Recommendations From Reading Research (D&Z Ch. 12)

       Chapter 12, for me, was a great conclusion to this book, as it reiterated the importance of reading in every content area.  This chapter provides strategies from reading research that illustrate how students read and how students are taught to read.  In particular, I am most interested in the section where Daniels and Zemelman talk about students should read as literate adults.  Literate adult readers choose a variety of texts, both for informational purposes and for pleasure.  This led to the concept of intrinsic motivation, and how that is key to finding purpose in the reading.  Daniels and Zemelman state, “intrinsic motivations…lead to greater learning in high school subject areas” (p.296).  However, it saddens me to say that, “the role of intrinsic motivation in reading has been borne out” (Daniels and Zemelman 296).  As students progress through their education, they lose the motivation and self-interesting of reading, which is detrimental in trying to build literate adult readers.  However, I can sort of relate to this because I feel like I was more in control of my reading diet in the earlier stages of my schooling, and as I got to high school, I was one of those students that Daniels and Zemelman described as reading to find answers to questions at the end of the book. I think one of my main focuses as a future high school ELA teacher is to make reading something students look forward to.

            In this chapter, I also really enjoyed the section that talked about allowing students to discuss what they are reading. I believe this is often overlooked in a high school classroom, at least in my experience, it was.  This makes me think back to everything we have learned about education, and a big aspect of learning anything is socializing.  Thinking back to the very first assignment we did in SED 407, detailing something we were literate in and how we learned, we came to the consensus that we couldn’t have become literate in something without the guidance of someone else. We actively have to discuss and work things out to understand them.  I am all for cooperative group learning, such as think pair shares or Socratic seminars.  As I conclude my final blog post on Subjects Matter, I will say that there are some things that education is getting right and then there are areas that need some tune ups, and as the next generation of educators, we can all play an important role in enhancing the state of education, and I look forward to this challenge. By the way, don’t forget to incorporate reading in all of your classrooms.

Inquiry Units and Struggling Readers (D&Z Ch. 10-11)

            Chapter 10 gets into detail about Inquiry Units, and I really like the concept of them.  As I was reading the chapter, I was pondering different ways to implement Inquiry Units in my future ELA classroom.  Lets just say that a plethora of ideas came to mind but nothing that is fully developed.  In my opinion, the best thing about Inquiry Units is that the students get to fully immerse themselves in a topic that interests them.  As future educators, we have undergone enough educational psychology to know that one learns best by being intrinsically motivated to do so, and inquiry units lends itself nicely to this theory. 

            However, a teacher’s worst enemy is always time because there is just so much to get through and so many standards to meet that it makes incorporating inquiry units rather daunting.  In regards to the common core standards, Daniels and Zemelman, at the very beginning of the chapter, use an example of a teacher who does not begin a lesson plan by first choosing a standard.  Instead, this teacher designs a lesson plan, teaches the concepts, and then decides which Common Core State Standards were met (Daniels and Zemelman, 2014, p. 259).  Daniels and Zemelman (2014) call this concept “backmapping” (259).  I found this concept rather interesting because it kind of negates the premise of UbD where a teacher starts off with a standards and then works backwards in the lesson planning.  UbD urges for teachers to know where they are going, and I think that having this map is essential.  I like the idea of Inquiry Units, but this concept of “backmapping” seems to be a bit irresponsible. I do think that there absolutely needs to be a destination in view, if not then the lesson plan will result in chaos.  There needs to be some sort of idea of what the students should be learning. To invest a significant amount of class time on inquiry units, you need to make sure that you are meeting the standards you need to be meeting because the department of education is to really going to care whether or not the students investigated something that interested them; they will be looking for improved test scores and all that other good stuff.

            I really enjoyed Chapter 11 because it was very insightful, and I think that every teacher, no matter the content area, needs to bookmark this chapter. D&Z state in this chapter that every teacher is a teacher of reading, and I must admit that it takes some stress off of us ELA teachers. D&Z use the example, “I’m a physics teacher, not a reading teacher” (278). Daniels and Zemelman may sympathize with teachers who say things like this, but here is what I have to say to this physics teacher—do you not assign textbook reading? Yes? That is what I thought. How can you be a teacher in a content area that assigns textbook reading, and not feel as if you are not a teacher of reading? It is every teacher’s job to ensure that students comprehend any type of reading that they come into contact within a course. 

