The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.
Topic: The Daily News Show with Jon Stewart
Title: “The Daily News Show with Jon Stewart: Part 2.” James Trier. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2008), 600-605. [A publication of the International Reading Association]
Summary: The author analyzes the satiric material in The Daily News Show with Jon Stewart as a way of teaching critical thinking. Two techniques that Jon Stewart “turns on their journalistic [standard TV] news heads” are the sound bite usually wiped clean of grammar mistakes, etc. and the objective, unemotional point of view of the commentators. He also analyzes technological devices like interviewing President Bush by taking snippets from many different videos from many different sources and using them as answers to Stewart’s interviewing questions. The author offers sources on the Net for material to use in the classroom.
Comment: I'm afraid that until now, I have never seen the show. After reading this article I will explore the sources of material available on the Internet and I will try viewing the show. Sounds like an intelligent send up of TV news journalism. RayS.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Response to Literature
The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.
Topic: Response to Literature
Title: “Weblogs and Literary Response: Socially Situated Identities and Hybrid Social Language in English Class Blogs.” Kathleen C. West. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2008), 588-598.
Summary: Each week students in 11th-grade American Literature go to the computer lab where they write blogs in response to the literary works they are reading. It’s a free for all. Students can respond in any way they wish. Other students in the class enjoy reading their responses, but the freedom afforded to the students allowed them to go beyond academic requirement: “In doing this they absolutely called upon the tools of formal literary analysis that they had learned…but they also disrupted AP notions of language embedded in the curriculum of their school by incorporating out-of-school literacies into their work."
[Comments: I wish the author had written the last part of her title in English: “Hybrid” means simply using academic and out-of-school language. Otherwise, the idea of allowing students to respond freely to what they have read sounds good. They might not like doing the same thing on paper with the teacher as the only audience, but they surely will love doing it on the computer with other students as an audience who can enjoy reading unconstrained ideas about what they have read. RayS.]
Topic: Response to Literature
Title: “Weblogs and Literary Response: Socially Situated Identities and Hybrid Social Language in English Class Blogs.” Kathleen C. West. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2008), 588-598.
Summary: Each week students in 11th-grade American Literature go to the computer lab where they write blogs in response to the literary works they are reading. It’s a free for all. Students can respond in any way they wish. Other students in the class enjoy reading their responses, but the freedom afforded to the students allowed them to go beyond academic requirement: “In doing this they absolutely called upon the tools of formal literary analysis that they had learned…but they also disrupted AP notions of language embedded in the curriculum of their school by incorporating out-of-school literacies into their work."
[Comments: I wish the author had written the last part of her title in English: “Hybrid” means simply using academic and out-of-school language. Otherwise, the idea of allowing students to respond freely to what they have read sounds good. They might not like doing the same thing on paper with the teacher as the only audience, but they surely will love doing it on the computer with other students as an audience who can enjoy reading unconstrained ideas about what they have read. RayS.]
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Assessment Tests
The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.
Topic: Assessment Tests
Title: “Are Assessment Data Really Driving Middle School Reading Instruction? What We Can Learn from One Student’s experience.” Danielle V. Dennis. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2008), 578-587.
Summary: Author suggests that teachers receive much data from assessment tests, but they really do not understand the meaning or use of that data. We need to help teachers fully understand and learn how to use the data from assessment tests: “Teachers must be trained not only to understand the results of tests but also to make curricular decisions based on those results.” p. 588.
[Comments: I’ll never forget a very short little article by Morton Botel of the University of Pennsylvania in one of the journals of the International Reading Association. I’ll have to paraphrase because I can’t recall the specific diagnostic tests to which he refers. Botel said that reading specialists use many diagnostic tests to gather much detail about the reading problems of students, but whatever data they find, they always use the same materials to remediate them: The SRA reading series. The SRA reading series consists of cards with stories and questions. Each card is a generic “read-the-passage-and-answer-the-questions” technique that has little to do with the specific information found by the reading specialist after hours of testing.
I worked for many years with reading psychologists; I found the same thing true. The psychologists spent hours and hours diagnosing problems, and the methods for dealing with those problems were usually some standard useless techniques like playing a game of “Go Fish.”
