I Poems……

“Language is a social and communicative activity” (Vygotsky, 1978)

-I think this quote is very true! It shows us that language is not just a technical understanding of text, but it is a way in which we communicate our feelings and thoughts in a social world.

Looking through the power point (ipoemre4030) I feel there are certain steps one must take to understand “I Poetry.’

I Poetry is:
-written in first person
-is a way that students can deepen their literary understanding of particular character, setting or plots from children’s novels

Instruction Framework consist of:
-Poetry Innovation Mentor Text
-Researching Topic
-Shared Writing with Poetry Innovation
-Student Research and Writing with Poetry Innocation

-> Through these steps and techniques students were able to incorporate factual information into their poems, show emotion, vivid imagery, show precise word choice, develope ownership of their poems, and have a deeper understanding of their topic.

Also not only does this way of Implementing “I Poems” help student with understand and deepening their poetic development, it also shows and helps teachers understand how to effectively and properly use scaffolding when teaching students.

Interestingly enough looking through how Frye and her Colleges composed this power point, after reading I see that in a way there steps to showing how to implement “I Poems” really does take a similar form to Laner and Applebee’s “five principles,” Appropriateness, support, collaboration, ownership and internalization.

Overall I feel that writing “I Poems” is an effective way for students to understand and write poetry that is mentally and personally collaborated to create. As well as I thought it was really cool how at the end of the power point Frye and her colleges put actually results to their implementation. It really does show how effectively this teaching can work and how much students can and enjoy creating “I Poetry.” I think my favorite would have to be the I Poem by Hayden talking about the Gila Monster. It really stuck me and I thought the Gila Monster was a cool topic and he did a really good job on capturing his topic!!

I cannot wait to try one of these myself!!

Reciprocal Teaching and Discussion Director Readings

After reading both articles I would have to say that my favorite was the Reciprocal Teaching reading.  Reciprocal Teaching is my favorite because it is getting evey student involved in a role, instead of just having all the different roles on one person (student) in the group to cover on their own.  In my eyes reciprocal teaching allows students to work together, and each have a turn of being involved in the overal process.  Also reciprocal teaching reminds me of literary circles where everyone has a role to tell about the passage being read.  For Discussion Director reading, I feel that with this type of process students are more likely to slack off, because the roles for reading (summary, questions, engagement, etc.) are all placed on one person “The Discussion Leader.”  I feel that students will say well if I am not the discussion leader then I really do not have to read, and can just build off of what the discussion reader says.  Overall both techniques have similarities, but are very different in how they are used with students.  Here is a chart below to help understand some of the differences and similarities and how they can be used in the classroom.

	Similarities	Differences
Reciprocal Teaching	-can be used in small group -can be used individually -can be used with whole class -investigate text -adress different roles	-Every group member has a role -used during reading -group works together to talk about reading -change of roles with each new passage read -has responsibility over one role
Discussion Director		-used after reading -one student directs the discussion -has responsibility over several roles

Looking back at the chart I created while reading the articles and looking back at the reading themselves, I really feel that the Reciprocal Teaching really benefits the students more while reading.  Not only does it teach students to learn how to focus on different roles when reading, it also makes them aware of what types of things to look for when reading to help them understand and obtain the most beneficial information from the reading.  Yes the techniques of the Discussion Directer does give students some of the same qualities, I however simply fill that the discussion director is more so along the lines of presenting a discussion on a reading rather than a group overal discussion where students are more likely to read so that they can talk about their role or topic.  Discussion Director reminds myself more of something a teacher would do rather than a student, or could only really be implemented in high grades, unlike the reciprocal teaching that I feel could be used in almost any grade when modified.  Therefore I would implement Reciprocal Teaching in my own classroom, rather than Discussion Director.

Connecting Vocabulary Article, Multitext Vocab. Activities and Vocabulary Overview Handout!

