Reading Reflection #4 Subjects Matter Ch. 3 & 4

Chapters 3 and 4 are centered around a common theme, textbooks. In chapter 3 we investigated why textbooks are not enough to drive an entire class. There are several shortcomings of textbooks. One major flaw is there is simply too much information in textbooks. This makes it hard for readers to differentiate micro-details from overarching concepts. Also, textbooks are reference books, which do not read the same way was a narrative. They simply just house large amounts of information. We expect students to read and retain the information in them, but not only are they hard to read but the design of each page is distracting. To make matters even worse, textbooks are often outdated and contain major typos. The author recognizes that despite all of these shortcomings, textbooks still have an important role in many classes. Therefore, the author wanted to inform the readers of several criteria that teachers should consider when deciding which textbook to use; however, the author is makes it clear that our entire curriculum should not be dictated by a textbook (which are often aligned for the state standards of Texas and California which can differ from other states). Chapter 4 builds off of the idea that textbooks are not enough to teach students. It suggests that as an alternate to textbooks, teachers should include an array of literature from different genres that include news stories, primary and secondary sources, magazines, trade books, and webpages. Our selections should include fiction, non-fiction, contemporary works, the classics, easy reads, hard reads, short passages, and long passages to ensure that there is material for all reading levels. The idea with these enriching texts is that students can benefit from getting a deeper understanding of specific material. These can be overarching concepts that the teacher really wants to drill home. If our intention is to prepare students to be good readers, then let's give them the same material that good readers encounter everyday. Students should be reading something everyday. After reading these chapters, I realize that I do not have to teach students the way I was taught. In fact, I wish I can go back and attend a school that used multiple reading sources. I do not want to discourage students from reading by assigning them 2 chapters of reading out of a textbook (haha that's a sly joke). Instead, I want them to learn to love to read. That's why I would like to implement this idea in my classroom, and luckily the authors provided me with a large list of reading selections that I can use in my classroom. Thank you!

Reading Reflection #3 Subjects Matter

I really like how in Chapter 5 Daniels & Zemelman provides a giant list of strategies that an instructor can implement in his or her classroom to help students become effective readers. They categorized each of the strategies as activities that come before, during, or after reading (some can be used at multiple points throughout the assignment). Although each method differs from the others, each method was purposefully designed to enhance certain skills in each section. All of the before reading activities have a common purpose to build on the students' prior knowledge to build a foundation for them to reflect on while reading. A whole class discussion centered around the central themes of the passage can be conducted to get the students' gears turning. A benefit to this approach is students hear what other students know about a particular topic. This provides an opportunity for each student to hear an idea they might not have thought about on their own, which can spark an interest in the student about the topic. The during reading activities helps students organize their thoughts while reading the assignment. This is important because students will need to understand the connections between all the central themes later on in the post-reading activity. Coding text is a great example of a strategy students can use to build their organizational skills. This is a strategy I would like to use in my math classroom. I am currently trying to get students to understand contextual problems and form the appropriate equations from the provided information. I want my students to develop a habit of identifying important information by some sort of code they have created. It can be either highlighting with different colors for different reasons or symbols that have an assigned purpose. The after reading strategies are designed to have students reflect over the reading assignment. Whether this is have some sort oral or written dialogue, it has students making sense of the reading. Reading is useless if you can't explain what you just read; therefore, these strategies are very important. Most of these strategies give the students some freedom in their own reflection. I think this is a benefit to the students because as the class discusses their work with each other, students can still see how other students approach a similar question that had to prescribed method for answering it. All in all, these strategies are great tools that I can easily use in my lessons to help me with my content.

