Friday, August 29, 2008

Topic: Spelling

10-Second Review: Method for helping students analyze why they misspell certain words consistently.

Title: “Teaching Challenged Spellers in High School English Classrooms.” Rebecca Bowers Sipe. English Journal (Marcy 2008), 38-44. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary. Students complete the following:
1. Misspelled word from my writing: "mispelled"
2. Correct spelling: "misspelled."
3. Description of the error and why I think made it: "Didn’t clearly pronounce both syllables."
4. Strategy to remember the spelling: pronounce both syllables completely-- "mis spell."

Comment: A good way to individualize and maximize spelling instruction. Student’s misspelled word, identifying the cause of the error and finding a strategy to remember it. I like it. I can use the technique myself on words that I habitually misspell. RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Topic: Vocabulary

10-Second Review: Use vocabulary exercises based on the SAT Sentence-completion test in which students use the context to supply the correct word.

Title: “A Context-Based Strategy for Teaching Vocabulary.” Deanna L. Nelson. English Journal (March 2008), 33 -37. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary: Take sentences containing vocabulary words from literature to make up the exercises. Put in blanks in place of the words. Students supply the missing words. “…cool where others were ---------- and reserved where others were ----------.” (Original words: "heated" and "voluble")

Comment: Students should try to fill in their own words to complete the meaning. Then compare to the original. I think it’s an interesting idea. It’s also an interesting way to preview key ideas in the text. RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Topic: Vocabulary

10-minute Review: Memorized word lists do not work.

Title: “Teaching Vocabulary Expeditiously: Three Keys to Improving Vocabulary Instruction.” English Journal (March 2008), 20-25. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Quote: “Traditional models of teaching vocabulary that focus on giving lists of words to students on Monday and testing their knowledge on Friday are not effective. Even if students score acceptably on the test, the majority of the words from these lists do not become part of their reading, writing or speaking lives. Instead, they are quickly forgotten after the quiz.”

Comment: Here's how vocabulary should be taught. (1) Pre-teach vocabulary words before reading assignments. (2) Use Word Power Made Easy by Normal Lewis, featuring the concepts behind words and identifying their roots, prefixes and suffixes, and building other words based on the same roots, prefixes and suffixes. (3) From personal reading, use 3" X 5” index cards to record the word and pronunciation on one side and the shortest, one-word or two-word definition on the other. It works. RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Topic: Vocabulary

10-Second Review: Students create scenarios—brief descriptions of an event or character that illustrate a word—or the complexity of the meaning of the word.

Title: “Thinking Critically about Words.” E. Kahn. English Journal (March 2008), 14-15. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary: George Hillocks, Jr., suggested that students write scenarios that both illustrate and raise questions about a word or concept. Here’s an example.

Corporal Jewkes is lost in the woods near a village that, unknown to him, is in enemy hands. The village is heavily guarded and the surrounding area is mined. He makes his way through the mines, of which he is unaware, and into the village. Not knowing what is inside, he enters the first house he comes to. It contains a gun emplacement, but the guards are asleep. Jewkes quickly kills the guards and takes the guns. To this point, should we consider Jewkes’ actions courageous? Why or why not? (Johannssen, Kahn and Walter 35).

Comment: One way to internalize the meaning of a difficult word. Write a story illustrating the word. RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Topic: Action Research

10-Second Review: We need to get members of the community as well as teachers involved in action research.

Title: “Teacher Research and Learning Communities: a Failure to Theorize Power Relations?” KG Herr and GL Anderson. Language Arts (May 2008), 382-391. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary: Action research deals with questions involving specific circumstances in classroom and community. Engaging not only teachers but community members in action research could help build a knowledge base of questions and possible answers to real classroom and community problems.

Comment: What a glorious dream! RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Topic: Field Trips

10-Second Review: College students prepare teachers’ guides to museums, etc., that help teachers get the most from their students’ experiences on field trips.

Title: “Community Collaboration Using a Unique Gallery as a Literary Resource.” AN Voelker. Language Arts (May 2008), 366-375. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary: College students provide teachers with before, during and after activities.

Comment: Raise your hand if you have experienced this type of preparation and follow-through in student field trips. Didn't think so. Whoever created the guide would help make field trips real educational experiences. RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Topic: After the Humanities, What?

10-Second Review: Few students study the humanities as a discipline today. We need to engage our students in multi-disciplinary studies. That’s what education today is all about.