         

  A teacher can be so wrapped up in pushing the material that they may forget that not everybody reads and comprehends at the same level.  D&Z states that we, as educators, must build trust with students, especially those who feel like that they may not be strong readers.  This, to me, seems like common sense because not having a student’s trust is detrimental to their learning and to your teaching. A line that stuck out to me while reading was, “…people who have repeatedly failed at something usually cope by focusing their lives elsewhere to avoid still more failure” (Daniels and Zemelman, 2014, 280).  This statement coincides with building trust with our students.  I know that I don’t want my future students to give up on reading, so my job is to teach them how to improve, or find the enjoyment that can come from reading.  This chapter does an excellent job of providing examples of strategies to implement, but for me, the most effective strategy would be to model good reading habits. I think it is important to provide the necessary tools before expecting students to master something. I also think that is important to show them that sometimes I still have reread something, or that I still stumble upon words that I do not know. It’s teaching how to handle these bumps in the reading that matters the most.

Lifelong Learners (D&Z Chapters 8 and 9)

     I really enjoy this book, as I feel it contains a lot of great practices to incorporate in a classroom.  However, the one grievance I do have with this book is that I feel like the authors exert a lot of their energy showing how reading and literacy can be incorporated in every subject other than ELA.  I feel like English is the only subject that is synonymous with reading. In every other subject, a student can get by without actually reading the textbook or any form of reading.  Whereas, in an ELA classroom, the entire curriculum is centered on a specific text, and the understanding of these texts play crucial role in passing the course.  Like, you can’t take an English course, if you don’t want to read the textbook/ texts. When I took math in high school, I never once read the textbook, unless it was to do the homework at the end of the chapter.  I just knew how to the math problem, sort of like a puzzle, but if you were to ask me the proper terms of the math problem, I would not have been able to answer you.  

            The reason I bring this up is because the premise of Chapter 8 is creating lifelong learners and lifelong readers.   Daniels and Zemelman (2014) state that a lifelong learners, “read not only what’s required by their jobs, but also for recreation, for information, for citizenship” (p.221).  D&Z also discuss that lifelong learners also read with other people (p. 221).  This chapter centers on individual and small group independent reading, where there is a specific time allotted each class periods for students to read what interests them, “at a level people can fluently digest” (Daniels and Zemelman, 2014, p. 222).   The problem I have with the current state of English classes is that we are forcing students to read some texts that they don’t really want to read.  If choosing readings based on students’ intrinsic motivations fosters the concept of lifelong readers, shouldn’t the entire ELA curriculum be set up in the way? Actually, shouldn’t all of an individual’s education be based on their interests and intrinsic motivations?  I am not saying that and ELA class shouldn’t teach the classics like Shakespeare, but I do think that there needs to be a better balance.

            I do like the concept of the independent reading workshop because I don’t think students do enough reading based on their interests. I can relate because as a current college student, I can never find the time to read what I want to read, during a given semester.  If I factor in time to read things for fun, I am taking away time from my class reading, which can ultimately affect the grade I get at the end of the semester.  Therefore, I think it is important to factor in time during class time to have students read what they want to read.  Lets face it, students are not going to want to pick up a novel, of their choice, after reading a thirty page chapter for homework.  I think we should have a wide range of English courses to choose from in High school, sort of like the options we get in college.

            I can really see myself implementing a number of the technologies listed in this chapter. Sites like Edmodo, Google Drive, and Kidsblog.org all seem like interesting publishing forums to have students electronically share their writing (D& Z p. 232).  By implementing this activity, actually aligns nicely with the Common Core State Standards, as there is some that require students to utilize and learn how use technologies.  The only problem, I can see from doing this activity is that we may be teaching in a school district where not every student has access to the internet or a computer.

            Chapter 9 harks back to what Daniels and Zemelman said at the beginning of Chapter 8 where independent reading can be done in small groups, and that lifelong learners often immerse themselves in book clubs.  Chapter 9 is all about Content- Area Book Clubs.  Again, as an aspiring ELA teacher this concept is not taboo to us, but D&Z’s purpose is to show how this technique can cross over to different content areas like math and science. This chapter shows how to prepare students on how to actually participate in a book club, which I think is very important to ensure that the students are reaping the benefits of what the book club should be giving to them. 

