Response to Breanne

I definitely see how literacy is incorporated into Science and Social Studies in my placement. Actually I have seen more literacy in Science and Social Studies class compare to English Language Art class. There are a lot of writing in Science and Social Studies class because students need to write lab reports do research on the topics that they are learning in Social Studies class and write down information about it. Now the MEAP test is done, I can wait to see the real English Language Art class. Until this year, I was always placed in either Kindergarten or first grade. So I never got a chance to see a textbook used in the classroom. However, now I see how textbooks are used in classroom and textbooks contains very important contents but the way it is used in the classroom does not really delivery the contents to students. For example in Social Studies class, students take turns to read each paragraph. I see many students are not paying attention when other students read for them. Then, when we go to computer labs to do research on the topic that they learned, not many students know what they have to research on. Thus I think if we start to use some practices to be actively reading through textbooks, they will really benefit to students to comprehend the textbook better.

The first chapter that I read from Strategies That Work was chapter 12 titled Content Literacy: Reading for Understanding in Social Studies and Science. Much of this chapter focuses on different practices that can be done to helps students comprehend text in Social Studies and Science. Many Social Studies suggestions were creating things to help summarize all the information, whether using writing or visuals. Such as: concept maps, story maps, maps of countries and cultures, time line of historical events, journals and personal narratives, etc. A couple of these comprehension strategies I will be using in my reading unit. These include: concept maps, a journal, and a time line of events. For the time line, I plan on reading a book that is historical fiction and having students apply the comprehension strategy sequencing to put the important events in order. This will not only teach students a comprehension strategy to use during reading, but it will also tie in Social Studies and help them to recognize a strategy that could be used in the Social Studies curriculum. The Science reading practices in this chapter also include creating things such as posters, mind maps, and picture dictionaries. Many of them were visual representations, but there were also things such as keeping journals and everything focused around summarizing information. This chapter showed me that many of the science and social studies practices for content literacy center around making meaning of the text that is being read in order for students to walk away with the big idea and concepts from the text. There are many different ways shared in this chapter and each of them help to make connections and push student’s thinking. They are also different activities that encourage engagement from the students and serve to keep the student’s interest. This chapter helped give me ideas for different practices I can use when designing my units. It reminded me of the importance of implementing practices like these in all areas and not just during reading time.
The second chapter of Strategies That Work that I read was chapter 14 Reading to Understand Textbooks. I knew right away that this chapter would be interesting because I know that many students find reading from their textbooks to be boring and therefore do not take much meaning from the text that they read. This is exactly what the chapter says at the beginning. That no student has ever walked into the classroom loving their textbook and that often the text books either have TMI (too much information) or NEI (not enough information). The big idea of this chapter is that it is up to us to set up our lessons so that students are not just reading to “memorize” the text to complete an assignment or test, but that the students are actually thinking their way through the text. This chapter shares some practices to be actively reading through textbooks. Some of these practices include: being selective about what is read, coding text with sticky notes, merging thinking with new information, discussing in small groups, using the jigsaw strategy, etc. All of these practices help to make reading out of textbooks bearable, as well as beneficial for student’s learning. We need to make sure that students understand the purpose of reading the text, and are comprehending and making meaning of the text as they read it. These practices got me thinking about textbooks in our curriculum and how some of them could be used to help students to become active readers while they are reading them. For example, with our textbooks in science, I personally think that they are very boring to just read, and so I understand completely why my students would think so too. Therefore, when we read out of our textbook, I think I am going to implement some of these strategies to help my students make connections and taking meaning from the text. One practice that I really liked was either making sticky notes on thinking and new information or making a two-column think sheet labeled Notes or Facts/My thinking. This will help students to write down new information that they learned and make connections with their own thinking of the new concepts. This chapter provided me with a lot of practices that I can use in the future for subjects such as science where the main reading source is their textbook.