After reading “Breaking Down Words to Build Meaning: Morphology, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension in the Urban Classroom,” the vocabulary Overview Handout and the Multitext Vocabulary activities.  I feel I really understand how important vocabulary is to understanding and comprehension in reading.  Through each reading I was able to piece together in my mind that vocabulary and moving forward in reading go hand in hand.  Not only does it help to know basic root words to comprehend new vocabulary, that student encounter in reading as talked about in the Vocabulary article, but it also helps students to broaden their range of vocabulary.  Broadening students vocabulary is talked about in the Vocabulary Overview handout through the use of indirect and direct instructions which I can remember, now that I know how to look for these techniques, my teachers using these types of ways to teach my own class new vocabulary words.  Furthermore I think that the Vocabulary activities shown through the teaching of the Multitext unit on Pirates, really test these types of skills and how students can develop these skills of comprehending and understanding vocabulary to fur their reading skills.  I really like the activity where it ask students to write synonyms and antonyms, because as talked about in the Vocabulary article; when it talked about morphology, which I feel this type of activity could fall under, this activity allows students to further investigate meaning and understand of why this word has this mean and how they can really come to comprehend meanings of other words through understanding the vocabulary words they already are familiar with.  Overall each of these readings can interlock to one another and could even be presented together in help teachers to understand how students can benefit from this type of vocabulary teaching.  I really liked and enjoyed theses readings!  The were very insightful and helped my to even think about how I can improve my own understand of new vocabulary words through understandings I already have.  Great readings!!

Free Verse Poem Redue “on something you are looking at outside”

Looking out my window

green is all I see

Staring straight at me, are

branches

leaves

and trees

growing from the first floor

reaching me at the third

I wake up in the morning

to say

hello nature

beautiful outside

I’ll see you when I come back

for the day has just arrived

slowly growing

slowly changing

with greens and red leaves

soon you will fall

and will be bare

but beauty will still remain

cause I will see you always

each and every day

so good morning

and good night

its time to dream

and time to sleep

so sleep tight

tree outside my window

please….

stay beautiful and bright!

Connecting Reading Assessment, Multitext Unit and Reading Article

After reading the article, Integrating instructional-level social studies trade books for struggling readers in upper elementary grades by Elizabeth M. Frye, I understand how difficult it is for students who are unable to read on grade level.  I also understand how difficult it was because I was one of these students.  I remember being the student to stop reading when everyone else was done, even if I had not completed the reading assignment.  I ultimately learned to build off of what others said, never really reading the assignments.  However in the article I really liked how it talked about using “Literary Units.”  I think this would have really benefited me as a student because you are able to read on your comfortable reading level, even though students are reading different books.  With the literary unit students are reading different books on different reading levels, but are sharing the same type of theme, genre and sometimes author.  This is similar to some of the aspects of the “Multitext Unit,” meaning that towards the end of the multitext unit we are suppose to provide different books for different reading levels, but staying on the same genre and topic of the lesson.  Multitext is also a great way to teach Social Studies because not only are teachers combining fun fictional stories they are pairing them with informational text, instead of learning and reading straight from a text book.  As for “Reading assessment,”  this is established to help identify what students are on level, hoe proficient they ready and how they are able to comprehend.  This assessment can help establish what types of books these students should be reading and on what level.  Also giving a reading assessment can re-establish if a student is placed in the correct reading level.  Often some students are placed and never reassessed to see if the have moved forward or improved, but then again teachers never want to place a student in a reading level that is to difficult.  Overall I feel that the article helped me to better understand why we as teachers should preform reading assessment testing and why we should use multitext units in the classroom.  I am excited and cannot wait to implement these types of teachings in my own classroom!!

Fisher, Frey and Lapp Article Respons

This article is very interesting and looks at several different types of modeling skills, however in this article it investigates one of the most common types of modeling teachers use, “Shared Reading.”  Within shared readings are several components.

