As I was reading through everyone's blogs (once again I was quite overwhelmed with the amount of entries and the amount of really awesome things that were being brought up) I came across a passage in Jaimie M.'s blog. In her seventh blog entry Jaimie writes, "...my job as a hopeful teacher is to take away the frustration that certain lessons bring to students and to bring excitement back into the lessons of even the most boring topics...I needed to kick my habit of showing my feelings about certain topics."
I feel that a lot of the time when I was student teaching and even substitute teaching I would show my negative feelings towards a subject when I was teaching it. If something was boring it was easily shown on my face, so the students weren't very excited about learning the topic. Why would they be? If the teacher wasn't excited about it, why should they be? In this entry Jaimie was talking about the expository genre and finding new ways to teach the expository genre. Going into student teaching and even now I want to make sure that I can make learning fun for every student. I love to have fun in the classroom, while making whatever activity we're doing educational as well, so that students are having fun and learning at the same time. When social studies or science time comes around though, the fun sort of goes out the window for me, just as teaching writing of non-fiction texts. I'm the kind of teacher that likes creativity and I thought that you could only be creative in narrative or descriptive genres, but Jaimie and Gretchen showed all of us ways in which we could be creative in the expository genre as well.
After reading this particular quote I took a look back at Tompkins' (2012) chapter on expository writing, just to see if I could obtain some new knowledge that maybe I had missed the first time around. I always thought that when teaching the expository genre you would state that it was a nonfiction text and then just go from there. Tompkins (2012) states that teachers should, "...share a collection of nonfiction books, including informational books, almanacs, guidebooks, photo essays, alphabet books, and biographies and guide students as they examine the books to identify the characteristics of the genre" (p. 213). I never realized that you could provide students with such a wide array of texts in order to introduce them to the genre. I would have never thought to introduce them to guidebooks or even an almanac, considering I haven't even opened an almanac since I looked at my grandpa's about 10 years ago!
Keeping in mind that I was apparently not the best at teaching expository writing, I really like how Tompkins (2012) gave me a lot of insight and resources to guide me through my education as a new literacy teacher. I really like how she gives real-life examples of how the strategies are used in classrooms and how they could be used. The "Types of Expository Writing" section on page 207 will really help me to not only use more strategies in the classroom, but it will help me to become more excited when teaching the expository genre, because I really enjoyed the idea of the alphabet books and the "All About..." books. I am so excited to use these new strategies in my future classroom!
Showing posts with label Strategies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strategies. Show all posts
Monday, November 12, 2012
Monday, October 1, 2012
Learning Log Entry # 4
Free entries are so difficult for me. You would think they'd be so easy because you can write about whatever comes to your mind, but there's just so much that comes to my mind when it comes to the field of literacy that I don't know where to begin. My first thought, though, goes back to the Kucer & Rhodes's (1986) article and the two different strategies that they suggested to use when writing. I'm one of those "writer's block" kind of girls and it just comes so easily to me. I've been staring at this blank page for a day just wondering what to write, because I'm at a loss for words. I decided to look back at the strategies, and focus on my views on those, and how I think I could use them in my classroom.
When I first read about the card strategy I thought it was a pretty cool idea. I got the main idea of it from the detailed description of it, but Kucer & Rhodes (1986) suggested only giving three to four index cards to start out with. I didn't think that was a sufficient amount, especially since you need more "meat" in your paragraph to make it a good one. Anyway, I kept my mind open and continued reading. After I figured out what it was and how it worked I thought it was a really awesome strategy that a lot of students, especially students that struggle with writing could benefit from. My topic for my genre piece project is planning my wedding and I had no idea where to begin. I know what I did but to actually WRITE about it was a completely different story. I was so excited when we actually did the card strategy in class on Wednesday! I went through eighteen cards (just ask Lindsey M, she was a trooper). After doing the activity I realized that 3-4 cards is definitely not enough for students, but handing them a huge amount of index cards could be really intimidating for them, so I'd probably give them about six or seven to start out with. Then once we started writing (I chose one of my genres as a blog entry) I went to town! I couldn't stop writing, I knew exactly what my topics were, what I should be writing about, and my creativity flowed from there. I was really proud of my writing and I think it's going to show when it's published. I think students will really enjoy this activity and being able to receive other students' inputs on the order of events and doing the same to their peers I think is a really cool idea. It gives them a fresh perspective on their writing. Lindsey actually helped me realize that some of my elements should go in a different order, it just made better sense.