Title. “Review: A Massive Failure of Imagination.” K. Spellmeyer. College English (July 2008), 633-643. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary/Quote: “When students have the opportunity to work against the fragmentation of the curriculum—bringing together economics and environmental science, or medicine and anthropology, or literature and the media—they are creating the knowledge needed to prevent the phrase ‘educated citizen’ from becoming a term of ironic derision.”

Comment: To what degree are interdisciplinary studies occurring at the college level? I think this article makes a great deal of sense. RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Topic: College Students' Reading

10-Second Review: Students are not reading required course content, but are reading what is of importance, interest and significance to them.

Title: “Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Studying the ‘Reading Transition’ from High School to College: What Are Our Students Reading and Why?” DA Jolliffe and A. Harl. College English (July 2008), 599-617. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Quote: “If the scuttlebutt about reading is true, the Visigoths are at the door. An array of national surveys and studies suggests that neither high school nor college students spend much time preparing for class, the central activity of which we presume to be reading assigned articles, chapters and books. Similar studies argue that college students spend little to no time reading for pleasure and that adults in the United States are devoting less and less of their free time to reading fiction, poetry, and drama.

"Books lamenting the decline in the reading of great literature in our culture find an eager and ardent audience. The water-cooler conversation in English departments and indeed throughout the university seems to confirm the reports and corroborate the end-of-reading treatises and memoirs: legions of students apparently come to class ill prepared, not having done the assigned reading at all or having given it only cursory attention. Professors admit that students can actually pass exams if they come to the lectures and take (or buy) good notes, whether or not they have read the assigned material. In short, careful reading seems to have become a smaller blip on the higher educational radar screen or dropped off it altogether.”

Conclusion: “In short, we discovered students who were extremely engaged with their reading, but not with the reading that their classes required.”

Comment: In short, students are reading but not for their course assignments.

Remind the students of that simple technique: the chapter survey. Students read the title of the chapter, the subheading and the bold-face headings throughout the chapter. Now they read the first paragraph, the first sentence of each intermediate paragraph and the last paragraph. At that point, they raise questions about what they still need to read and quickly go back to the places in the text where the questions are answered—as signaled by the bold-face headings and first sentences of intermediate paragraphs.

Students will read—at any level—if they raise questions they want to answer.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Topic: Quotes from The Writer August 2008

10-Second Review: Magic Realism, Interviewing and Failure in Writing

On Magic Realism: For all of those who read Gabriel Garcia Marquez and wondered what the hell it was all about…: “A literary genre presenting a credible cosmos in which all sorts of bizarre stuff happens without being thought anymore unusual than the bizarre events on the nightly news.” Mort Castle. “Blend History and Imagination.” p. 39.

On interviewing: “Some of your best quotes…come after the interview is over. Everyone relaxes and sometimes sources say fascinating things.” B. Williams in a review of Freelancing for Newspapers: Writing for an Overlooked Market by SF Lick, p. 46.

On failure: “Be thick-skinned, be flexible, and throw away your first three novels. There’s no embarrassment in failure; that’s how we learn.” Archer Mayor. p. 58.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Topic: Rewriting

10-Second Review: You need to re-write in order to keep your readers turning the pages.

Title: “Make Your Readers Stick Around.” JE Ames. The Writer (August 2008), 32-34. The Writer is a publication by writers for writers. Its purpose is to encourage writers to keep on writing.

Quotes: “Many well-intended writers of mainstream and genre fiction focus on the stupendous ‘opening hook’ without considering that reader interest is almost always strong at the beginning. The more serious problems creep in later on….” p. 32.

“Rewriting is crucial to a seemingly effortless flow. Shakespeare claimed he ‘never blotted a line,’ while Gustave Flaubert didn’t stop polishing the manuscript until his publishers pried it from his ink-stained fingers. Most writers fall somewhere between these two extremes, but ‘rewriting,’ as William Zinsser said, ‘is the essence of writing well.’ ”p. 34.

“Only through copious rewriting can writers achieve the unbroken flow that’s critical to holding readers. Each rewrite should pare another layer of unnecessary verbiage from your manuscript, honing each sentence for brevity and clarity.” p. 34.

“… polysyllabic Latinate words are annoying, especially if readers are driven to the dictionary.” p. 34.

“…requires writers to constantly demand of themselves: Why should the reader want to keep turning the pages?” p. 34.

Comment: Valuable advice. RayS.

The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in recent American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.