Questions

There is an old adage, "The only stupid question is the one left unasked". While I do agree that no question is particularly stupid, I do believe that some questions serve a more meaningful purpose than others. Developing, organizing, and asking students questions will be at the very core of an effective teacher’s lesson. Classrooms in which students do not feel that they are encouraged to ask or answer questions, will offer students little or no chance to deeper understand material. Even if higher order thinking questions are not being asked during lectures, questions will still remain a central component of any classroom’s evolution in a number of ways. For example, teachers will ask questions before teaching a lesson that prompt students to make predictions or connect new ideas to their existing knowledge, and afterward teachers may use test questions to assess students’ understanding. We teachers use questions everyday in the classroom with the intention of examining students’ understanding, recollection, and interest.

In making use of an assortment of text-based reading strategies, teachers will ask a variety of higher order thinking questions that will increase student participation and better develop their thinking skills. In the text it noted that a student’s ability to respond to a test question is not based solely on what the student knows about the information at that given time, but the student must also be able to bring into play a variety of skills in order to respond as it should be. For example, in a short answer test question, students must be able to summarize and identify the main points of a topic, all while showing understanding of the overall theme. Short answer questions are great, but if a student is not skilled at organizing and analyzing information, due to not having enough experience practicing in this activity in the classroom, they are less likely to record information effectively on an exam. Teachers ought to allow their students the time to practice essential skills such as these. Furthermore, teachers must give students more than enough time to respond to questions, and then be prepared to respond in any case.Questions should be asked frequently throughout every lesson to keep students’ attention and make learning the active process that it truly is.

 

While there ought to be many questions posed during a lesson, students should not be asked more than one question at a time, so as not to confuse and discourage them. Aside from merely asking questions with the purpose of assessing and promoting learning, teachers have got to enthusiastically use questions to motivate students towards learning in the first place. For instance, a personal question such as, “What do you think about the idea that your classmate just presented?” will persuade students to develop an individual standpoint, as well as promote a class discussion. Teachers should carefully develop meaningful, significant, interesting, individual, and challenging (but not too challenging) questions that will be asked during each lesson to arouse students’ involvement in learning and pose problems for them to consider. Regardless of the type of questions, teachers can rest assure that when students are being probed, they will ultimately understand information better and think more confidently and independently.

Getting It Down

In Chapter 7, Getting It Down: Making and Taking Notes Across the Curriculum, the introductory paragraph began by posing a very important question to their readers; Why teach student how to take notes? This truly set the tone for the chapter, which was full of note-taking activities that teachers could use in their classrooms, and the endless number of benefits for having students acquire note taking skills. The author continued on by defining the differences in note taking and note making. While note taking allows students to record important parts of a classroom lecture, note making is a process in which students use printed material to take notes. Both methods encourage students to organize information and pay attention. However, when students are asked to write as the teacher speaks, they are not given the opportunity to look back for missed information after the lecture is over. Whereas, when students use printed material to record information they have an ample amount of time to reread the text. I appreciate that students taking notes during a lecture are required to pay close attention and decipher what is most important or related to take good notes, but I am unimpressed that students are likely to miss information if not queued properly or informed of information in an organized and timely manner.

I personally have been the victim of teachers who spoke to fast, without allowing enough time for the class to write the information down in their notes. But in knowing this, I want students to be prepared when they encounter such seemingly impossible situations and know how to abbreviate, leave adequate space between their ideas, and be selective. While reading about the various ways used to teach students effective note taking practices, I found that Mr. Herrera’s strategy for teaching dictoglos seemed to be one of the most fun activities listed in the chapter. He chose to read rap lyrics to the class and test the students’ ability to record information quickly and accurately. Having the class engage in this type of activity allows them to practice taking notes in a motivational, yet beneficial manner, that will encourage them to block out background noise and focus on the most important phrases in the reading. It was mentioned repeatedly in the chapter that some teachers believe students should “just know” how to take notes effectively. This must be true, considering the fact that I cannot recall one formal note taking lesson in my entire school career.

