Chapter 9 post

I have always liked learning new words, and I believe that many students across the achievement spectrum enjoy vocabulary acquisition. When I went through school I remember this one teacher I had that made us write a word 20 times, then the definition 20 times, then 20 different sentences with the vocabulary word in it. Back then I though t that the teacher was doing this because she hated us, later I realized that repetition is the key to memorization. I would never use repetition to solely teach vocabulary though, I would prefer to let my students choose their vocabulary word from the text, but that is assuming that all students do their reading (a lot don't). I liked the idea study words, don't memorize, because a student can memorize the words and the definition for a week, then forget everything once the test is over, that is why I remember the vocabulary words that I use, not the ones I memorized to get good grades.Teaching word parts and different suffixes is important too, when a student knows the Latin meaning of certain parts of words they are on their way to mastering the English language. Today I went to my students study hall for field experience, we studied math, then finished by preparing for his upcoming vocabulary test. WE had fun studying for vocabulary, and I take credit for this, I made it fun by explaining how mastering the English language will allow for him to shock people with his repertoire of words, but I also made explaining every different word fun for him. I used all of the words in funny contexts, and gave his suggestions for how to use the vocab words in class to impress. To my surprise my student actually got interested in using these new words for his advantage, that made my day that he got excited about something I was teaching him.

Chapter 8 post

The idea of post reading strategies is unique to education because of the wide spectrum of what people will take from a text with them for the rest of their life. I like the idea of scales because of how it gets the student to feel associated or involved with the text. When a student places their opinion on the scale they are joining a team of people that feel the same way they do; this is a great way of covertly teaching students to stand up for what they believe in. I also think it is very benfical that they grade the student on how well they defend their argument, this will force students to learn the art of the spoken word. I personally think that debate skills should be stressed more in language arts classroom, because it is one's ability to make their point, convince and orate that lends to one's success. Also, I think it would be great if students were advanced enough to at the end of the book figure out the scales on their own, to show that they understand the different perspectives that people might have about the book, and the underlying questions the text begs. Somebody Wanted But So Seems like it would definitely teach the gist of a story but would go no deeper than the surface level. I think the It Says I say exercise would be great for getting students to think critically about characters motivations and help them make inferences about the text. My own feeling is that after a text is taught the teacher should give the student reasons to remember the text and inspire the students to look for the morals and situations from the text.

Chapter 7 post

This chapter was very interesting to me because I at field experience I see teachers using a couple of these different during reading strategies.The chapter starts off talking about kids who 'just don't get it' and then talks about a teachers who tells the troubled student to be more like the students who are good readers. I think it would have been to show the troubled reader a good response to a given question to give them some ground work for what is expected, but to have the two smart kids lecture the bad reader would not have good results for the troubled student. It would leave the bad reader felling like he is less than his or her classmates and could lead to the smart kids developing an inflated ego. I know that the say something approach doesn't work, today at field experience a teacher had the students get in groups to read and discuss, they didn't even read, they talked girls and sports, I got my student on track though, and explained to him not to distracted by idle chit chat and shooting the shit, but to rather keep his eyes on the prize, and how an education is the key to success. He bought it. The telling students to go talk about a reading in small groups is putting too much responsibility on the student to think critically in many different ways about a text. The teacher should lead or at least start and guide the discussion to ensure that students are gaining valuable experiences. I think the rereading technique is very valuable to students, I had to learn this for Shakespeare and coming to college level classes. But the rereading depends a lot on whether a student is a dependent reader, I will always try to teach my students first off to become independent readers.

Chapter 5 post

Chapter five gave me some great ideas about how to get students to realize that they are making inferences and how important inferencing is to comprehending a text. Since people make inferences all the time in everyday life they probably aren't aware of their inferencing when reading. In the case of young people, they need us to fine tune their inferencing and help those along who cant make the connections. In life the ability to realize what motivates people, and understanding peoples actions around one makes one more likely to succeed. As a teacher I will explain to my students how being able to inference a text is like being able to read people, in a social manner, this should get all students immediate attention. I liked the list of what and how skilled readers make inferences, I wouldn't put this list on my classroom wall and say "be like this", but I would keep it as signs to look for and behaviors to encourage. I suspect that pages 69 through 71 are teaching gold. Particularly, I remember teachers doing #2 when I was younger, that is read very intriguing passages from a book and have the class discuss what they thought was going on in the passage, then reveal the answer. But my favorite was the 5 minute mysteries, the teacher would read it aloud and the whole class would try to figure it out, every one got involved, even the bad kids. I was enlightened by # 4, when for the first time I realized that while I read ahead of the book I was teaching, I should use what I was reading currently to create some discussions that would correspond throughout a text, so that my teaching of the text had a clearer focus and 'came together' at the end.