Task 1: Jetton, T. L., & Shanahan, C (2012). Adolescent Literacy in the academic disciplines. Ch. 1 & 2 pp. 1-68 (Essential Question A)
Pre-Posting -- Reviewing what you read on Learning from Text: Adolescent Literacy from the Past Decade & The Challenge of Reading Disciplinary, Chapters 1 & 2, think about the theoretical underpinnings for each chapter’s concepts AND think about how the role that written and oral texts need to play in the learning of your specific discipline. (Disciplinary literacy is perhaps in many respects a reconceptualization of what it means to teach an academic subject. Disciplines are organized ways of thinking about the world, and learning within a discipline involves more than becoming merely knowledgeable. Learning must also encompass how scientists, mathematicians, historians, and others read, write, and think. This is the difference between covering a subject and teaching a discipline.)
I strongly recommend having the readings read by Tuesday, November 12
Postings: Reading your reflections and interactions about the readings is the only direct way I have of assessing the quality of your understanding of — and engagement with — the assigned readings. See the expectations that follow for the more directed kinds of responses you would make according to the role you are assigned for this week.
Roles:
There are 4 people in each conversation group. You only respond to those in your own group.
Day 4 (Second online meeting day)
Group
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Initiators
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Summarizers
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Responders
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Illuminators
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1
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Ian
Gorton
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Michael
Gillis
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Karin
Logerquist
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Molly
Nelson
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2
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Laura
Mayo
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Nicholas
Gaudette
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Jesse
Vavreck
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Nancy
Nair
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3
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Jonathan Reeves
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Kaylee
Wiens
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Kris
Latcham
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Paul Garlock
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4
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Sean
Johnson
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Sara
Stein
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Erik
Krueger
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Michelle O’Connor
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Initiators start the conversation. They must do the reading immediately and get their entries in during the first day or two so others have material to respond to. Grading will be based on the quality of questions, speculations, and thought-provoking prompts that will get people really considering the ideas presented in the content. You must include your own responses to the ideas as well. If another Initiator has already posted his/her ideas, the next Initiator to post must enter new ideas. In other words, don't repeat what's already posted.
Initiators posts are due: Wednesday, November 13 before 5:00 PM
Responders directly address and extend the ideas that the Initiators have thrown out for consideration as well as adding your own unique responses to the readings. It is not enough to say, "I agree", or "That was a nice idea." Responders need to enlarge the conversation, make connections to their own experiences, and draw from other material in the readings to expand on the conversation. Responders need to get their ideas in at least 48 hours before the due date so the Summarizers can do their work (below).
Responders and Illuminators posts are due:
Friday, November 15 before 5:00
Illuminators teach, guide, edify, and enlighten. They take their own and other people's ideas beyond surface statements to broader and deeper ground. They pull from other sources, such as pertinent internet sites, they have encountered to shed light on questions or confusions. They clarify. Illuminators add their contributions after the Initiators, before or after the Responders, and before the Summarizers (i.e., before the last day).
Responders and Illuminators posts are due:
Friday, November 15 before 5:00
Summarizers pull together and consolidate all the key ideas from the group. They are the last to make their entries, probably best done in the evening of the deadline day. Every participant (except fellow Summarizers) should be named, and the contributions of each acknowledged in the summary. Summarizers should be organized and concise. Capture the essence. (If there are any group members who have not submitted by 8:00 p.m. of the deadline day, you do not have to wait for them — just summarize those who have submitted up to that time.)
Summarizers posts are due:
Sunday, November 17 before 5:00.
Respond to another member in our group. This response is due: Sunday, November 17, 11:59 PM
Friends, I had everything set to so that I could post last night, but my sister-in-law had an emergency C-section. She and the baby are well, but because of this, I'm behind. I will have a post in sometime tonight.
ReplyDeleteI apologize for my error.
Sean do not fret! Hope everything is going well!
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI am hopeful that these texts are just setting up future readings as they were dense and difficult to navigate, especially considering the topic of navigating text. Looking ahead I see specific chapters on content categories, this is what I cannot wait to read. Even still, as I read through the assigned texts, I realized that I took more notes here than on any other assigned reading throughout the program.
ReplyDeleteI was taken, both in week 1 and this week, by “curriculum literacies.” We cannot look at all 5th graders, rather those reading at or above grade level, and assume they can read a text because the text is at a 5th grade reading level. We all have multiple reading levels: I am strong at modern literature, I am strong at music, I am lousy at statistics, and I am alright at (most) technology. Knowing this would be helpful for all teachers, even at the college level.
I must admit that in this reading, I am a bit frustrated by the fact they write that we need to know ‘x’, but do not define ‘x’ or tell us how to teach ‘x.’ For example readers who define a purpose for reading are more likely to comprehend the text, especially when reading online (p. 13). I have some theories, mostly from the book “How to Read a Book” that I mentioned last online class. How do you propose teaching “setting a purpose?”
In the first reading it mentioned that KWL is not a reading strategy, it is an instructional strategy (p. 6). The text went on to discuss a little bit of their reasoning and then tell us that we need to know the difference between the two, but does not differentiate. So, what really is the difference between a reading strategy and an instructional strategy? Does the use of KWL help with my frustration about how to teach setting a purpose before reading?
Should we “dumb down” thick readings and put the complex text into bite-size pieces? This is a bit of the opposite of what the author was describing in the section “Long Noun Phrases” in the second reading (p 40).