To be completely honest, until our most recent class meeting, I gave little thought to my personal note taking practices. However, I found many of the note taking procedures listed in this section all too familiar. Skipping lines was one of the procedures that I find most difficult during lectures. Teachers will often skip around when lecturing, which causes notes that I am taking to become unorganized, which bugs me to the highest degree. I find it highly distracting when there are too many spaces between topics in my notes, yet it’s equally annoying when there is too much information squeezed into a tiny amount of space. For this reason alone, I vow to stay as organized as possible when lecturing, so that students may record information in a logical manner. In the concluding paragraph of the chapter, they stated that “teachers in secondary schools” should implement note taking lessons into their curriculum and give feedback to their students about their notes. I disagree with their suggestion, and firmly believe that note taking skills should be introduced to students while they are still in much earlier primary grades. There is no reason for teachers to not do this. After all, there are many reading strategies that can be used to teach note taking skills to students early on, such as the KWL and DRTA that can be easily used to show students the note taking process. I am looking forward to discussing these and many other ways to teach students valuable note taking skills.

Read Aloud Styles

In the article, Effects of Teachers' Reading-Aloud Styles on Vocabulary Acquisition and Comprehension of Students in the Early Elementary Grades, pre-service teachers administered three different read-aloud styles in various early elementary grades including, just reading, performance reading, and interactional reading. In order to determine the effect that read-aloud styles had on the students' ability to learn vocabulary and comprehend, the article defined, observed, and administered all three of the read-aloud styles in the classroom.The interaction reading, which allowed for discussion before, during, and after the read-aloud, very much engaged the students in the narrative stories that were read. It was stated that students were able to learn more vocabulary words through this type of read-aloud style than any other. This was not surprising to me whatsoever, given that the students are most encouraged to engage in the reading than any other read-aloud style. The performance style read-aloud style engages the students into a discussion about the story before and after the read-aloud, but not during. This may allow the students to better appreciate the story as a whole, rather than be engaged in discussion each detail throughout the read-aloud. Lastly, the just reading read-aloud style, which called for students to listen and not to pose questions before, during, or after reading, was the least effective in teaching student's vocabulary.

The statistics concerning the amount of time teachers spent administering read-alouds to their students each day and week were of particular interest to me. I find it so appalling that less than half of all teachers 40 years ago conducted read-alouds in their classrooms. Even before learning about the many advantages that read-alouds provide to students, I already felt that there were multiple benefits of conducting read-alouds. While it is a relief to hear that most all teachers use read-alouds today, it is concerning that most feel the need for doing so to be for entertainment and enjoyment purposes only. It is absolutely baffling that only 11%-28% of teachers read to their students in order tot build their vocabulary and reading comprehension. After reading the article, I learned that teachers can choose a type of reading style to use during a read aloud that will target very specific instructional needs that students posses. When deciding on which type of reading style to use, teacher ought to consider the students' learning types, age group, grade, and ability level. However, while the students ability to learn vocabulary appeared to be most effected by the type of read-aloud styles used, it was interesting to me that comprehension was mainly effected by the grade level of the student, rather than the reading style.

Furthermore, why would teachers only correlate discussions, writing activities, and drama along with oral reading activities less than 25% of the time? These types of activities all greatly contribute to the students' vocabulary and reading comprehension levels and ought to be utilized in every single literacy lesson possible.  I believe that we have most certainly come a long ways in developing better ways that we may teach students vocabulary and comprehension through the use of read-alouds over the past 40 years. However, it cannot be disputed that there is much more to be explored, discovered, and analyzed in regards to teaching students instructional content by having them listen, discuss, and retell stories read aloud. Personally, I would like to begin practicing conducting these various types of read-aloud styles in the classroom while I am still a pre-service teacher. This article has enlightened me so much about the various types of benefits that read-alouds have to offer, but most importantly, the article reminds teachers of the importance of knowing how and when each should be used to teach a specific instructional skill to students in early elementary grades.

Teacher Read Alouds

Reading aloud to students, even those in the later grades, give teachers the opportunity to motivate students, introduce material, model fluency, enhance comprehension and scaffold the reading process for students who may be struggling. I found it very interesting that studies mentioned in the Tapping the potential for teacher read-alouds in middle school article found in a study that they conducted that 85% of the teachers who participated in the survey read aloud to their students. While I am not surprised that the special education and language arts educators were most likely to read aloud to their class, I am surprised that some teachers in math and science class stated that reading aloud was not appropriate or the subject area that they taught. I completly disagree with this response considering read alouds encourage students to improve their vocabulary, interest, general knowledge, critical thinking skills, enjoyment, and over all understanding or comprehension of content described in all content area classroom textbooks.

