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.