Public Writing/Writing for Tests & Assessments

April 16, 2013

Content Area Writing

Chapter 5: Public Writing

Chapter 10: Writing for Tests & Assessments

Chapter Five

Although much of the writing that may be done in your classroom may be writing to learn activities and not seen by anyone other than the students themselves and you as a teacher, we must also prepare students for works that will be seen by the public. These pieces of work must be highly edited, clear and concise with a main objective that outside readers will understand. Students should have worked hard and long on these products and be proud of themselves and what they've accomplished by the end work. As teachers, we must act as editors and guide the students through this process while teaching them strategies that they can use to help them along the way.

Public writing has certain characteristics that students must understand and follow in order to successfully reach an end goal. These traits include:

Substantial: These public works should be longer and more in depth than any quick journal entries or write to learn activities. The text should focus on a certain subject and then go into detail and description on the subject at hand in a way that the reader can fully comprehend.

Planned: Public work should be thought out in advance and organized in a way that is understandable to the reader. Often times these works will be written in more than one draft in order to ensure reader comprehension and organization.

Authoritative: When writing public works, the writer should be sure of what he or she is discussing and confident in the claims stated. Readers should understand what stance the writer has taken and the writer must have support and evidence for that stance.

Conventional: The goal of public writing is to inform your readers about something that you feel is important. Therefore, your public writing should not be informal or give an air of nonchalance. If the writer wants to convince the reader of his or her points, he or she must be formal.

Composed: As I stated earlier, public writing often is attempted in multiple drafts in order to ensure organization, conventional concepts and substantive evidence.

Edited: In order to ensure a positive reader response to ones public work, it must be edited and corrected by the author and teacher. As teachers, we must continuously have peer and self editing among our writers to enable students to create well polished material.

Graded: The most important grade a public work can receive is the intended response the author was looking for from his or her audience. As teachers, we can create opportunities for students to have their work looked at by others in order for the writers to gain knowledge in the craft of public writing.

Developing Vocabulary & Concepts

April 9, 2013

Content Area Reading

Chapter 8: Developing Vocabulary Instruction/Concepts

There is nothing more frustrating than beginning a paragraph in a class and realizing that you don't understand any of the vocabulary being used. Add that to the possibility that you may already be struggling in the class and you have a deadly concoction. Developing vocabulary knowledge for your students is arguably one of the most important tools needed in every content area. If students don't understand your vocabulary, then they won't understand anything you attempt to teach from that point forward. As a teacher, we must create a solid vocabulary foundation for the students to build on as the year progresses. Therefore, continuously using vocab strategies is crucial for your lesson plans.

Of course, if it were up to you as a teacher, you would want students to learn and remember ALL of the vocabulary you use throughout the school year. However, that simply doesn't happen, especially in secondary education when students have a minimum of six classes to attend every day. So, it is up to the teacher to select specific vocabulary that the students will need in order to avoid falling behind in your class. A way to help students understand a word is to show develop and understanding of the concept behind that word through experience. Concepts create mental images for the students to grasp when seeing or hearing a word. Being able to create visuals in addition to words is a great way to reach multiple intelligence's in your classroom. Graphic organizers as well as actual pictures of objects, animals or people is a great way to visually engage your students in concepts; thus words. 

Some writing to learn strategies that could be used to help students understand concepts of words include:

Word Exploration: activate schemata and jog long term memory; normally used as a free write that is ungraded and a quick five minutes.

Brainstorming

List-Group-Label

Word Sorts

Knowledge Ratings

Culturally Responsive Teaching in Diverse Classrooms

April 2, 2013

Content Area Reading

Culturally Responsive Teaching in Diverse Classrooms

"Different languages and cultures are gifts in our classrooms" (Mraz et. al., 50). Teaching allows us a wonderful opportunity to embrace differences among ourselves and our students and create a community within our classrooms. One of the worst experiences I had as a child was being in a classroom and feeling as if my culture and beliefs were being unrepresented for eight months our of the nine month school year; black history month was the only time being black was even discussed. As a teacher, we have the chance to allow students to not only see themselves in the literature brought to the classroom, but other students as well. Reading can easily become universal; it is up to the educator to bring that diversity to the classroom.