In order to reinforce or introduce content to students, teachers should conduct read alouds. I be live that there are many more teachers reading aloud in primary grade classrooms than there are middle schools classes. This is ridiculous considering that the same advantages of conducting read alouds to younger students applies to older students as well. In order to scaffold reading material for students to eventually read independently, teachers should model the process of comprehending text to students that they may have otherwise not been able to decode and understand. It was said by one teacher that reading aloud was simply not allowed due to the lack of time given to teach the class. In response to this I would like yo say that read alouds do not always have to be lengthy or explained in order to be motivational and effective in the classroom. It only takes a few moments of reading aloud to students to spray student's interest and increase their listening skills.

For example, in a social studies classroom, a teacher start by reading short texts such as magazine or news articles. Doing this will offer students a real world reason for reading and allow them to make personal connections between text and their everyday lives. In doing so, students will find reading to be purposeful and meaningful in their lives regardless of their ability level. Students should be given opportunities to participate in a read aloud regardless of the subject area being taught. Teachers must remember to engage students in discussing the text either before, during, or after, the read aloud. Students should be given the opportunity to share their individual thoughts, questions, and responses with the class in order to partake in an effective read aloud. While teachers should always practice reading the passage before actually doing so during the lesson, they must also identify potential situations such as define vocabulary that students may find difficult and pausing frequently for students to ask questions or formulate a thought about the text. In conclusion, students benefit immensely from read alouds. Therefore, teachers should make engaging students in read alouds a weekly, if not daily occurrence in their classrooms.

Writing To Learn Cirriculum

                It is my opinion that effective teachers ought to utilize literature in all subject areas, so as to encourage students to improve upon their literacy skills and deepen their level of understanding the concepts taught in all subjects. It is no doubt that writing is a part of our everyday lives, whether professionally or educationally. Writing is often done with the intention of communicating, but it is obvious to experienced teachers and on lookers alike that students will think more creatively and be able to identify easier with topics that they chose to write about. There are many “writing to learn” strategies that I was introduced to in my reading comprehension course, which I found to be extremely beneficial in supporting students learning the steps and sequences included in the reading, writing, and reflecting processes. While reading comprehension is extremely important to a student’s achievement, being able to then write in their own words what they have learned is equally as important.

                Undeniably, there are many brilliant strategies that can be used to scaffold students’ learning the writing process. There was a reading comprehension strategy that I actually had the pleasure of utilizing with a student once. The story pyramid was the strategy that I chose to introduce to the student and it was somewhat of a pre-made story frame that guided his thinking about the story he was reading. The student was able to successfully formulate questions, recall main ideas, and clarify parts of the story using the pyramid. After completing the pyramid, the student wrote a summary using the key words that he had chosen by means of following the sequence of the lesson. I chose this exercise to guide the student step by step through the reading thought process, which begins before reading ever occurs and continues on afterwards. The reason that I mention this strategy is because I feel it taught the student how to enhance their thoughts through the use of writing, as well as taught them how to properly, sequentially, and creatively put their ideas into writing. These types of lessons help students discover their role as a reader and thinker, which ultimately improves their metacognition.  

                This supports my feelings about providing rubrics and checklist to students to use as a guide when writing. Checklists also assist the teacher in honing in on each individual student’s progress and assessing their level of comprehension. Writing is one of the main ways that students can prepare themselves to study, clarify, and recall information about a topic. A single writing activity may possibly be used to target many of a student’s needs, including the need to activate prior knowledge and make new connections with material, compare and contrast ideas, highlight main ideas, and take notes to study using spaced repetition. This being said, teachers should use technology, poetry, and other incentives that will continually maintain the interest of their students, especially those that may be struggling. The many ways that students may draw on writing in order to learn is never-ending. Teachers should evaluate assigned writings so as to facilitate assessments that will be evidence of the student’s level of understanding. Above all, writing is advantageous to both students and teachers alike and should be employed in all subject areas as the multifaceted and precious gateway tool that it is.