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?