Vocabulary (SMH)

When I think of vocabulary and a means to build vocabulary skills, I think of our current tutoring sessions at Oak Grove. During these tutoring session it is our responsibility to help introduce students to at least 4 new vocabulary words per week. I found it difficult to find a strategy to use that was interesting and incorporated skills that my student could use on her on, when trying to decode words for pronunciation and meaning. The book depicted strategies that I used such as the vocabulary cards and vocabulary prediction. I believe that it is a teachers responsibility to introduce new vocabulary to his/her students inside the classroom but also provide them with tools to decode words on their own. 

As I observe and help my after school students complete their homework, I notice that they are all required to do the same thing, when it comes to learning new words. Each student from K to 4th grade is required to write each of their words 5 to 7 times. In my opinion, this is just busy work. When I engage these students in identifying and spelling these words, mainly the K and 1st grade students don’t even know the words. Meaning that when they wrote the words they were just copying them from a list, not even knowing what the word is. I found this very interesting that students are just copying words out of routine and not being encouraged to decode or sound out words to know how to pronounce or identify the words in a sentence. ( I hope that makes sense) ;-)

When I think back to my adolescents, I remember my teacher engaging me and my entire class in activities that encouraged us to use the dictionary to help us in learning new words and their meanings. In this private school setting, word recognition was at the for front of many of our lessons. The teacher would lead our class into meaningful lessons that required us to use sources to help us to first syllabicate words, then pronounce words, define words, and lastly use the word in sentences. This being only one of several activities that we used to build word recognition. 

The book did a great job of describing the importance of having a vast knowledge of words and their meanings. It described how word recognition should be intertwined into other subjects and even electives. A students word knowledge can determine how successful a student will be in their learning. If they are not given the proper tools they need to gain new word knowledge from their teachers than many of them will not be successful in their educational journey. Lastly this statement from the book left a great impression on me, “The gap in word knowledge is problematic because of its impact on content learning and reading comprehension.” With this information in mind, I will try my best to equip my students with the tools they need to be successful. I will not follow the same old mundane of just giving students words to copy that they can’t pronounce and don’t know the meaning of or even how to use it in a sentence.

Question

- When teachers present their lesson plan to the administration, why don’t they encourage teachers to do other activities that build word recognition  instead of just okaying them to require students to write words several times over and over?

The Importance of Questioning

As a college student I think that it is important for a teachers at all grade levels  to engage his/her students in a question and answer session. Because, in teaching lessons or lecturing, many students may not gain the full understanding of what is being taught. As I think back to many of my college courses, that were mainly taught through lecturing, I can only remember writing notes and never asking questions, unless they were asked after class . I believe that not only my grades would've been better but also other students in the class grades would have improved if the teacher engaged us in questioning sessions to determine if their teaching was detailed enough or if it was anything that needed to be retaught. Also, I think that questioning during class would've not only help me but any others who may have had the same question but didn't want to ask it.

The chapter informed me that some questions are better than others. This doesn't mean that they are "dumb" or  "unimportant" question as the statement goes, but they really challenge you to think about what you've learned. Some examples given by the chapter are the "HOT" questions. Before this reading I learned last year that HOT question require students to think more deeply about what is being asked. I think HOT questions should be used most often because, they really challenge a learner to think about what they don't understand and about areas that they need to improve. It can also help a teacher to know what they need to change about the information or to find a alternate way to teaching the subject, that will help students to understand.

In all I learned that questions help students to assess what they've learned, to know what they need to improve. Engaging students in questioning sessions requires them to think about what they've learned  in a more critical way to determine if their knowledge is correct or needs improvement. Questions help students to think beyond what they've learned and this help them to retain the information better.  Questioning helps to make students better equipped and can help them improve in there future learning.

Quote "Traditionally, teachers use questioning more than ay other method for developing comprehension".

Question: When engaging students in question session , Is is important to allow students to discuss amongst themselves or should the teacher answer the question immediately to avoid confusion?

chapter 7

Before reading chapter 7, I had no clue that there was a difference between note taking and note making. Furthermore, I had no idea that note making even existed. The chapter gave me great insight on determine the difference between the two, both of which I often use to learn things that I need to know.  What I found most insightful about the chapter was the section titled, “Why Teach Students How to Take Notes”.  This information stuck out to me, “Taking GOOD notes trains students not only to pay attention but what to pay attention to. It teaches them to evaluate the importance of information and the relationship between pieces of information as they read textbooks and articles. It also teaches them to organize that information into some format that serves their purpose.” Being a student, I never thought of note taking in that way. In my years of high school and my early years of college, I thought of being required to take notes by our teacher, as a form of busy work, so the teacher could ensure that we remained attentive in class. Also, many of my teachers and some professors would give grades for note taking. I believe this should never happen. The chapter teaches us that note taking is something that a GOOD teacher teaches their students how to do and show them the importance of having notes to use to guide their learning. The chapter also stresses the importance of providing students with signal words. This helps students to know that the information is important and they should spend more time cover that information. Many of my old professors would not use any signal words, they expected you to know every detail about every topic covered in class. I know that it is important to know everything however, I think it is important to stress to students when some things are more important than other. This will ultimately set students up for success not Failure. Lastly, and maybe the most important point that I learned is that there is a difference between note taking and note making. The difference comes in when in one you create notes that are placed in your own words. The other is when you copy notes from a book or PowerPoint or some other source. It is my opinion that a teacher should encourage students to use both note taking and note making to create the best types of learners. Using both makes students more rounded and better able to learn and retain information.

