last one did, but goes into more specifics of how schools in general can make this happen. They are suggesting that schools should not separate students on different “tracks,” which a lot of high schools do. Another thing that was interesting is that this author believes when working collaboratively in groups, students should be rewarded on their progress, even if it was not the top performance. The biggest case this article makes is that schools need to have an environment where the teachers and students feel connected in their learning.
Classroom Recommendation: I think after learning more and more about how the adolescent brain works best, it is crucial for my future students to feel as though they are in a safe environment in my class. I know it may seem like a younger teaching strategy, but it might be a good idea to have certain rewards for when students do well or answer questions in class. This might get them more engaged and see that I recognize when they put effort into their learning. Also, I could get them involved in outside community service type projects to help get them involved. We could do this while reading the novel I mentioned in my previous article, Stargirl. The character in this novel is very concerned with the environment and community and we could have a discussion about how community is important in our classroom to help bring the students together.
Topic: Rethinking the Role of Literacy in the Content Areas
Heller, R., Greenleaf, C. (2007). Rethinking the Role of Literacy in the Content Areas. Literacy Instructions in the Content Areas, June 2007, 7-14.
Summary: Reading this article as a recently graduated high school student, I felt I had an insider’s perspective. The author is arguing that each content area has specific skills according to their reading and writing. Students cannot be taught the same literacy skills to write a lab report and a historical term paper. The article gives teachers certain strategies to have their students practice pre-reading, while reading and post-reading in order to help get them engaged and take away more from the difficult readings.
Classroom Recommendation:This is an extremely important article for all future and present teachers to read, so that we can understand that the readings our students are tackling are not easy and they need help switching gears from their other content areas. Since I am going to be an English teacher it is crucial for me to instill strong literacy skills that my students can apply to other subjects as well as their future careers. In order to accomplish this I will have constant reading comprehension assessments; even if all they have to do is answer a few short answer questions or complete a chart while reading. I think having these type of activities really help a student stay focused and it is more likely they will understand the information.
Topic: An Introduction to Analytical Text Structures
Stempel, Amy. (2010). An Introduction to Analytical Text Structures. Hot Topics in Adolescent Literacy, 2010. 1.
Summary: This article gives a condense explanation of multiple types of analytical writing, The author believes that students have too much practice in narration, but not enough in analytical or explanatory writing. The article lists six types: compare-contrast, cause-effect, problem-solution, concept-definition, goal-action-outcome and proposition-support. She gives the definitions of each style and clear examples of each.
Classroom Recommendation: I love this article because it is great for English teachers. Teaching writing is not an easy task, but when definitions and examples are laid out for students sometimes it can be easier for them to understand and master. To get my future students practicing these styles and getting them comfortable with analytical writing, I would do a lesson including all six types of writing. I would have an activity to go with each writing style so the students would become accustom to them all. For homework, they would have to pick one of the styles and write a longer paper to demonstrate their new knowledge.
Topic: Summarizing to Comprehend
Marzano, R. (2010). Summarizing to Comprehend. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Mar. 2010, 83-84.
Summary: There is no better way to write about this article than a summary. Marzano is advocating that summarizing information from texts is one of the best ways for students to comprehend, but some strategies are more effective, such as: classifying what’s important, familiarizing students with multiple text structures, helping students recognize layers, encouraging graphic representations and reviewing essential terminology. All of these strategies are helping students to understand different aspects of texts in all content areas.
Classroom Recommendation: It’s important as English teacher for us to install these strategies early in student’s minds so they can apply them to all of their future reading. In order to do this, whenever students do reading in my course, I would have them pick a specific strategy to keep notes in their notebooks or journals as they read. They would have to pick a different strategy for each text they read so that the student would be able to learn multiple techniques for comprehending strategies. Also, I would check these notebooks every month to ensure that the students are completing the assignment. This, at the same time, would also keep track of the student’s reading which is just as important as understanding the text.
Topic: Representing Knowledge Nonlinguistically
Marzano, R. (2010). Representing Knowledge Nonlinguistically. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, May 2010, 84-86.
Summary: Robert Marzano presents an important teaching strategy in today’s society: nonlinguistic representations. He states that most people understand that humans take in knowledge both linguistically and in the form of images. The readers gets a full grasp of how to teach new information in this way because Marzano breaks the article down into five categories: they come in many forms, must identify crucial information, must be explained, they take a lot of time and should be revisited. Laying out an informative article in this way is helpful to the reader because it keeps the important information easy to follow and simple to understand.
Classroom Recommendations: I think this is a great idea and that more teachers need to also follow this way of thinking. We already know that every student learns information in a different way—then why not let them explore all of the ways to learn? In my classroom, I want to make sure that the students who learn visually or through nonlinguistics, have the opportunity to express that. To do this, I would want to let the students take notes in any way they see fit, but I foresee an issue with this. As Marzano states in his article, presenting information in pictures takes a lot of time. Keeping this in mind, the students could take notes with words in class and then for homework have to represent the information through pictures or graphics. This way, the students are still thinking about the lesson when they go home and putting it into a way that they can understand it. The next day in class, each student could share and explain their nonlinguistic representation to the class.
Topic: Cues, Questions and Advance Organizers
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (2005). Cues, Questions, and Advanced Organizers. Focus on Effectiveness, 2005, 1.
Summary: The focus of this article is for teachers to be more aware of the questioning techniques and strategies that they use throughout a lesson. The author is stating that these questions can help focus a lesson and provide students with a deeper understanding of the material. The article also suggests that teachers need to have high level questions, but to be sure to leave enough wait time for students to respond. The greatest part of the article is the importance that questions can help teacher understand what students already know about a topic.
Classroom Recommendations: Questions and cues are such a critical role in all subject areas of teaching. Without these two things, not much learning, if any at all, would be taking place. Although research shows that most teachers ask between 45-150 questions in a 30 minute period, I want to be sure that in my classroom, all questions are meaningful and promote further learning. Not only do I want to use the strategy of questioning, but I also think it is important to show these questions in the form of advanced organizers because it will also get visual students engaged. I hope to also utilize think, pair, share activities because sometimes it is difficult to have enough “wait time” with questions. This way, students can have fully enough time to answer the questions and talk out the possible solutions.
Topic: The Learning Power of WebQuests
March, T. (2003). The Learning Power of WebQuests. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Jan. 2004, 42-47.
Summary: This is a great article to read as a future teacher, especially in today’s society with technology moving at the rate that it has been. The main focus of the article is to get students involved with research, but in a more interactive way through WebQuests. Teachers need to take more responsibility when creating project inquiries because we need to be more aware that students can copy and paste answers. By doing this, the students and the teachers are getting little benefit. The author is pushing for more open ended and in depth research where students must share their ideas instead of simply splitting the project among the group.
Classroom Recommendations: This article’s suggestions can really be applied to any content area and that is what makes the message so great. For English specifically though, WebQuests can be used to help students relate texts in class to either current events and/or situations they are already comfortable with. For example, when students read To Kill a Mockingbird, I could have each group of students work on a more present Supreme Court Case. They could each do a WebQuest researching these different cases and have to present them to the class. In order to make sure they were all participating and engaging in their learning as best as possible, I would be sure to frame the project in an open-ended way where students would have to work together to do the project.