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.

A Balanced Reading Diet (D&Z Ch. 4-5)

The premise of chapter four was the concept of a balanced reading diet within in the classroom, and it gave me some things to think about in terms of what readings I should I assign to my future students.  This chapter also revolves around the reading required by the Common Core Standards, which was very valuable to me because it helped me see how I could implement strategies to meet these standards. Nonfiction is the text that the CCSS predicates itself on because according to the authors of this book, nonfiction work provides a deeper and longer understanding of the material (p. 64).  As a future ELA teacher, I find myself more passionate about fiction pieces, and although I do see a place for nonfiction pieces, we still cannot forget about the enjoyment that comes from reading fiction.

One of the biggest issues that the chapter addresses is the amount of time a teacher has to implement all these nonfiction readings. Early in the chapter, it was stated that nonfiction pieces is engaging, but it was contended whether or not there was a enough time to teach whole books. That is when D&Z suggested implementing smaller readings in the classroom, which could be an excerpt from a book or an article. I do find smaller readings to be effective because I think it would be a great way to get more points of view in a particular area of the content. Also, like D&Z states, it will provide all students with an opportunity to engage in class discussions, which is absolutely crucial.

            I really liked how the CCSS is trying to build independent readers, and I really liked how it was mentioned that we, as teachers, shouldn’t be picking all of the reading materials.  It is stated that, “real readers, life long readers, assign themselves” (p.69).  I do agree that students should have some freedom to choose what they want to read, but we also want to make sure that they are selecting the appropriate texts for the appropriate situations.  As teachers, I think we need to teach the students how to choose the right readings, and show them how the process of selecting articles for an academic purpose is different from the process of choosing things to read leisurely.

            The “windows and mirrors” theory is also a really great strategy for picking readings because it is dependent on the students being able to see themselves in the reading, but it also provides the students with the ability to empathize with others.  I never really thought about this before, and as I was reading this section I was trying to think back to my high school experience to see if there were books where I could picture myself. I am sure there were a few books that I felt connected to certain characters, but I just cannot remember it now. However, it is important to choose texts that the student’s can relate to, so that there is a purpose and a motivation to keep them reading. I know I wouldn’t want to read something that was irrelevant to my life.

            Chapter five offered an enormous amount of reading strategies that I found all to be useful.  I won’t go into detail about each one, but rather the ones that I could really see myself as teacher using in the future.  I could definitely see myself implementing “Tweet the Text.” As you know, I am a connoisseur of all things social media, and I do think that it plays huge part in people’s lives today. Like the authors state, most of the kids are using social media, so why not pair a learning activity with it.  Now, I do not want to make the assumption that every single high school teen uses social media, but I would argue to say that most of them do. As a future ELA teacher, I am always looking for innovative ways to implement learning in my classroom, and I like to use technology in any way that I can.  We live in a technological society, where things evolve more quickly every day, and that is the society are students will grow up in, so no matter the subject we teacher we need to teach current technology as well.  This tweet strategy would also be a good way to introduce some poetry lessons because it will provide the student’s with a challenge, seeing as there are only one hundred and forty characters available.

CRAFT Writing (Strong Ch. 6)

         This chapter contains some great writing information that I will definitely be implementing in my future classroom.  This chapter specifically looks at the type of writing that would be most beneficial in a classroom, while keeping the student motivation at a high rate. We need to reduce the risk of creating non-writers in the future (Strong p. 95). I do think this is an issue we are having in education at the moment.  I think writing is often forgotten about, but it is one of the most important things we can teach our students.  I am an aspiring ELA teacher, but I don’t think that the responsibility should be placed solely on us to teach writing; that responsibility should be shared equally throughout content areas.  Strong introduces us to writing assignments that not only can be used in an ELA classroom but in all other content areas.  More specially, Strong spends the bulk of the chapter introducing and expanding on the CRAFT format of writing.

            The first part that I thought was useful was the ten principles of designing a writing assignment. I must admit, I didn’t realize how much thought goes into creative an effective writing assignment. Now does a writing assignment have contain each of the principles, or if not, which are the most important to incorporate?  I would argue that principle 9 is important because I believe giving students choices always leads to more motivated students. Also, the majority of the article is concerned with principle 8, which is, “think of CRAFT whenever designing your assignments” (Strong p.99).

A festive example of a RAFT

            I was aware of the RAFT format of writing prior to reading this chapter, but this was my first time looking at CRAFT. Basically, the only difference is that with CRAFT, we, the teachers, are providing a context to the assignment.  I look at this as giving the assignment a backstory. This chapter models different types of CRAFT assignments showing how to use each aspect of the format.  All of the examples start with an introductory paragraph, presenting a scenario.  From there, students will have an assigned Role, they will be speaking to a specific Audience, and they will be executing this writing through a specific Format, and will be assigned a Topic.  I do really enjoy this concept/format of writing because it allows writing to be a bit more creative than a traditional five-paragraph essay paper.  For instance, this chapter shows students creating brochures and menus as a CRAFT writing piece.

            With the CRAFT assignment, the directions should be explicitly stated, and the grading rubric should be simple and not overbearing (Strong). While looking at the rubrics, provided with the example assignments, I was amazed at how simple they really were. Some rubrics only consisted of four criteria to be assessed on a scale of 1-3. I was under the impression that a CRAFT writing assignment would be considered a high stakes writing piece, but the simplicity of the rubrics suggest otherwise.  It seems more like an in-class assignment that entails a lot of work.  Maybe, that is my problem? Maybe, a high stakes assignment can be assed with a simple grading system.  Well, to be honest I really don’t care for rubrics anyways in terms of assigning a final grade. I think grading should be more holistic, but that is another conversation within itself.

            It was great to see all of the examples provided for this CRAFT assignment, but I felt slighted a little bit at the lack of ELA examples.  Thank goodness that I am a creative person because I already got some cool CRAFT ideas of my own.  In my opinion, I think the CRAFT writing assignments allows for students to actively engage in their writing. They are assuming roles that may be foreign to them, and taking on topics that may equally be as foreign. This assignment requires a tremendous amount of research before the writing can begin (Strong). That is the thing that I love about the assignment because it is researched based writing presented in a more appealing way for students.