Response to Carolyn

In my TE classes, we have talked few times about a scripted curriculum. Many of us including me think a scripted curriculum can be helpful but it is not realistic. If a teacher is reading from a scripted curriculum, we don’t need to go to college and take classes to learn how to be a teacher and learn how to teach students. Also with a scripted curriculum, I think there is a limitation. I have not seen a scripted curriculum for real, so I am not sure how it is written but every class is different. Nobody can expect what kind of students will be in our classroom. Each classroom needs their own instructions and modifications depend on the students. I am not sure about the idea of reading being a collaborative effort. I like the idea of students help each other to understand the text or guide them to read. However, at some point they all should learn how to read and comprehend by themselves without help from others. And I am surprise to hear that it is supposed to take around 3 weeks to train students but your class been going on the sixth week of school and still have quite a ways to go. I am sure students are bored doing it because it has been dragged or last for so long when it should not be. Also, I am not sure if students can handle “coach” other students even though they have been trained. Using my 5th graders as an example, most of them do not like to read so my MT and I always pushing them to read during silent reading time. If not, they will just daydream and look for chance to talk to their neighbor. So imagine students are in a pair doing reading together when they don’t care about reading and not taking this serious, I don’t think this will help students at all.

This week, I decided that I wanted to discuss PALS. In Leslie, PALS is a big deal. My MT makes it sound like there is a lot of pressure from high-up people, such as our principal to make sure that our students are being trained almost everyday in PALS. For those of you who may not know what PALS is, it is a scripted curriculum that stands for Peer Assisted Learning Strategies. Apparently, it has recently been released to schools after a decade of research and development. Essentially, students are being trained on how to "coach" other students while they read/comprehend, making reading a collaborative effort. The training process requires students to sit in pairs, while the teacher/intern reads from a script, while the students are supposed to be listening intently to what is being read.

We are still very much in the training process. It's supposed to take around 3 weeks to train; however, we are going on the sixth week of school, and we still have quite a ways to go. According to my MT, once the students are trained, the program yields great results. However, the training process is rough. From what I have witnessed, I find the program to be incredibly tedious, and the students do not seem to taking it too seriously. I feel a bit ridiculous reading the script to them everyday.

So, my question is, for those of you that also do PALS, what are your opinions on it? What are the results? For those of you that do not use PALS, how do you feel about a scripted curriculum? How do you feel about the idea that students are being trained in a rigorous manner? How do you feel about the idea of reading being a collaborative effort?

Assessment Sites in the Classroom

Reading 1: Students can retell a story in their own words.
We have a literacy teacher Mrs.Salstrom in our school. She comes to my classroom twice a week for MEAP prep. Every time she comes to class, she brings one short picture book and reads to class. After she is done reading, she always asks if someone can tell what happened in the story or summarize the story in their own words. So, when someone retells the story, Mrs.Salstrom can find out if that a student can retell story using their own words and did comprehend the story. One of the advantages is that Mrs.Salstrom can quickly know if that student understood the story and another one is that student gets a feedback from the teacher right away. However, this is only limited to one student or maybe just two students because whole class cannot retell the story to the teacher.

Writing 1: Students can use writing to communicate ideas.
My MT and I use our bulletin boards to post students’ writings with different “themes”. For example, one bulletin boards is about “where did your feet take you?” which we did very beginning of school year. For this one, students had to write one paragraph about what they did over the summer vacation. Student had about 45 minutes to write a paragraph what they decorated their paper which was a foot shaped. Another bulletin board is about rock star. Every week, a class will choose one student in the class and write one paragraph about that one student (everyone has to write something nice about them). These are some fun and quick writings that my students do once a while. Advantages of these assessment is that students do not feel like this is a test that they will get grade on and they will just freely write whatever they want to within the big topics. A disadvantage will be that students are not used to write an essay or longer writings. They will get frustrated if we asked them to write 5 paragraph for their essays because they are so use to only write a paragraph.

Writing 2: Students can write for different purposes and audiences.
I have seen two essays in my classroom so far. One was for social studies class when they had to write a persuasive essay to newspaper editor and another one was during their MEAP prep that they have to write argumentative essay. Before students start writing their essays, my MT explicitly explained that they are not writing for teachers (my MT and I) to read. There are always audiences and purposes of writings and they need to think about their audiences before they write. So, for social studies they wrote in a letter format because they were going to write to the newspaper editor and for MEAP prep writing, students wrote in general 5 paragraph essay format. These assessments have shown teachers that they wrote for different purposes and different audiences.