In our group we have: Music, Health/P.E, ELA, and ELL. I am curious how this course will benefit the ELA and ELL teacher candidates, who have already worked through much of this in their content areas, without frustrating those of us to whom this is new (read: Sean).
Thanks for the post Sean! Although I am the ELL person in our group, I still share some of the same frustrations about parts of the text. For the most part, I found a lot of the information to be very repetitive of what I have learned / am learning in my ELL classes.
DeleteIn regards to your thoughts about the KWL being a reading strategy, I also disagree with the book. I have seen the KWL used in reading comprehension tasks. Perhaps the way they book views the KWL, it does not really help us READ the words on the page, but I think it still helps students build a confident base about previous knowledge, provide an opportunity about what they want to learn from the activity, and what they took away from it.
This may not be a reading strategy, however, I see nothing wrong with using instructional strategies to help reading.
Aspects of Chapter 2 were again mostly things that I am already familiar with, and I feel the book did a pretty good job summarizing the different topics. (Especially the section about nominalization pg 41) I think these topics are VERY important for classroom teachers to understand. Certain topics such as these can be easily overlooked by native English speakers, because they consist of language skills that we are able to use simply because we grew up using them. These subtle and natural changes to language are actually very apparent and unnatural to English Language Learners.
I hope I answered enough of your questions! Please do not feel overwhelmed with the contents of this book, as they are very important to the development of ELL students! Looking forward to responding to more responses!
Sean,
DeleteThank you for that summary. The last few weeks we have learned an overwhelming amount of new "reading/language" strategies, statics, and ideas when it comes to how to teach a content specific lesson. Most often I feel we are getting so much new information that I feel overwhelmed and then will watch a video or read a paragraph and it will feel like it is all coming together. Even if you we can not implement or don't agree with all of the strategies listed in these first few chapters we can call agree that we are starting to look at the language we use in a whole new framework. Every time I am at my field experience or as I write my TPA lesson plans I am more aware of the importance and the background knowledge of the students I will be implementing the lesson to.
As I read these very information heavy chapters I saw a lot of repeating theme about the importance of literacy. Most of the researchers focused on comprehension skills.
ReplyDeleteI pulled my most insightful passages below:
Dole, Duffy, Roehler, and Pearson (1991) suggested “teaching Strategies” these include the importance on using comprehension strategies including, determining importance, summarizing, making inferences, student-generated questioning, and comprehension monitoring.
In the last decade new strategies to increase comprehension was produced by Reciprocal Teaching. They focused on strategies of predication, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. Students then we slowly asked to model and using their own personal experiences.
Lastly, another overall theme I noticed was using modeling and examples of prior experiences, as mentioned above this could be the teacher or the student modeling and sharing prior experiences.
I found a great website that has some very useful tools to incorporate the appropriate strategies into any classroom to support literacy.
Adolescent Literacy: A resource for parents and teachers for students in 4th -12th grade. http://www.adlit.org/
AdLit.org is a national multimedia project offering information and resources to the parents and educators of struggling adolescent readers and writers. AdLit.org is an educational initiative of WETA, the flagship public television and radio station in the nation's capital, and is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and by the Ann B. and Thomas L. Friedman Family Foundation.
The reason I chose this website was because of the useful information it provided on Common Core and it had applicable teaching strategies. All for you to download!
Keep this website handy: http://www.adlit.org/strategy_library/
Hey Michelle!
DeleteAwesome website that you found! I really liked the different strategies. Modeling can be very effective if the students respond well to it. I think it would be the most effective if the class sizes were smaller, giving more attention to the individuals that need it.
I liked how you pulled out the teaching strategies:
Delete*determining importance
*summarizing
*making inferences
*student-generated questioning
*comprehension monitoring, and those specific comprehension strategies:
*predication
*questioning
*clarifying
*summarizing
These are all elements we work a great deal with in English - Language Arts and I am always on the look out for ways to simplify, solidify, and clarify in a concrete form what exactly it is I am "teaching" in Language Arts, since it can be such a subjective and philosophical area.
A great author, Kelly Gallagher, offers a lot of comprehension activities for ELA teachers especially, but he might be a good author for anybody to read who wants their students improving literacy. I, for one, don't feel qualified to teach math or science texts at all - so I can only imagine it's the same for you guys with English texts. All the different texts are confusing, and it's nice to have the broad concepts (listed above) that we can all agree on & return to.
Sean, Erik and Michelle all seemed to react to the text a little differently this week. As Sean pointed out, Erik and I have had a bit more experience considering literacy since our content areas are already directly related to a lot of the concepts expounded upon in this course. Therefore, Michelle mentioned feeling overwhelmed at times, and Sean feels frustrated. That being said, Erik did a good job in his post of trying to use his prior knowledge to connect to Sean and Michelle is keeping a very positive outlook, and found a useful link for the group to continue learning about this week’s literacy concepts.
ReplyDeleteI think some of the overall take-away’s from this week’s reading and discussion are as follows:
*We need to figure out the difference between a reading strategy and an instructional strategy (question introduced by Sean), and when that line can be blurred (as mentioned by Erik).
*We need to keep in mind the different expertise of various content areas, ELL and/or ELA vs. Music/Health, and utilize our peers whenever possible.
*Michelle offered us multiple links to further our knowledge base on this topic, or just bookmark in our computers for later perusal.
Thank you all for a great discussion this week – as summarizer, I don’t add my own two cents as much, but found all the ideas you picked out to be important and fruitful nuggets.