I disagreed with Dr. Botel many times during my career—he doesn’t know it and couldn’t care less—but I salute him for his making clear that the medical approach to reading problems through diagnosis and remediation was a fraud. Botel’s article was both hilarious and devastating. RayS.]
Topic: Assessment Tests
Title: “Are Assessment Data Really Driving Middle School Reading Instruction? What We Can Learn from One Student’s experience.” Danielle V. Dennis. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2008), 578-587.
Summary: Author suggests that teachers receive much data from assessment tests, but they really do not understand the meaning or use of that data. We need to help teachers fully understand and learn how to use the data from assessment tests: “Teachers must be trained not only to understand the results of tests but also to make curricular decisions based on those results.” p. 588.
[Comments: I’ll never forget a very short little article by Morton Botel of the University of Pennsylvania in one of the journals of the International Reading Association. I’ll have to paraphrase because I can’t recall the specific diagnostic tests to which he refers. Botel said that reading specialists use many diagnostic tests to gather much detail about the reading problems of students, but whatever data they find, they always use the same materials to remediate them: The SRA reading series. The SRA reading series consists of cards with stories and questions. Each card is a generic “read-the-passage-and-answer-the-questions” technique that has little to do with the specific information found by the reading specialist after hours of testing.
I worked for many years with reading psychologists; I found the same thing true. The psychologists spent hours and hours diagnosing problems, and the methods for dealing with those problems were usually some standard useless techniques like playing a game of “Go Fish.”
I disagreed with Dr. Botel many times during my career—he doesn’t know it and couldn’t care less—but I salute him for his making clear that the medical approach to reading problems through diagnosis and remediation was a fraud. Botel’s article was both hilarious and devastating. RayS.]
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Metacognition
The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.
Topic: Metacognition or Modeling the Reading Processes
Title: “Does Feeling Come First? How Poetry Can Help Readers Broaden Their Understanding of Metacognition.” Amy L. Eva-Wood. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2008), 564-576.
Summary: Adding to the technique of using “Think-alouds” while showing students how to read (metacognition), the author suggests that teachers use poetry to demonstrate to students not only how to read and respond intellectually, but also how to respond emotionally to the ideas, images and figurative language of poetry.
[Comments: The “think-aloud” is a technique used by teachers who read aloud while explaining how they understand and interpret what they read. I have to admit that I have never tried the technique, but the method has always intrigued me and including emotional response through poetry is an interesting addition. I think if I were teaching again, I might try the read-aloud and model my thinking involving short poems with difficult ideas that are hard to comprehend and to interpret. For example, try it with a poem by Emily Dickinson. Talk students through how you read, interpret and respond emotionally to a single poem. You will be showing students how you approach a difficult poem and they can try it themselves. RayS.]
Topic: Metacognition or Modeling the Reading Processes
Title: “Does Feeling Come First? How Poetry Can Help Readers Broaden Their Understanding of Metacognition.” Amy L. Eva-Wood. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2008), 564-576.
Summary: Adding to the technique of using “Think-alouds” while showing students how to read (metacognition), the author suggests that teachers use poetry to demonstrate to students not only how to read and respond intellectually, but also how to respond emotionally to the ideas, images and figurative language of poetry.
[Comments: The “think-aloud” is a technique used by teachers who read aloud while explaining how they understand and interpret what they read. I have to admit that I have never tried the technique, but the method has always intrigued me and including emotional response through poetry is an interesting addition. I think if I were teaching again, I might try the read-aloud and model my thinking involving short poems with difficult ideas that are hard to comprehend and to interpret. For example, try it with a poem by Emily Dickinson. Talk students through how you read, interpret and respond emotionally to a single poem. You will be showing students how you approach a difficult poem and they can try it themselves. RayS.]
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Teaching and Student Response
The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.
Topic: Teaching and Student Response
Title: “That Which Is Taught, That Which Is Learned.” Andrew R. Ratner. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2008), 533-537.
Summary: A phone call from a student the author had had in his class sixteen years ago reminds the author that the ideas he and the class discussed had sometimes very different responses by individuals in the class and that he as a teacher will never really know what students have learned from what he taught.
