Blog 3: Teaching Literacy to Youths Who Struggle With Academic Literacy

-
     This chapter focused on students who struggle with interacting with difficult academic texts. One of the first things that stuck out to me was the fact that many students who struggle with academic literacy are intelligent, full of good ideas, and intent on learning. However, they have trouble with more technical reading and the analysis they are expected to do in an educational setting. I have seen so many students in my placements who love to learn and may even love to read at home and during silent reading time. However, they dislike and have trouble with more academic reading. I believe that often this is because the vocabulary and topics of the reading are less relevant to students' daily lives, and therefore more effort is required to understand academic texts.
     The author focused the chapter on helping students change their "reading identities" meaning what they thought about themselves as readers (are they good/average/bad readers?). They said that a student's reading identity has a profound effect on a student's reading ability. I definitely agree with this; if a student does not believe that they can read, it is likely that they will put less effort into learning how. However, I wish that the author had put forth some specific strategies for teaching students how to read academic texts, as I think that there is value in these. Reading an academic text requires different skills than reading more everyday texts, and it is important for students to learn how to develop these skills.

Discussion questions:
Why do so many students develop a hatred of reading once they start school?
What skills do students need to be successful in reading academic texts?
Where do student reading identitites originate?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog 2: Teaching ELA in a "Flat" World

-
     This chapter was a great way to summarize what teachers need to be teaching their students other than simply their content areas. Yes, it is important for students to be familiar with classical works of literature (for example). However, it is more important for students to be able to apply that knowledge and other skills to their future lives. I felt that Friedman's eight roles that the author mentioned could be summarized by the skill of critical thinking. Students need to be able to explain information, adapt solutions, etc., to be able to solve problems. Knowledge is important, but in today's world, it can be easily gained on the internet. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills cannot and are vital to all jobs and roles that students will have later in life.      One aspect that I can easily incorporate into my classroom is internet research. Too often, teachers require students to use only a few internet resources and rely mostly on physica...
Read more

Blog 12: Digital Literacy

-
     The first chapter by Beers discussed using technology meaningfully, so that it actually applies to real-life tasks students may need to complete. Often teachers might think that using technology can be accomplished by using a word processor. However, to truly use technology effectively in the classroom, teachers need to use technology that is relevant to students and allows them to have a voice. Examples from Beers include class blogs, podcasts, wiki sites, and book trailers.      The second chapter in Hinchman discussed the concept of multimodality, meaning using multiple texts, writing mediums, and other ways of communicating, to portray content. Alternative forms of langauge can include photos, videos, documentaries, etc. Multimodality also requires students to compare and connect these mediums by asking questions about how and what the mediums portray differently. Students can also make connections using personal stories, pop culture, and current ...
Read more

Blog 7: Literacy For ELLs

-
     The chapter by Hinchman discussed several different strategies to work with ELLs in the classroom. One of the important themes was the idea of focusing on language in all content areas. Students need to learn key content vocabulary and the academic language to be able to communicate in that content area. Another strategy was the idea of "juicy sentences." This is an activity asking students to do a case study of sorts of a grammatically and linguistically complex sentence. This helps ELLs see examples of concepts and rules of the language and study them in detail. Finally, the authors discussed the importance of annotation. I definitely agree with the point the authors made about content-specific language. I think that often teachers take this to mean vocabulary only. This is important, but often different subjects have different conversation structures, or even different sentence structures. As an example, I am much better at English-related subjects than science. I...
Read more