Online Reading and Research

Question: What are students’ attitudes toward reading and researching online?

The author of this article sampled students’ attitudes toward reading and researching online. Here are her results:

Quotes:

I believe the Internet makes it harder to get useful information. 87% agree and 23% disagree.

I believe it’s easy to get lost when I use the Internet for research. 62% agree and 38% disagree.

I believe the Internet has made learning more interesting. 95% agree and 5% disagree.

I would work harder if I could use the Internet more often in school. 68% agree and 32% disagree.

I feel happy when I do research projects on the Internet. 89% agree and 11% disagree.

Comment: These results of this student survey about reading and researching on the Internet are open to my readers’ interpretations. They probably suggest positive attitudes toward being actively involved in researching on the Internet and less satisfaction with traditional sources of information. Which is why I would make traditional sources of information a part of research along with the Internet. RayS.

Title: “Understanding Dispositions Toward Reading on the Internet.” Julie Coiro. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2012), 645-648.

Evaluating Persuasive Writing

Question: What questions should students ask in evaluating their persuasive writing?

Quotes:

Introducing My Persuasive Claim:

My clearly stated claim is….

The authority of my claim has been established by…..

My Supporting Claim

Evidence is included to support my claim. The evidence is….

The knowledge, concerns and question of intended audience have been addressed by….

The formality of tone matches my familiarity with the audience. My tone is….

 

Illustrating Language Power

Rhetorical questions have been asked. These are….

Power verbs and adjectives have been included. These include….

An unforgettable power phrase has been included. It is….

 

Summing It Up

My claim or position is clearly presented, developed and supported as shown in lines….

A powerful, punchy conclusion reinforces the authority and clout of the original claim. It is…..

p. 644.

 

Comment: An interesting summary of one view of a persuasive piece of writing. RayS.

Title: “Persuasion – Stating and Arguing Claims Well.” Diane Lapp and Douglas Fisher. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2012),641-644.

Behavioral Changes and Reading Aloud

Question: How can students with behavioral challenges be helped to modify their behaviors?

Answer/Quote: “Some marginalized groups of students are at greater risk for school and societal failure than others. One group in particular that stands out in the literature that speaks to school failure is students with emotional behavioral disorders.

Quote: “Evidence has shown that children will not learn more appropriate ways to conduct themselves by being suspended from school or being sent to the administrator’s office…. In the same way that academic skills are taught and reinforced, an emphasis must be placed on teaching appropriate social skills and behaviors.” P. 619.

Quote: “Once you know something about the students and their lives, you can select literature that is…relevant to them.” P. 626.

In other words, the author suggests reading aloud books that deal with problem behaviors that are relevant to the students.

Comment: Sounds a little like bibliotherapy. I’m not putting the idea down. It’s one piece of the puzzle. To change social misbehavior is going to require a lot more work than reading aloud books about problems that are relevant to problem students. It’s a start. RayS.

Title: “Reading Culturally Relevant Literature Aloud to Urban Youths with Behavioral Challenges.” CE Verden. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2012), 619-628.

Art Museums and Reading

Question: How can art museums motivate students to read?

Answer: By having students visit art museums, “…they were…’seduced’ into ‘wanting to look more closely and to know more.’” p. 605.

Comment: That’s the author’s main idea. There’s a lot of teaching involved before that idea translates into motivation to read. This blog is all about ideas. This is an idea that needs a lot of work. RayS.

Title: “ ‘I Was Skeptical at First’: Content Literacy in the Art Museum.” AL Barry. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2012), 597-607.

Reading/Writing Connection

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

Question: How are reading and writing connected?

Answer/Quote: “Reading and writing are intimately and inextricably bound. Serious efforts to examine and improve students’ writing can be informed by careful inventory of the kinds of texts to which they have been and continue to be exposed. It seems clear, then, that teachers at all levels should give careful attention to the selection of reading material—particularly for non-or reluctant readers for they are the very students who have the most catching up to do. Students who rarely  read anything more challenging than popular magazines cannot be expected to write as well as students who have had exposure to more complex and varied texts.” P. 188.

Comment: As noted in previous research, even young students when writing books, copy the formats of the children’s literature books read to them by teachers, with text on one part of the page and pictures on the other part of the page. My experience has also been that people who have not been formally taught to write have become writers because “they were never without a book in their hands.” The formats of narrative and expository writing can be taught, but there is no question about the value of reading to the ability to write. RayS.

 Title: “Good Readers Make Good Writers: A Description of Four College Students.” Mary C. Daane. Journal of Reading (November 1991), 184-188.

Reading and Writing in First Grade

Note: Normally, I do not publish my blog, English Updates, on weekends. However, I publish several other blogs during the week having to do with ideas in English education that are not current, but still useful. On weekends, I will publish samples of these ideas. RayS.

Question: How do young children use the basal texts in their own writing?

Answer: “Students tended to use the style, format and sentence structure of [basal] readers as models in their own writing.” BL Eckhoff. 1986. P. 440.

Comment: Back in the early 1980’s, my wife Barbara, a first-grade teacher in the Downingtown, PA School District, began making blank paperback books of folded sheets of 8 1/2” x 11”paper, stapled length-wise.

She created an author’s center in which her first-graders made their own books. The results were remarkable. As this research says, the students used the basal stories’ style, format and sentence structure. They put the text either at the top or bottom of each page and drew pictures to illustrate the text at the opposite end of the page. Those first-grade students have retained their “books” even after graduation, which either they have told her or their parents have told her. RayS.

Title: “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English.” RK Durst and JD Marshall. Research in the Teaching of English (December 1987), 422-443.

Boys and Reading

Question: Why are boys so hard to motivate to read?

Answer/Quote: “Although much has been written in the popular press about the ‘boy crisis’ in reading…the subject is far more nuanced than this treatment suggests….. Getting boys to read is not simply a matter of locating texts with a male protagonist in an action-oriented setting or stocking libraries with graphic novels.” P. 587.

 The authors’ solution is to model reading by reading aloud and to model writing by reading what the authors have written aloud. They also suggest finding books that answer the boys’ questions.

Comment: The problem is clear. The authors’ solutions seem somewhat simplistic. And hard to implement. RayS.

Title: “Motivating Boys to Read: Inquiry, Modeling, and Choice Matter.” D Fisher and N Frey. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (April 2012), 587-596.