-Comprehension: is a strategic to understand text

-Vocabulary: helps to focus on solving and word that is not familiar, or the definition is not provided

-Text Structures: Strategies to help readers predict the flow of information (compare and contrast, problem and solution,cause                                 and effect, etc.)

-Text Features: components of the text that are added to increase understanding and interest (captions,                                                                         illustrations, charts, tables, etc.

I thought this article was very interesting and helpful in understanding “Shared Reading.”  I love how that the article goes through the different components and tells you how the should properly be implemented to benefit the student, to what I feel is the max.  It also talks about how a teachers should be involved in this learning process.  In other words not giving away the answers, but giving them a certain starting point to help them understand what types of things they should look for when reading.  For instance in one section of the article it talks about how a teacher is to model vocabulary.  A teacher does not give them all the words, but instead models how to look for these types of vocabulary words by using different strategies such as context clues, word parts and resources.  Which all allow students to understand, by exploring on their own, the definitions of words they may not be familiar with.  Overall this article shows that when modeling shared reading most teachers will focus more on one component after covering moderately the other four.  It also states that teacher should teach with a purpose, because purpose is the most important.  In other words teachers should have a purpose for why they are modeling certain text and in one part even talks about sticky notes.  Which I love sticky notes and is a great way to keep track of the different components that teachers are trying to make sure students understand.

Pirate Article Responses

Surprisingly I found the pirate readings very interesting!!  I have always had and interest in pirates, ever since I was young, and I even attended the Live Blackbeard Play at the Greensboro Theater last year with my family.  Therefore reading these articles really showed me how I, a future teacher, can get my students involved in a lesson like this.  I thought some of the really cool techniques used where the “double-entry diaries,”The Data Revival Chat,” The Pirate Diary Notebook, and the piquing curiosity technique of “KWL” (what you know, what you want to know and what you learned) a technique I became familiar with in my RE 3030 classroom last year in block I.

Brief Summaries of my favorite Techniques:

-Double-entry Diaries: this is a technique where the students write information or quote on the left side of the page, while on the right side they write their own thoughts on what they are thinking when looking at the quote on the left side of the page.  This actually reminded me of the journal writing technique we talked about in class which showed that it helps to work out or write down your own thinking process so one can go back and look at to reference why they thought a certain way, or simply so they will not forget.

-The Data Retrieval Chart: A chart created to help students organize information and ideas while they are reading.  In the pirate circumstances this chart is used to help students create a “wanted poster,” about their pirate.  This is cool to me cause it allows students to gain knowledge about a subject, at the same time of using this type of technique to aid their creative assignment, in this case a “wanted poster.”

-The Pirate Diary Notebook: Is simply a note-book full of information on pirates, similar to a dictionary with pictures, as well as serving the purpose of a journal for students to write thoughts in as well.  I found this interesting because it is a way students can create a booklet of the new topics they learn about through the whole lessons.  Also reminds me of a portfolio, something a teacher can reference when trying to see if the students understood and comprehended the learning topic.

-KWL (what I know, what I want to know and what I have learned) :  This is a techniques where students write down in a chart under the three categories in parenthesis on the subject or topic the students are discussing.  This was actually one of my favorite techniques I learned last year, because I feel it is both beneficial to the student and the teacher.  Not only does it show the student how much they knew at the beginning of the lesson plan v.s. how much they know at the end, but this type of technique allows teachers to see what student retained, what needs to be changed and what can be left out in future discussions.

On the other hand I would probably not use the blog technique in my own classroom, like I would use the techniques I listed about.  I feel this way because I myself do not particularly like using the blog.  I find it hard to navigate through, hard to manage and sometime frustrating in trying to get things to look the way I want them to look.  Therefore although a great technological implementation of technology use in the classroom, I still would not give my students something that I myself find hard to use.   Overall I thought the articles where very informative and useful for future references, as well as using and modifying the different techniques for other lessons and topics.  Once again I am excited to start on pirate, they are interesting, scary and captivating.  I can not wait to gain more knowledge and add it to the pirate knowledge I already have!!