The second strategy, the puzzle strategy, is a little different. The students are given a text, something totally different than what they've read. A completely new piece of text to them (which I think is a great idea so that students don't know exactly what's going on). Kucer & Rhodes (1986) state that, "...The text should have some structural similarities to others they have read, the concepts should be easily understood, and the text should not be too lengthy." (192) In other words, don't give them a four page text that they will look at and think it's in a completely different language. Until they get used to the puzzle strategy, as teachers, we need to stick to text structures that the students are used to working with and are used to reading. Don't throw them a curve ball! Then the text is cut into different parts and the students will put the parts together in the order that they think they belong. Cutting in the middle of paragraphs is too confusing, so I thought it was really good advice when Kucer & Rhodes (1986) said that we should cut the parts in a "natural order." (192) This is a small group assignment which I think is great. Once everyone is finished they will compare their answers with each other or they could compare it with the original text.
Personally, if I had to choose one of the two strategies to use in my classroom it would be the CARD STRATEGY! It just seems so much more useful and it is really fun to do. It also creates peer interactions and it get students involved in each others' writing. I think it's such a good brainstorming activity and any age group would enjoy it.
When I first read about the card strategy I thought it was a pretty cool idea. I got the main idea of it from the detailed description of it, but Kucer & Rhodes (1986) suggested only giving three to four index cards to start out with. I didn't think that was a sufficient amount, especially since you need more "meat" in your paragraph to make it a good one. Anyway, I kept my mind open and continued reading. After I figured out what it was and how it worked I thought it was a really awesome strategy that a lot of students, especially students that struggle with writing could benefit from. My topic for my genre piece project is planning my wedding and I had no idea where to begin. I know what I did but to actually WRITE about it was a completely different story. I was so excited when we actually did the card strategy in class on Wednesday! I went through eighteen cards (just ask Lindsey M, she was a trooper). After doing the activity I realized that 3-4 cards is definitely not enough for students, but handing them a huge amount of index cards could be really intimidating for them, so I'd probably give them about six or seven to start out with. Then once we started writing (I chose one of my genres as a blog entry) I went to town! I couldn't stop writing, I knew exactly what my topics were, what I should be writing about, and my creativity flowed from there. I was really proud of my writing and I think it's going to show when it's published. I think students will really enjoy this activity and being able to receive other students' inputs on the order of events and doing the same to their peers I think is a really cool idea. It gives them a fresh perspective on their writing. Lindsey actually helped me realize that some of my elements should go in a different order, it just made better sense.
The second strategy, the puzzle strategy, is a little different. The students are given a text, something totally different than what they've read. A completely new piece of text to them (which I think is a great idea so that students don't know exactly what's going on). Kucer & Rhodes (1986) state that, "...The text should have some structural similarities to others they have read, the concepts should be easily understood, and the text should not be too lengthy." (192) In other words, don't give them a four page text that they will look at and think it's in a completely different language. Until they get used to the puzzle strategy, as teachers, we need to stick to text structures that the students are used to working with and are used to reading. Don't throw them a curve ball! Then the text is cut into different parts and the students will put the parts together in the order that they think they belong. Cutting in the middle of paragraphs is too confusing, so I thought it was really good advice when Kucer & Rhodes (1986) said that we should cut the parts in a "natural order." (192) This is a small group assignment which I think is great. Once everyone is finished they will compare their answers with each other or they could compare it with the original text.
Personally, if I had to choose one of the two strategies to use in my classroom it would be the CARD STRATEGY! It just seems so much more useful and it is really fun to do. It also creates peer interactions and it get students involved in each others' writing. I think it's such a good brainstorming activity and any age group would enjoy it.
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