            I am not going to get into the specifics of book clubs, but I will spend some time talking about the teacher’s role in book clubs, and it is a very minimal one.  Book clubs should be practically student directed with the teacher only there to assist, observe, and facilitate (D&Z, p.249).  The students are doing all of the work by reading the book, b contributing to discussion such as asking “rich” questions, and by being an active listener.  I do think this important in the development of lifelong learners because it allows students to read a book that is interesting to them, and work out the problems or issues that arise from reading the book with their peers.

Implementing Textbooks and Creating and Community of Learners (D&Z Ch. 6 and 7)

Chapter 6 invites teachers to implement the classroom textbook in a more beneficial way that is better aligned with the Common Core Standards.  The beauty of this chapter is that it includes a number of textbook activities to acquaint students with the textbook or to show students how to use them more effectively.  First, as an aspiring ELA teacher, I have this strange attitude towards textbooks because the premise of an English class is to read texts, and the majority of ELA textbooks are composed of literature pieces that we must teach the students.  In some ways, textbooks are essential in an ELA course; yet again there is never a perfect textbook, even for the subject of English.  I would rather just select the literature/nonfiction pieces to be read in my classroom, and by doing so I can pick excerpts that I think are more interesting and relatable while corroborating it to the common core.  Lets face it; most of the ELA textbooks in schools are predated anyways.

            One thing that Daniels and Zemelman (2014) concludes is that, “students don’t need more time with their noses in the textbook—they need tons and tons of practice time reading, talking, and writing about important subject-matter content” (182).  This stood out to me because I feel like many teachers fall prey to thinking that the textbook is the “bible” to their courses, which is obviously not the case.  Sometimes, we can be wrapped up into plowing through the pages of textbook while forgetting that the whole point of reading it is to strengthen our readers in the classroom.  I know from my own experiences that my high school English teachers would assign a lengthen piece of reading from the course textbook, just assuming that every student in the class knew how to access the textbook.  Not to mention, that most teachers would also assign the typical response questions at the end of each chapter, and almost always there would be some connect to personal experiences question.  I thought whether or not any of these teachers proofread some of these connection questions in the back because many of them used outmoded examples that were not as relatable to students in the new millennium.

            However, this chapter offers some activities that will benefit the teachers and the students in regards to using the textbook. My favorite is Activity #1, Textbook Feature Analysis (Daniels and Zemelman, 2014, 184-185), which has the students explore 11 different facets of the textbook.  It has students exploring the type of texts they are included, as well as if the use of color plays an important role in the textbook.  Not only should students be completing this activity, but I think the teacher teaching the course should as well.  By having a teacher complete this activity alongside his/her students, will allow that teacher to identify any problematic areas that exist in the textbook. Also, the teacher should also be willing to do this activity to model to his/her students on how to do it.

            Chapter 7 focuses on building a community of learners, which is, I believe, to be one of the most important parts of teacher.  As future teachers, we need to foster a positive community for all of our students, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.  The only way to do this is to teach our students strategies on how to best work together.  Daniels and Zemelman (2014), mention that a attribute that works well in the creation of a community of learners is humor, which made me extremely excited (204). I think humor solves a lot of problems, and I think to think of myself as a very humorous person.  I firmly believe that everybody should laugh at least once a day.  So, hopefully I can incorporate humor in my classroom to help to take the edge off.  However, I won’t be too humorous to the point where my students don’t respect me. 

            In the subheading entitled Taking Action, Daniels and Zemelman (2014), states, “[students need to] truly believe their teachers care intensely about them and their learning” (208).  For me, this is extremely important because teachers need to care, and if you don’t care about your students then you have no business being a teacher in the first place.  I did better in classes where the teachers were passionate about their teaching, and you could sense that every student mattered to them.  I had some teachers that just did not care and that resulted in me not caring.  When I am a teacher, I am going to make sure that I never stop caring for my students because if that happens then I have lost my vision of what teaching should be.