Language is the first step into seeing into a culture that differs from your own. To often, students that struggle with the English language and differ culturally from the "American norm" are left to fail in a school system that is unwilling to embrace these differences. As teachers, we must accept and encourage this diversity to help build our classroom learning environment. Mraz et. al. speak of an American history teacher that avoids correcting grammar within class discussions because he feels that the importance should be put on understanding of the content being learned and not the way it is being said. I agreed 100 percent with this stance. To many times have I been in a classroom and seen students shut down after taking that leap and speaking their mind about something in class after they were corrected on there grammar. I think that students that already struggle with the English language are taking a huge step by participating in class, often because they may be self conscious about the way they speak. I think the worst thing a teacher can do is criticize a student on the way that they speak versus engaging the student in a positive way because they are involved.

As educators, we must continuously focus on engaging students in the transformative and decision making/social action approach. These approaches "help students understand diverse ethnic and cultural perspectives by providing them with ongoing opportunities to read about concepts and events, make judgments about them, think critically, and generate their own conclusions and opinions" (Mraz et. al., 55). By further engaging this process and allowing students to participate in different activities and projects that relate to these culturally important issues, you will allow students to put these concepts into socially relevant circumstances. When picking out books that are culturally inclusive of your students, some of the questions to consider would be:

Is this book good literature?

Is this book culturally accurate?

Are cultural issues presented comprehensively?

Are minorities relevant?

Are dialogue and relationships culturally authentic?

Studying Text

March 19, 2013

Content Area Reading

Chapter 10: Studying Text

As educators, the use of texts within our classrooms is extremely important in helping students learn our content area materials. We use text everyday in our own personal lives and it is important for us as teachers to help students use texts correctly and in a beneficial way. By creating and effectively using reading strategies in your classroom, you will be increasing the amount of information students can process and gain from your lessons.

In order for students to even begin learning these strategies, there must be an emphasis put on different text structure and how to use them. These features are important building blocks that will enable students to find important information in an understandable way. External texts structures in textbooks and novels are the features of the preface, table of contents, appendixes, and indexes. When students are aware of these book highlights, they will be able to find crucial information in a way that is less time consuming. They aids are especially helpful when searching for information in a 500 page textbook. There are also the internal text structures, which is the texts in which the author tries to explain and describe different concepts to the reader.  This format is most often seen in informational texts. By being able to identify this structure, a reader will be more easily be able to pick out what information is more or less important. 

A very helpful tool that should be used by students when reading a text is a type of graphic organizer. These can act as visual displays that help students grasp important information and ideas. By writing down these different ideas, students are able to interact with and further understand what is being displayed in the book. These organizers can also be helpful in creating other strategies, such as writing summaries. The students will be able to use these notes in order to portray what they felt were the main concepts that the author was trying to convey. By reiterating their original ideas, they are able to expand their thoughts in a way that might have been much more difficult before.

Planning Instruction and Writing

Content Area Reading

Chapter 9 & 5

As an educator in the twenty first century, one of the things that we all must think about is the continuous diversity within all education classrooms. It is almost impossible today to go into a public school that does not have at least a handful of students from different countries or that speak different languages. As a future English professional, one of my biggest challenges is teaching not only students with English as their first language, but students who may speak multiple languages and are unfamiliar with my own. I know that as someone that loves all things English, it is easy for me to get swept away in my content area mindset. Chapter 5 in Content Area Reading focuses on the importance of explicit strategy instruction and planning that will lead to engagement and differentiation for all students.

The steps within explicit strategies have been organized and set out in different categories by the authors of this texts. Under explicit strategy instruction there is:

1. Informal Assessment: A tryout of a particular literacy strategy in order to assess where students stand and how you might need to differentiate accordingly.

