"I Read It, But I Don't Get It"

Chris Tovani wrote an excellent book that exhibits comprehension strategies for adolescent readers.  This book will be very useful for me to keep in mind when I am teaching.  There are so many students who struggle with reading, or who simply just don't like to read.  The majority of the students that struggle with reading are either "resistive readers" or "word callers".  Tovani provided me with tons of ideas on how to work with and help these students.  In high school, I would consider myself a resistive reader AND a word caller.  I knew how to read, but I didn't like to at all and I also couldn't remember what I read half of the time.  After reading some of Tovani's ideas, I know that a lot of these strategies would have helped me a lot in high school so I want to supply these strategies with my future students in order to help them.

One of my favorite strategies that Tovani provided is to make a connection with what you are reading.  This allows students to connect what they have read with their own personal experiences and it can help them to remember and understand better what they have just read.  We have tried this a few times in my practicum classroom and it seems to work really well for the students.  This is something I will continue to try in my own classroom.  I think having the students write a journal response to connect their life to the reading would be a really beneficial way of doing this!

Another strategy that I really enjoyed from Tovani's book is the double-entry diaries.  This is a great tool for students to show us what they are thinking.  This allows students to quote specific parts of the text and then explain their thinking behind each specific quote.  By doing this, students are able to think about the text in their own ways.  I think this could be really helpful for the students, and for us as teachers to see where their thinking is at!

"Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom"

As I have heard ever since I joined the education program, using pop culture while teaching is extremely important.  The article this week helped me to gain a perspective on how to use pop culture while teaching.  In order to use pop culture while teaching though, we need to fully understand the culture of our class.  The pop culture that is interesting to one student, may not be to another.  As teachers, we have to be sure to use pop culture that is respectful to all the different races, genders, and cultures of our students.  Morrell stated, "What that means is that educators need to understand the ways that popular culture is practiced by their students, in their norms, their behavior, their dress, their activities, in addition to their selection of CDs, DVDs, magazines, and websites"(249).  Right here Morrell is implying that teachers need to find the interests and values of their students in order to successfully use pop culture in their lessons. This is really important, otherwise students will not be engaged the way we hope they will. 

One of my favorite sections in this article was the section on arguments.  In my practicum classroom right now, the students have a very hard time writing argumentative papers.  Why though?  They are able to argue about a ton of different topics out loud every day, but why not when we ask them to write one on paper?  It is simply because the arguments we ask them to write about are not of high interest to them.  The activity of "court trials" that is mentioned in the article is a great tool to use whenever teaching arguments in the classroom.  I can definitely see myself using it in my own class. This is a great way for students to meet the objective and stay engaged at the same time. 

A huge worry of mine for when I become a teacher is making sure my students are engaged in every lesson.  I think using pop culture and activities that relate to them and their lives is a great way to keep them engaged.  I can say from my own experience that whenever pop culture was involved in my learning, I was one hundred percent more engaged and interested in the lesson.  I truly think this is a great way for students to learn, be involved, and have fun all at the same time. 

Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

There are oppressors and oppressed people all over the world.  Sometimes, we can't even recognize those people.  It is important in the education world to recognize these situations, and these few chapters really helped me to get a better outlook on how to do this.  Freire states, "Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both."  This notion really didn't settle well with me. I don't think this is a good way to settle situations, and it will only make things worse in the end.  I completely understand that is a natural human instinct to fight back equally with someone, and I am often guilty of this, but I know from experience this isn't always the best approach. For me, I have never been in a situation where I felt oppressed, so I don't have a ton of experience or answers on how this situation could be fixed.  I would be interested to hear about other strategies that have been used by people and how they worked, that way I could use them in my future classroom whenever I run into this problem. 

After reading these few chapters, I can see how easily teachers could accidentally become oppressors to their students.  This was really eye opening for me and made me realize, this is not the way I want to be to my students.  I want to have good relationships with my students and I want to always give them a say in how they want to learn.  I think the foundation of teacher-student relationships is built off of respect.  The students need to have respect for the teacher, but the teacher needs to have just as much respect for the students as well.  This respect can be built from giving the students the chance to show their learning in different ways.  We as teachers can let the students have just as much say in the learning process as we do.  We do not need to be oppressors to them, for that will only cause them to want to be oppressors back to us. 

"Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning"

Assessing and evaluating students is a major aspect of teaching.  This article really helps to lay out ideas for assessing and evaluating our students.  It is important to know that the ideas of what it means to "learn literature" differ from teacher to teacher, and that is what can set up the assessment tools that we use.  Some teachers like to use tests and quizzes to assess their students.  I think this can be a very helpful tool, but personally in literature, I like the idea of using more open-ended questions.  Literature can be a very complex subject and a lot of times there are no right or wrong answers, it all just depends on the students way of thinking.  Open-ended questions give students more of a chance to express their thinking and help us as teachers to understand where there thinking is coming from, rather than just using a test key to mark their answers right or wrong.  The section that gives us alternatives to "correct answer" tests had quite a few great ideas to use also.  I really love journal responses.  I think they are a great way to let students practice their writing, express their ideas, but at the same time gives us a great source to evaluate their thinking and learning.  I have seen this type of assessment a few times, and I have found that it is very helpful and the students tend to enjoy it as well.

One of my favorite assessment tools that was mentioned in this article, and that I have also seen in use, is a portfolio.  This is a great way to see students growth throughout the unit, as well as giving the students a chance to reflect on their work themselves.  I think portfolios can often be a lengthy assessment, but given the right unit, I think they are a perfect way to assess the students work and see how far they have come along since the beginning.  Whenever we give out portfolios, or any type of assessment for that matter, it is important that we give them a rubric or some type of criteria list.  Students need to know what they are being evaluated on so that they have a chance to reach the expectations and goals. I have been in classes where I wasn't given a rubric, and it made the work a lot more confusing and hard for me to complete to the best of my ability.  I think it is extremely important to always give the students a chance to show their work to the best of their ability, by giving them guidelines, rubrics, etc., for we want them to succeed!

"Assignment Template Aligned to California's Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy"

The template provided in the article is a template in order to help us as teachers guide our students into better reading, comprehending, and responding to texts.  In order to become great readers, comprehenders, and responders, there are a lot of steps that they can take in order to get there and this article does a fine job at pointing our students toward those steps.  Personally, I found the section on pre-reading to be extremely important.  I find that a lot of teachers don't have their students do any sort of pre reading or pre activities before reading a text, they just dive in.  In my experience, I don't ever really even do any pre reading.  I think it would be extremely beneficial to have my students do activities before reading to get them prepared on what is to come.  I could definitely see myself using the pre reading activity of making predictions and asking questions.  I think this is a great way to get the students into discussions and sharing, while also preparing them for the text that they are about to read.

I also really love the ideas on post-reading.  A lot of teachers have their students write summaries or take quizzes, which is great, but I think that post reading should go beyond that just as the template shows.  I would want my students to have the chance to write responses and ask open ended questions.  This is a great way to further their learning and also give them a chance to have discussions with one another and share their thoughts and feelings on the text.  When students are able to do this, I think it is easier to understand the types of texts that my students enjoy and I would be able to hopefully base their learning off of their preferences.

I thought the the formative assessment section of this article was extremely useful.  I love the "student generated test questions" assessment.  This is a great way to get the students to think critically about the text, but at the same time it would help me as a teacher to see where their thinking is and what they think is a fair and reasonable question.  I think this would really help me to see how deep their thinking goes and what else we need to work on.