Topic: Homework

10-second review: What’s wrong with the instructional sequences in the following teaching scenarios?

Title: “Learners Need Purposeful and Systematic Instruction.” D Ross and N Frey. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (September 2009), 75-78. The secondary journal of the International Reading Association (IRA).

Instructional Sequences:

“A mathematics teacher solves a series of problems on the board and then assigns the odd-numbered problems at the end of the chapter for homework.”

“An English teacher reviews the previous chapter in the novel, lectures on the theme, and then suggests everyone to silent reading for the remainder of the period.”

“A science teacher assigns Chapter 14 in the textbook and tells every one to answer the questions at the end of the chapter (full sentences, please).”

The authors say that what’s wrong with these sequences is lack of preparing students for the homework. The teacher needs to talk through how to solve one of the math problems, how to preview the material for silent reading of the novel and how to survey (title, sub-title, illustrations, first paragraph, first sentences of the middle paragraphs, last paragraph, and raise questions to read to answer), read and then answer the questions in the back of the chapter.

Comment: This preparation suggested for homework is called modeling. The teacher models for the students what the students are expected to do when completing the homework. Parents will love teachers who model the homework because they won’t have to figure out how to do it for their children. RayS.

Topic: Strategies for Reading in the Content Areas.

Topic: Strategies for Reading in the Content Areas

10-second review: This article provides a list of strategies to help students read materials in subjects using textbooks to provide information.

Title: “Content Area Reading Strategy Knowledge Transfer from pre-service to First-year Teaching.” C. Alger. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (September 2009), pp. 60-69. The secondary school publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).

Summary of the list of strategies:

Cornell Note-taking

Graphic Organizers

K-W-L Chart

Concept Maps

Writing to Learn

Interactive Reading Guide

Concept Definition Mapping

Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DRTA)

Learning Logs

Structured Note Taking

SQ3R

Word Family Trees

Question-Answer Relationships (QAR).

Comment: All of these strategies for reading content material in biology, chemistry, social studies, etc. can be found defined and illustrated online. Simply put the name of the strategy in a search engine like Google or Bing and you will find definitions and illustrations. Don’t pay for this information. You will find links that give this information for free. Keep looking.

Caution: Be sure to try each of these strategies on yourself before trying them on the students. You will be better able to anticipate problems and advantages of each strategy. It might be worthwhile to have students try all of them to decide which techniques help them best to comprehend difficult material. RayS.

Topic: "Street Lit."

10-second review: A new genre is called “street lit,” “hip-hop lit,” “ghetto fiction,” and “hip-hop fiction” aimed at urban black girls who will likely read it outside of school.

Title: “Ghetto Fabulous: Reading Black Adolescent Femininity in Contemporary Urban Street Fiction.” E Marshall, J Stapler and S Gibson. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (September 2009), 28-36. The secondary school publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).

Summary: Two of the genre’s less promising titles are Bitch and Whore. Authors suggest reading this type of fiction as a bridge to the standard reading in school.

Quote: “…motivate and facilitate meaningful instances of self-efficacy for all students and particularly those Black adolescent girls who have been historically marginalized within and excluded from meaningful engagement with texts in English classrooms.”

Comment: If the teacher is going to make any connections between street lit and standard lit, the teacher is going to have to read some of it. RayS.

Topic: English Language Learners (ELLs) and Idioms.

10-second review: One of the major problems in working with ELLs is translating English idioms into English.

Title: “Transnational and Community Literacies for Teachers.” RT Jiménez; PH Smith; BL Teague. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (September 2009), 16-26. The secondary school publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).

Problem: How would you translate the following idiom into English that can be understood by an English language learner? “The text reads, ‘He is sending him to new heights’ and is accompanied by an image of a pilot handing a model airplane to a boy. Students translating the idiomatic expression, ‘to send (someone) to new heights’ into a language other than English will discover multiple layers of meaning that will require interpretation and discussion to produce a comparable text in the other language.”

Comment: Not to mention into English that the English language learner will be able to understand.

My attempt: The pilot is encouraging the young boy to achieve his dreams, including, perhaps, becoming a pilot.

I still think one of the best techniques that one can use with ELLs is to have them write in English, as best they can, for ten minutes a day on a topic of their choice. At night, or if there is time, during the class, the teacher corrects the students’ text, fixing grammar, usage, punctuation, and translating idioms, etc. The students ask the teacher questions about the corrections and then re-write, making the corrections so that they have a model of correct English writing. Ten minutes of writing is not much writing. But a lot can be learned from that short sample of writing. RayS.

topic: A Reading Exercise

10-second review: What does it take for you to read the following?

Title: “Reimagining Our Inexperienced Adolescent Readers from Struggling, Striving, Marginalized and Reluctant to Thriving.” CL Greenleaf and K Hinchman. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (September 2009), 4-13. The secondary school publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).

“We begin this article by asking you to read the following text:

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What strategies did you use to make sense of your reading of this text, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States? What caused you to slow down or reread? Under what circumstances might a teacher introduce this document to students—even those thought to be struggling with reading? What challenges might young people representing an array of reading abilities encounter as they read? How could a teacher help those young people to address any challenges and weigh the text’s possible meaning? What knowledge and strategies might young people extrapolate form this experience to other reading?” p. 4.

Comment: Interesting exercise and questions. RayS.

Topic: Print and Online Journals.

10-second review: In the June 2009 issue of College Composition and Communication, the editors print the beginnings of two essays. At the conclusion of these short beginnings, they suggest that readers go to the online edition of the journal to read the complete essay at www.ncte.org/cccc/ccc, “The Extended CCC.”

Comment: Why not print the entire essay? I suppose that this approach to the uncompleted essays is a gimmick to meld the print and online editions of the journal. I don’t get it. The two mediums are different. With print, I can preview, skim and scan easily by flipping the pages, underline while I am reading and annotate in the margins. Online, my reading is similar to reading a scroll, which early writers and readers discovered centuries ago was more easily done with pages. For me, it’s harder to jump to the essence of the idea online than with printed pages. For whatever my opinion is worth. RayS.

Topic: Why Write Literature in the Modern World?

10-second review: To communicate the human condition at this time.

Title: “Perspectives: Writing in the Post- ‘Man of Letters’ Modern World.” Geoffrey Sirc. College composition and Communication (June 2009), 829-830. A college publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

Summary: To answer the question about writing literature in the modern age, the author quotes poet Alan Tate’s 1952 essay, a Phi Beta Kappa address given at the University of Minnesota:

“To the question, what should the man of letters be in our time, we should have to find the answer in what we need him to do. He might do first what he has always done: he must recreate for his age the image of man…. But at our own critical moment…he must distinguish the difference between mere communication…and the rediscovery of the human condition in the living arts…in a society of means without ends, in the age of technology….” pp. 829-830.

Comment: Why create literature today? To distinguish between “mere communication” (e-mail, tweeting, texting, cell phones, etc.) and rediscovery of the human condition in a “society of means [technology] without ends” or technology and talk for its own practically-meaningless sake. RayS.