Ch. 11- Developing Content Area Writers

It seems to me that when many students are told that they must write something for school, they have the urge to cry, run away, and/or shout out a long string of obscenities; this is similar to the way I feel about math. These students have probably not had positive experiences with "writing" in the past, and they may have given themselves up as being "bad writers." What this chapter taught me is that "writing" does not have to be the same boring old five paragraph paper, just like we have learned that math does not have to be hours of worksheets and textbook problems. And while stiff papers and snooze-worthy worksheets are sometimes necessary, they do not represent a practical, real-world use of what is being taught.

Like Conley explained at the beginning of chapter 11, the writings that students will complete outside of school include memos, letters, charts, tables, schedules, and policy and procedure documents. The focus of these types of writings is not the structure of the text, or whether each paragraph has five sentences. The sole purpose of these writings is to communicate information. In the past, too much focus has been placed on the format of a paper, and too little focus has been placed on its meaning. Perhaps this is because it is much more difficult to assess the quality of a paper than its structure. Similarly, students will be required to write papers in college that do not follow a specific format. If students are only taught how to write in one way, there will be no room for creativity and personal expression. The papers will typically be stiff, redundant, and dull. It's no wonder so many students dislike writing!

Conley explained that teachers should teach their students that writing does not only occur in the school setting. E-mails, blogs, and even text messaging are forms of modern, technological writings. However, I believe that text messaging may do more harm than good in the long run. Last semester, Dr. Hanna expressed her hatred of text messaging and how its shortened form of writing can result in incorrect writing and spelling. This afternoon while I was tutoring my student, I asked him to write a sentence with one of our vocabulary words in it. He wrote "wat" instead of "what" and said that he is used to shortening his words when he uses text messaging. With the increasing popularity of such forms of communication, we must teach students that there is a casual way to communicate, and a formal and professional way to communicate.

I love the use of journals in content area classes. Students learn so much information in one day, and it is very difficult to retain it all. There are so many facts and ideas being shoved into students' brains that much of it spills out and it is forgotten. I have written things down that I learned in class, looked at them a few weeks later, and realized that I had completely forgotten most of what I wrote. When a student writes in a journal after a lesson, he or she can dump all of that information onto paper so that they can see it, organize it, and revisit it later without overloading their brains.

My Experiences with Smartboard and Promethean

Several of the classrooms I've been in on campus have either a Smartboard or a Promethean board, so I've seen them in use many times. I consider myself an expert at observing these types of technology! But as we all well know, simply observing something is pretty much the lowest level of learning. So, I'd love to have some hands-on experience with either the Smartboard or the Promethean board. I think they can be great tools for teaching. However, I do not want to become that teacher that uses such technology in every single lesson. Smartboard and Promethean boards should supplement teaching; they should not take the teacher's place.

I have never had any sort of instruction with the Smartboard, but I did participate in an introductory lesson concerning the Promethean board and its software. I took a tutorial online, then listened to a lecture on how to use the software and the board. While the instructor was demonstrating the use of the Promethean board, I really wanted to try it for myself! I feel like I learned a lot about how to use the technology, but I didn't learn much about what to use it for in the classroom.

In my experience, Smartboards are great tools for teaching skills that involve steps or procedures. The teacher can model skills for the students using the Smartboard so that the students can observe, then practice the skills on their own. For example, Dr. Manning uses a Smartboard in her Assessments class and she goes through the steps of determing assessment values, such as standard deviation, Z-scores, and other things I have yet to understand. By seeing her work out the steps, it helps me better understand the process. Teachers could also use the Smartboard as a tool for teaching editing skills in Language Arts. Similar to the assessment values, editing involves steps. Each step must be clear and understood before a student can move onto the next step. Smartboards are great for teaching steps because they allow the teachers to interact with text on a screen, rather than just presenting it to them.

Conley Ch. 7- Activating Prior Knowledge and Increasing Motivation

When I read the title of this chapter, I thought to myself, "Activate prior knowledge, make things interesting, blah blah blah.... I've heard this before. I get it." How many times in our education classes have we been taught that we must activate prior knowledge and increase student motivation? These two teaching strategies are certainly important, and they are unquestionably effective. However, I have never connected the concepts together so strongly until I read this chapter. I came to realize that prior knowledge and student engagement are related in such a way that they create something like a cycle of learning. If a student has prior knowledge, he or she will have interest in the subject. That interest leads to motivation, which leads to engagement in the learning process. Engagement leads to comprehension of the concept, which gives the student prior knowledge on which to build. Then, the cycle starts all over again!

This idea of a cycle of learning reiterates the idea that teachers should teach nothing in isolation; everything should be connected in some way. When teachers follow the standard schedule where they introduce a concept on Monday and test on Friday, they bring the learning process to a halt. Teachers need to build on what their students already understand so that the students can have a foundation on which they can build their fortress of knowledge (Cheesy, I know). The stronger the foundation, the more stable and expansive the future knowledge will be.

Activating prior knowledge can also be done by connecting basic ideas across content areas. Students may have an interest in one subject, but they may not see the relevance of learning another. By connecting Big Ideas between the two content areas, teachers can motivate their students to learn about subjects that some students may not normally perform well in. For example, I absolutely despise math. I was that student in school that asked, "What is the point of me learning this stuff? That's what calculators are for!" However, if one of my teachers had connected math with a content area that interested me, there is a good chance that I would have been more motivated to learn math. Similarly, teachers can use their students' personal areas of interest to motivate and engage their students. This reminds me of an episode of a favorite childhood show, Full House. Stephanie shared my animosity towards mathematics, and had a difficult time understanding fractions. Joey, being the genius that he is, used food- an interest and motivation for many students- to demonstrate the concept of fractions. Stephanie understood the concept of fractions, D.J. and Kimmy ate the cupcake halves, and all was well at the Tanner family household.