For this weeks entry, I would like to bless Alyse's entry "A Fluke". I really appreciate and can relate with the fact how hard it is to find the time to keep a balance between everything going on in your life. I have felt and overwhelming amount of stress with trying to balance the amount of homework and assignments and also with keeping a clean house, dinner on the table, making sure my fourteen month old son is cared for and played with, and also that I am maintaining a healthy relationship with my family and friends. It has been a lot on my plate and it has been starting to show now more than ever. I sometimes get so stressed that there is not enough time in the day to get everything done that I have been taking it out on others, and it is not ok.
I can also relate with Jacki's Entry #8 when she also talked about struggling with blogging. I have been finding it difficult in finding the motivation to write my blogs. I feel as though blogging was something totally different than what I am experiencing now. I thought that it was more like a journal where we would be able to free write, where WE were our own audience. With each entry I write, however, I have found that I was wrong. I always seem to be missing something in my blogs and I just can't seem to fix whatever is missing. Anytime I write now, I expect something to be missing and it makes me not look forward my next entry. Hopefully I will be able to get past these feeling so I can have the motivation to write my blogs each week.
I would also like to bless Kristine's entry on March 5th. She talks about her negative experiences with professors and how they would provide negative comments on almost all of her assignments she got back. I could definitely relate with her frustration and how discouraging it could be experiencing this with every assignment. I myself have had experiences with a few professors that no matter what you do, nothing you did was what he/she wanted. It made me dread completing any assignments because I knew what I would see when I got it back-a bunch of marks all over my paper. It was really frustrating because it made me feel like nothing I could do was right. This leads me to agree with Kristine in that teachers should provide 2 positive comments for every negative comment they place on a paper. As a teacher, that is something that I want to make sure I do. I don't want my students to ever feel the frustrations I have when it comes to writing. I want them to be able to enjoy it and I want my comments to help them rather then hurt them emotionally.
I guess I really didn't have one person to bless, address, or press. As I starting writing, I realized there were a lot of other entries that I could mention. I think that everyone brings up some really good points and issues, but these were just a few that stood out to me.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Entry #7
Over the last two weeks, I have been doing a lot of work on the Teaching the Genre presentation. My genre is on expository text and every article that I have read has talked about how important learning to read expository text is for a child's comprehension. They push teachers to introduce expository text to students as early as possible in their reading careers so that they will be able to develop the skills that they need to learn from such texts (Gregg & Carver-Sekeres, 2006). Children seem to enjoy reading these kinds of texts, so why are we seeing so few children reading informational texts within our classrooms? Why not have them available and make it a habit to read these kinds of books if we know our students are interested in them?
One of the articles that I read talked about the importance of direct instruction and how it is essential if teachers want students to become good readers of expository text (Gregg & Carver-Sekeres, 2006). Teachers need to be able to plan their instruction very carefully, by making sure to pay attention to three main things: building and activating background knowledge, teaching new vocabulary, and scaffolding. I feel that background knowledge is something that can be very easy to teach. I know that a lot of students come from different background and may not have the same amount of background knowledge as other members in the class, but all a teacher would have to do is build on their knowledge by teaching that student about the topic or having their peers teach them what they know so that they too can add that information into their background knowledge for the future. With informational text, there is frequently going to be new vocabulary within the readings, which is why it is most important for the teacher to teach any of these unknown words. The more practice and access students have with these kind of texts helps them learn to process information in new and different ways during their readings.
Another article that I read talked again about the lack of direct instruction on comprehension strategies and how important it is for a child's comprehension. It talked about the importance of teaching student's the text structure of expository text and how it would have a positive effect on reading comprehension. The author says that, "expository text structure awareness is one reading comprehension strategy that should be explicitly and systematically taught" (Dymock, 2005, p.177). I feel like the author makes a great point about teachers needing to take the time to teach the text structures of an expository text and how they are different from others. They need to understand that you do not need to read the text from front to back in order to understand it. Once students understand the text structure, it will in turn help them better understand the text and will improve their comprehension of expository texts. I, myself, actually learned about the two different kinds of text structures: descriptive and sequential. These both were new to me. I learned that the descriptive structures focus on the attributes of something, whereas the sequential structure focuses on a series of events that progress over time.
After reading different articles about how important teaching students about expository text is and how it can improve their reading comprehension, I want to be sure to include it in my future classroom someday. I want to be able to provide my students with informational books in the classroom that they will be able to read and become familiar with. I will also make it a point to read these kinds of books with them, in case some students don't take it upon themselves to read them on their own. The most important thing that I want to make sure I do is to teach my students the expository text structures so that it will help them better understand the books during their readings.