2. Creating Awareness/Explanation: Open discussion of ideas between the teacher and the students in order for students to understand the rationale and process behind the particular strategy.

3. Model & Demonstrate: This is a follow-up session presented by the teacher in which he/she demonstrates the literacy strategy through teacher modeling; i.e. providing a chart or PowerPoint that walks through the steps of the strategy slowly and clearly.

4. Practice: Have the students practice the strategy through using different texts the teacher provides, watching for how successful they are or if they are still struggling.

5. Application: Providing regular class assignments that highlight/emphasize the use of the strategy with different texts.

Through allowing this process along with regular lesson plans that involve constant engagement through critical thinking, I am assured that my students will receive the knowledge they need in order to take them to the next level as a strong reader and writer.

In chapter 9 of Content Area Reading, Vacca emphasizes the use of writing across the curriculum in all content areas as a way to increase understanding and facilitate engagement within the classroom. As someone who has found a passion in writing throughout my life, I want to be able to provide students with the same enjoyment in a way that allows for a deeper understanding in my classroom. After reading about the many Writing to Learn activities and then reading this chapter on writing within your content area, I am convinced of the many activities that will allow for students to increase texts comprehension within the class. 

Learning With Trade Books & WTL

Content Area Reading/Writing 

Chapter 11 & Chapter 2

Growing up in an urban area, I remember being in junior high and craving a trade book. Of course, at the time, I didn't know that they were called "trade books", but I did know that they were novels that we would be able to take home and read whenever we would like. I knew that they would be new and most likely recent and relatable to me and my life; what I was actually going through. I remember using the textbooks that were years old, with bent binding and ripped pages. As a student that loved to learn and think outside of the box, those books would have given me and many others hope. 

Chapter 11 in Content Area Reading focused on the need for trade books and there role/purpose within the classroom. Students get tired of reading textbooks that gloss over facts in uninteresting ways. Although some books have pictures and writing that is easy for a reader to understand, they often do not go in depth on the topic or provide different perspectives of the events at hands. By providing students with trade books, they are able to not only gain different points of view in regards to a topic, but they are allowed to think critically and evaluate different circumstances in ways they may not have done before. Allowing students to work with both textbooks and trade books correspondingly, a teacher would be able to assure students with the tools to evaluate their self knowledge, interpretation, perspective and application skills. 

I think the great thing about trade books is that their are so many different types of styles that you can use within your classroom no matter what content area you teach. As a future English teacher, I would be able to use poetry books, nonfiction/fiction novels, short stories and even graphic novels in my class in order to provide different perspectives of a period. If I was teaching a section on the Harlem Renaissance, my options would be endless. An interesting book type that was brought up in the chapter, as well as in class, was the idea of picture books in the secondary classroom. Students are truly never to old for colorful picture books, especially ones that have a great message to tell. I think that just providing a quick inside look at a certain subject with a picture book is a great opener into a unit. 

Chapter 2 in Content Area Writing focuses on different strategies in which students can write to learn in unique ways. The chapter begins with different types of writing that one might not even think of as actual writing when they are doing it, such as making a grocery or pros & cons list. However, this type of writing allows students to begin thinking about what they see or don't see, and any type of writing that makes a student think is what's worthwhile. The chapter speaks of writing to learn as informal writing that is exploratory and personal. This writing is not for the teacher to assess, but for the students to explore their minds from. By getting these thoughts out on paper, they begin to think about them in ways that they may not have before. This writing should be short and unedited as well, giving the students time to just spit their ideas out without the worry of them being looked at or graded. I believe this type of writing is where the beginnings of a class discussion form beautifully. Students tend to be more confident about what they want to say once they have gotten their ideas out somewhere in some organized way that makes sense to them. I think the abstractness of this form of writing is what makes it so unintimidating and successful.