Web Resource Review

The web page I found is http://www.ixl.com/math/algebra-1. This website is intended to provide additional help in Math and Language Arts for grades K-12. It is very organized, and it separates content based on grade level.  I selected the Algebra 1 category which is commonly taken by 9th graders. The website explicitly states the number of skills in each subset. Algebra 1 covers 270 skills. When you click on the link to the content material it is once again very organized. Each of the skills is grouped into different categories, and each of those categories lists all the associated skills used in those types of problems. If you click on a particular skill, you will be directed to a page of practice problems. The format is multiple choice answers and there can be more than one correct answer. Each sequential question is based on your performance of the previous question (if you get them all right, they keep getting harder) . In the event that you answer a problem incorrectly, a pop up appears that explains why your answer is incorrect and it shows you the correct answer. You must click a button that says 'I got this' to continue on with the questions. On the right hand side of the screen, it keeps a running tally of how many problems you have attempted, and the percentage you have answered correctly. After attempting 20 question a pop-up screen says you have reached your daily practice limit, and the only way to continue on is to sign up for a membership or way a day. Despite this annoyance, there is virtually no advertisement on the web page. The website design is not distracting, and it is very readable. Assuming that a student had a membership to this website, this would be a great resource for students to practice math either at home or at school. Since it is separated by categories, students can pick specific topics that they struggle with in class, and they can work at their own pace. It is very easy to navigate through this website, thus adult supervision is minimal. All in all, I think this is a great website (if you are a member).

Readability

I choose an online textbook for Algebra 1. The book is Understanding Algebra 1 by James W. Brennan. I chose a section from Chapter 5 which is about the solutions of a system of equations. Also, I chose to use the Flesch Method to determine the readability of the section. The statistics that popped up on my screen said that out of the 794 words in the section, there is 8 % passive sentences. Also, the Flesch Reading Ease is 56.7, and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is 10.1. Since this is usually a class taught to freshmen (and sometimes eighth graders) this is a little bit surprised that the reading level is a whole grade level ahead. On average there were about 4 sentences per paragraph, and there were about 20 words per sentence.

Reflection #1

After reading The Early Catastrophe, I too believe that the first three years of a child's life is the most important time frame to learn a language. I have always been under the impression that genetics and socio-economic status have a strong correlation with a person's overall intelligence, but I was still surprised when I read the outcomes of Betty Hart and Todd Risley's research.  The part that truly surprised me was the ratio or praise and prohibition that children of the three distinct subcategories of the SES experienced in their homes. Provided that the researcher's extrapolation of their data is correct, the alarming rate of 1 encouragement to 2 discouragements for child on welfare should raise red flags to parents. We need to be very careful about how we interact with children at such a young age! All children learn to talk and act properly in any household, but we have seen that there are certain trends that will have a more positive effect on a child's vocabulary than others.

The article Reading Supports for All is full of useful advice for helping ELL students. As teachers, it is our responsibility to identify the needs of our students, support the students as they develop and apply their new knowledge, and for us to evaluate their mastery of the new knowledge. Therefore, if we have an ELL student (or any student who is performing below level in a content area) we must tailor our instruction to help meet the student's needs. This is not to say that we will just half the work load because the student is unable to read as much as the other students. Instead, we select an appropriate amount of work that still encompasses the key concepts that we want our students to gain at the end of an exercise. It is not that an ELL student is less smart than a student who is proficient at English. In fact, the ELL student may be using a much more complex thought process to read in a non-native language; however, the ELL student may just need a little more SRE's to help learn the skills that a native English speaker might pick up faster.

Lastly, after reading chapter 7 in Subjects Matter the phrase classroom environment has a new level of importance in my mind. From my personal experiences in the classroom (both as a student and as an instructor), I have noticed that a class is much more productive when there is a positive classroom environment. When students have autonomy in their classroom, they feel appreciated as a person with opinions. If they are under the impression that the instructor does not care about them, they are much more likely to shut off which leads to no learning taking place. Therefore, by implementing some of the strategies that are listed in chapter 7, we can have our students feel safe to take a risk to learn something new. Moreover, the more often we can incorporate activities such as a Jigsaw presentation or different stations around the round we are also increasing each student's individual accountability for his or her own learning, which was always our end goal.