Question

Why is note taking not taught in younger grades such as elementary?

Should note taking and note making be taught interchangeably?

Graphic Organizers Chapter 6

1. "Graphic organizers can be used throughout the curriculum to help students understand the relationships between ideas. Because they are tools for categorizing and storing information, visual displays can be useful in helping students understand complex information."

I selected this quote because I think it really summaries the importance of allowing students to use graphic organizers. It is very important to get students to visually represent what they know for the teacher so that the teacher will know what needs to be reinforced or retaught.

2. Is using a graphic organizer as a way of assessment really effective? I believe that students will just memorize information to fill in a graphic organizer instead of trying to study and retain the information.

3. I use graphic organizer to study for all my exams. I think they help me to gain a better understanding of the content that I need to learn. Writing an outlines allows me to put words from books or power points into my own words and I get to think about the information before I write it down.
For example, while studying for my math exam for Dr. Larman, I used two different types of graphic organizers which allowed me to write down my notes in two different ways thus, helping me to retain the information.

Chapter 4 and Text Talk

The article as well as the book both were effective in describing how beneficial it can be to use read alouds and shared reading activities in a classroom. Although these are activities that are thought to be mainly used in the elementary setting, I agree with the reading that it is very important to use these in secondary educational setting also. These two techiniques can be a great assest to students who donot retain information well when they read to themselves. In my experence with reading even at a college level, I gain a better understanding and can retain information better when it is read to me. I think a teacher should not only require students to practice reading through read alouds but also require students to have a discussion about what has been read to further deepen a students understand of the reading.
The article also pointed out how effective text talk can be to a students understanding of a reading. I found the table on page 14 that points out all the components of a text talk to be very interesting and I believe this to be something that I will try to implement into my class. The two things that I found to be most important from this table were the need to establish background knowledge and using follow up questions.

Why is round robin frowned upon?
Why aren't teachers required to engage their students in shared reading and discussions ?

Writing To Learn

After reading both the article and Chapter 8 I found that they both stressed the importance of educators requiring  or including writing in all subject areas. Writing is a great way for students to process what they have learned through reading and lectures. Students can use their writing as a review or to help them process the new information they have just taken in. Incorporating writing into all subject also allows teachers to determine what  students know and understand and what students may not have full knowledge of. What really stuck out to me about the chapter and the article is the different techniques and tools that could be used to incorporate writing into different subjects. I believe that it is the teachers responsibility to teach students how to use several of these techniques. I also believe that down the line the teacher should allow students to select which technique works best for them and allow students to display their knowledge in that form.

When is it appropriate to let students select their writing technique of choice and when should the teacher make the decision?
When requiring students to include writing in other subject areas such as math and science should you grade them on grammar and punctuation or allow them to write freely?

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

I found the article to be very intriguing and informational as to why literacy instruction should be included and varied, in the way it is presented at all levels in elementary school and beyond. Growing up as a child, I was one that never really cared for reading. I would read only if it was required of me. I believe this was the result of my experiences in my elementary class setting. From grades k- 4 I attended a private school which was suppose to give me a great foundation, one that was supposedly better then what I would have received in a public school setting. I remember several of my teachers requiring us as students, to read in the infamous round robin reading style. I never really gain any incite from the text that was read but, I did however learn how count the amount of people ahead of me to know which paragraph I was expected to read. Because of this, I found reading boring and thought of it only as a tool to please my teacher and keep her from sending me to the office, because I was a bit disruptive.I think that many other students think of reading in the same way.


I believe that the article makes a very valid point in stating that literacy instruction should be included in the lower elementary grades. In this fast pace world that we're living in reading and comprehending what was read can make or break anyone young or old. Learning how to comprehend a text can make a world of difference for children if taught how to do so properly, at an early age. Students are placed under so many strains to pass tests that are presented to them. What many teachers fail to realize is that if a student doesn't have prior knowledge of how to read and comprehend what is place in front of them, than they may not understand how to properly convey their understanding. 


In visiting schools and working with school age students, the only reading that I noticed being done was reading from a basal reader or a AR book. Most students don't read for understanding or enjoyment when reading these types of books because, they are reading them for memorization to pass a test. I believe that if a foundation is set in lower grades like the 1st to teach children how to read for enjoyment and comprehension then the transitions into to higher grades will be  easier and will help to improve state test scores as well. Lower grade teacher mold students into the type of student that they will probably be in the future. Requiring teachers to teach students to comprehend different types of text and express them in different ways will make for better students when they reach the higher grades. 


The article made me think of several intriguing questions. One being, Why is so much emphasis placed on using basal readers in the classroom, when many stories in them are above the students grade level? Two, Why is reading for comprehension not encouraged in all subject areas instead of just English and Language Arts? Three, Why are people just know speaking out about literacy instruction when the issues has been been around for some time?