Chapter 4 & Text Talk

            Chapter 4 discusses read alouds and shared reading in great detail.  I enjoyed reading and learning more about them and their differences.  The article persay I did not enjoy as well as the textbook because the textbook always explains their focus and are more convincing, in my opinion.  A read aloud is a passage selected by the teacher to read publicly to a large or small group of students with the purpose of pulling out the content of the text whereas shared reading is a passage jointly shared by the student and the teacher focusing on a specific text feature or comprehension strategy.  In both, the reading is done by the teacher; therefore the teacher should read using prosody, modeling reading as interesting even if it is expository text.  The difference in the two is when and how they are used because their focuses are different as mentioned earlier.  In the article it mentioned that the text chosen for read alouds play an important part because for one, it aids in developing literacy, and two it needs to be challenging enough to make students use their schema to perform metacognition.  Also in the article it mentions how students are able to think and reason before or when they come to school but we have to scaffold how to think and reason while reading other texts. Scaffold instruction in shared reading extends students’ learning because the learner receives immediate feedback and further prompts to arrive at solutions.  Shared reading allows teachers to address comprehension strategies through modeling with each student.  After each shared reading is it also important that teachers allow a think- aloud because you want to make sure that students not only know the concepts but understand them and can manipulate them correctly.

Writing to Learn!!!

            In reading the article by Knipper and Duggan they specifically discussed writing to learn in content area classes, but in the text Fisher and Frey discussed writing to learn in general, for content area classes, and more.  I better understood Fisher and Frey than Knipper and Duggan.  I especially liked the point made when they mentioned, “writing to learn is an opportunity for students to recall, clarify, and question what they know and what they still wonder about.” I believe in allowing the student to write and tell me what they are thinking other than molding them to say what you want them to. You can ask a student questions all day and they answer them right or wrong, but if you allow the student to write what he or she is thinking and give it support to why they are thinking the way they are, you will be able to determine why the student thinks the way they do versus that is just what they think.  I like one of the definitions given for writing to learn because it states that writing to learn involves getting students to think about and to find the words to explain what they are learning, how they understand that learning, and what their own processes of learning involve. I encountered an instructor who did not like the way I wrote my paper and therefore “nick-picked” the whole paper and I got a low score.  She said it did not make sense of what I was writing, but if the paper is written on my thoughts and point of view on education, what gives her the right to say it is wrong? When I based it off my schema, gained from information taught by her colleagues. Fisher and Frey also mentioned that writing to learn can help students learn, understand, remember, and figure out what don’t know.  I like the prompts listed to encourage writing to learn such as: admit slips, found poems, crystal ball, exit slips and especially “What if” scenarios.

Response to Content Area Literacy Instruction Article by: Barbara Moss

            The author’s argument or persuasive point throughout this article is that she believes content area literacy should not be set aside for just middle and high school leveled students, but should start at the elementary level.

            I believe the author brought out some really good points to look at concerning the issue of students not being able to be on the set reading level for each grade when it comes to expository text.  Some technologies in our society are helping students to become more interested in reading for informational purposes such as: LeapFrog activities, various apps on IPods and IPhones, and computer programs, PBSkids.org.  It’s important that students enjoy reading as much as they would enjoy a videogame for the simple fact that they need to know and understand before there was media there was literature (textbooks, newspapers, almanacs, dictionaries, thesauruses, etc.,). My church’s motto: “Together we stand, divided we fall” is very appropriate for this situation because not many people are trying to inform others on this issue.  In the article Moss reported that Armbruster only found 24 full-length articles in the years 1969 to 1991 related to this topic.  Why is that when it was emphasized back in 1925 by William S. Gray? I believe it is because society is more hung up on making new things for students to enjoy than to actually help them grow up and be professional, well organized equipped adults. 

            I honestly can say that I probably would enjoy expository text more now if I was exposed to it earlier.  The thing is with expository text is that many students cannot read it once they get to fourth grade because words that they have never been exposed to or that are on a sixth or seventh grade level are used and after they try to read it some they give up because they are not encouraged to read it, something that will help them, but are more encouraged to read maybe contemporary realism.  I do not think that everything presented to a student should be for informational purposes because then students would be “zoned” out more than you would want them, but that they should be presented with both in one together. I think concepts can be presented in a way that students will not even know that they are learning when they are, but as they are reading knowledge is gained.

            Through an activity with Dr. Ramp I was enlightened by the fact that a basal reader was around the grade level, if not on it, but the basal textbook for science content was on a 7^th grade level when the book was for 3^rd graders according to Fry’s method. This puzzles me to ask: How do we expect students to appreciate informational text when it’s not on an appropriate level? Sure advanced students would be able to work through it, but as educators we have to think about all our students.  When is society going to see that it’s an issue when college level students can only read on a 9^th grade level in expository text and work together to better our students? We have to remember they are the today, tomorrow, and the future, but it all depends on what we do today to get them there.