Assessing Students and Texts

Monday
February 18, 2013

How do I assess students for *understanding* rather than memorization?

As I look back at my time in high school, I feel that a lot of my teachers made the mistake of thinking that because I had memorized the material, I had truly learned it. However, once done with the unit and test, the material became a distanced hazed; disappearing almost as fast as my cramming the night before had allowed it to come. I was in advanced classes and did well in them all, but I realized that I wasn't really learning anything. I couldn't apply what I was doing to real life situations. It was not until college when I learned how to study to learn and not study to memorize.

So, as I get closer to my own secondary classroom, I want to learn more ways to incorporate knowledge and understanding into my assessments. Not just ways in which the students have memorized the information to pick choice a, b, c or d on the multiple choice test. Chapter 4 discusses both formal and informal types of assessments that can be implicated in a classroom in order to determine what students have or have not learned. In regards to formal assessment, the books talks about standardized tests for your class.  Here is where my interest peaked. How do I make a standardized tests that enables my students to show there full understanding of a topic. Multiple choice? True or False? A student could have a lucky guessing streak and have a high chance of at least getting a C. When I was in high school, I simply memorized the main points of each lecture and apply those memories during the test hour. Once done, those memories faded away and I continued on with my day to day life. What is the perfect test? Quite a loaded question, I'm aware, but I digress.

I believe the problem of coverage focused learning occurs when students begin to teach toward standardized tests that they are held accountable for. At what point are teachers giving the chance to truly teach so that their students will learn and excel; using that knowledge outside of school and in college? Chapter 4 discusses the penalizing of teachers who do not reach a certain passing rate for their students on the test. Unfortunately, these tests do not necessarily say if students understand the work or not. These tests, again, call for memorization of facts for the subjects of math, science, reading and writing. For the students without the best of memories, they are stuck with remedial classes and failing test grades.

Literacy Matters; Writing in Content Areas

Reader Response Number One

Content Area Reading/Writing: Chapter One

In Chapter one of Content Area Writing (CAW), authors Harvey Daniels, Steven Zemelman and Nancy Steineke bring to light the known idea that students are writing more than ever before in this Millennia. Students are creating websites such as their personal pages on Facebook and Myspace, creative writing blogs and text messages; all of which they use to express themselves in ways that they cannot do in any other way. However, the book speaks of a "writing crisis", in which students are not focusing enough on academic writing that will help them achieve professional goals in the future.

When reading this alongside chapter one in Content Area Reading (CAR), I was amazed at how relatable both chapters were to each other. Chapter one of Content Area Reading focused on the need for teachers to create active and engaging lessons that incorporate both reading and writing in ways that students can explore and enjoy. When comparing this to the other chapter in Content Area Writing, I found that the way to get to students to bring in their outside enjoyment of writing is to engage them in unique concepts that will allow them to express themselves in that same way academically.

In the end, students just want to be able to relate to the work that they are doing. They also WANT to learn. They crave knowledge in a way that interest them. As a teacher, it is our job to find intriguing ways to do just that. Content Area Writing speaks about writing being "part of a better life", and makes the claim that being able to "bring words to life on paper" makes someone simply feel better and acts as a release. By providing different ways to create this outlet within the classroom, not only will the students overall writing improve, but they will enjoy academic writing much more.

Of course, simply stating all of these facts is much easier typed and said than done. There are different things that come into affect within the classroom that may affect what we as teachers can go over or include in our curriculum. More and more it seems that we are teaching towards a standardized test that allows little to no room for engaging activities. CAW speaks of the different standardized tests that call for more writing instruction in order to improve the writing scores on these tests. However, there simply isn't enough time in a day! Teachers have a curriculum full of different things they must do in order to meet the required standards for their students. When do they find the time to teach towards these tests? Also, these tests do not truly tell us if a student can write or not. When they present prejudice and imperfect tests (as stated in the book), they receive imperfect answers. This is a true problem when thinking about improvement in ones classroom.