[Comment: Which reminds me of an experience I had at one of my graduations when I was a young teacher. A student came up to me and said, “Mr. Stopper, I never forgot something that you taught me.” I was young and naïve and I fell for it. “What was that?” I asked, thinking that I must have said something profound. “Never chew gum in an argument,” he said, referring to the technique I had used to help him remember how to spell the word “argument” that is usually misspelled “arguement.” It was only much later that I read an article warning teachers, NEVER, NEVER EVER respond to a question like, "Do you know what I remember about your class?"
I have just inserted a little levity into an idea that is really quite profound: we never do know what our students have learned from what we have taught. RayS.]
Topic: Teaching and Student Response
Title: “That Which Is Taught, That Which Is Learned.” Andrew R. Ratner. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2008), 533-537.
Summary: A phone call from a student the author had had in his class sixteen years ago reminds the author that the ideas he and the class discussed had sometimes very different responses by individuals in the class and that he as a teacher will never really know what students have learned from what he taught.
[Comment: Which reminds me of an experience I had at one of my graduations when I was a young teacher. A student came up to me and said, “Mr. Stopper, I never forgot something that you taught me.” I was young and naïve and I fell for it. “What was that?” I asked, thinking that I must have said something profound. “Never chew gum in an argument,” he said, referring to the technique I had used to help him remember how to spell the word “argument” that is usually misspelled “arguement.” It was only much later that I read an article warning teachers, NEVER, NEVER EVER respond to a question like, "Do you know what I remember about your class?"
I have just inserted a little levity into an idea that is really quite profound: we never do know what our students have learned from what we have taught. RayS.]
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Avid Readers
The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.
Topic: An Avid Reader
Summary: Some unorthodox ideas about the characteristics of avid readers.
Title: “The Bad Habits of Good Readers.” Carol Jago. Council Chronicles (March 2008), 36-37.
Carol Jago: What do avid readers do? “Based upon my personal reading habits and those of many wonderful book worm students, I notice that avid readers often….”
1. “…value speed over reflection.”
2. “… skip anything they find boring.”
3. “…care more about their personal reading than assigned reading.”
4. “… declare a text they don’t care for as ‘boring’ with great authority.”
5. “…can be poor writers and careless spellers. In their desire to get back to their books, avid readers often rush through writing assignments.” [In my experience, I have found that good writers rarely remember being taught to write in school, but always remember carrying a book to read. RayS.]
6. “… get stuck reading one particular kind of book for a very long time.” [Remember the Bobbsey Twins and other series books? RayS.]
Topic: An Avid Reader
Summary: Some unorthodox ideas about the characteristics of avid readers.
Title: “The Bad Habits of Good Readers.” Carol Jago. Council Chronicles (March 2008), 36-37.
Carol Jago: What do avid readers do? “Based upon my personal reading habits and those of many wonderful book worm students, I notice that avid readers often….”
1. “…value speed over reflection.”
2. “… skip anything they find boring.”
3. “…care more about their personal reading than assigned reading.”
4. “… declare a text they don’t care for as ‘boring’ with great authority.”
5. “…can be poor writers and careless spellers. In their desire to get back to their books, avid readers often rush through writing assignments.” [In my experience, I have found that good writers rarely remember being taught to write in school, but always remember carrying a book to read. RayS.]
6. “… get stuck reading one particular kind of book for a very long time.” [Remember the Bobbsey Twins and other series books? RayS.]
Friday, April 18, 2008
The Fun of Teaching Literature
The purpose of this blog is to share interesting ideas I have found in American professional publications dealing with the teaching of English at all levels, elementary, secondary and college.
Topic: The Fun of Teaching Literature
Summary: To overcome the resistance of students to what they are reading.
Title: “Charles Simic: For the Love of Poetry.” Deb Aronson. Council Chronicles (March 2008), 24.
Quote. Charles Simic: “That’s the fun of teaching: that you have a sort of resistance in the group and you try to convince them of the value of what you are reading.”
Topic: The Fun of Teaching Literature
Summary: To overcome the resistance of students to what they are reading.
Title: “Charles Simic: For the Love of Poetry.” Deb Aronson. Council Chronicles (March 2008), 24.
Quote. Charles Simic: “That’s the fun of teaching: that you have a sort of resistance in the group and you try to convince them of the value of what you are reading.”
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