One of the articles that I read talked about the importance of direct instruction and how it is essential if teachers want students to become good readers of expository text (Gregg & Carver-Sekeres, 2006). Teachers need to be able to plan their instruction very carefully, by making sure to pay attention to three main things: building and activating background knowledge, teaching new vocabulary, and scaffolding. I feel that background knowledge is something that can be very easy to teach. I know that a lot of students come from different background and may not have the same amount of background knowledge as other members in the class, but all a teacher would have to do is build on their knowledge by teaching that student about the topic or having their peers teach them what they know so that they too can add that information into their background knowledge for the future. With informational text, there is frequently going to be new vocabulary within the readings, which is why it is most important for the teacher to teach any of these unknown words. The more practice and access students have with these kind of texts helps them learn to process information in new and different ways during their readings.
Another article that I read talked again about the lack of direct instruction on comprehension strategies and how important it is for a child's comprehension. It talked about the importance of teaching student's the text structure of expository text and how it would have a positive effect on reading comprehension. The author says that, "expository text structure awareness is one reading comprehension strategy that should be explicitly and systematically taught" (Dymock, 2005, p.177). I feel like the author makes a great point about teachers needing to take the time to teach the text structures of an expository text and how they are different from others. They need to understand that you do not need to read the text from front to back in order to understand it. Once students understand the text structure, it will in turn help them better understand the text and will improve their comprehension of expository texts. I, myself, actually learned about the two different kinds of text structures: descriptive and sequential. These both were new to me. I learned that the descriptive structures focus on the attributes of something, whereas the sequential structure focuses on a series of events that progress over time.
After reading different articles about how important teaching students about expository text is and how it can improve their reading comprehension, I want to be sure to include it in my future classroom someday. I want to be able to provide my students with informational books in the classroom that they will be able to read and become familiar with. I will also make it a point to read these kinds of books with them, in case some students don't take it upon themselves to read them on their own. The most important thing that I want to make sure I do is to teach my students the expository text structures so that it will help them better understand the books during their readings.
Dymock,
S. (2005). Teaching expository text structure awareness. The Reading Teacher, 59(2), 177-
181.
Gregg,
M. & Carver-Sekeres, D. (2006). Supporting children’s reading of expository
text in the geography classroom. The Reading Teacher, 60(2), 102-110.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Teacher's Comments on Student Assisgnments
Reading some of my peer's blogs, I would have to agree with Nicole with the fact that it has been sometimes hard to write some of these blogs considering I do not have my own classroom at the moment. It is kind of unrealistic in a sense to think of my "dream" classroom and what I would do in it. I don't know the kind of classroom I will have down the road let alone the kind of children that will fill it. So it is difficult to think of the different things that I would do with the children in my future classroom. However, as someone who has always been discouraged by the pen marks all over my paper, I found Sommers' article to be very appealing and something that I could relate with. Having experience with the topic, I could at least talk about what I would do in the future, based on the experiences that I have had as a student myself.
Every time I would have a paper returned to me, whether it be in elementary school, high school, or college, I would always look at the amount of writing on the paper before actually reading the comments. I didn't read whether they were positive or negative comments, I just looked at the amount of red pen on my paper. I thought that if there was a lot of marks then that meant I did something wrong, which would make me upset and it made me feel like I was a poor writer. After reading the article by Sommers, however, I realized that not all comments are have to be negative and that teachers should have a balance of positive and negative comments. This way the teacher doesn't make the student feel like there writing isn't good enough and scare the student away from writing.
As a future teacher, I don't want my students to feel the way that I would feel every time I would get a paper returned to me. I want my students to be able to benefit from the comments that I leave on their papers by making any changes that I may suggest to better their writing. However, I want to also make it a point to write positive comments on their papers as well. I don't ever want my students to get so discouraged with my comments on their papers that they are too nervous to hand in any pieces of writing in fear of what I will say to them. My goal as a teacher will be to create a balance of positive an negative comments so that my students will learn to enjoy writing instead of fearing it like I sometimes still do.
Every time I would have a paper returned to me, whether it be in elementary school, high school, or college, I would always look at the amount of writing on the paper before actually reading the comments. I didn't read whether they were positive or negative comments, I just looked at the amount of red pen on my paper. I thought that if there was a lot of marks then that meant I did something wrong, which would make me upset and it made me feel like I was a poor writer. After reading the article by Sommers, however, I realized that not all comments are have to be negative and that teachers should have a balance of positive and negative comments. This way the teacher doesn't make the student feel like there writing isn't good enough and scare the student away from writing.
As a future teacher, I don't want my students to feel the way that I would feel every time I would get a paper returned to me. I want my students to be able to benefit from the comments that I leave on their papers by making any changes that I may suggest to better their writing. However, I want to also make it a point to write positive comments on their papers as well. I don't ever want my students to get so discouraged with my comments on their papers that they are too nervous to hand in any pieces of writing in fear of what I will say to them. My goal as a teacher will be to create a balance of positive an negative comments so that my students will learn to enjoy writing instead of fearing it like I sometimes still do.
Sommers,
N. (1982). Responding to student
writing. College Composition and
Communication,
33(2), 148-156.
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