Narrative and Argumentative Writing

Narrative and Argumentative Writing

Synthesis:

McKeough- Narrative Writing

This text goes through the basic stages that children go through when they write a narrative. The two most important elements of narratives are character development and “trouble”. Students whom are younger have less developed skills in these areas than students who have been in school longer. This text pairs writing samples with standards of CCSS. It talks in great detail about the lesson of trickster tales and how the understanding and expectations grow as students mature. Trickster tales require a great deal of understanding when it comes to character development and trouble or breach. One strategy that teachers use to teach writing is Reading with a Writer’s Eye. This involves learning how to write using texts as a guide for effective writing. This requires students to evaluate the text and to imitate the techniques so that they can learn how to improve certain aspects of their writing. Narratives are one of the primary forms of communication that children start with; they replicate what they hear, what they imagine, and what they hear about in their lives.

Ferretti and Lewis-Argumentative Writing

This text focuses on the concept of argumentative communication with a focus on writing. Even young children can be adept at arguing. Very often, many of their initial conversations are argumentative as they try to understand the world and its rules. Arguments are dialogic, so students can often benefit from talking about and debating their arguments along with writing them. This way, students can begin to think about opposing viewpoints and how to address them. Self-regulated strategy development is a way for teachers to help students learn how to improve their argumentative writing. This chapter also covers other strategies such as: TREE, STOP, and DARE. These strategies help to break down the parts of argumentative writing and to give students something that is not intimidating but is also functional. The chapter covers details on how to write different types of arguments that might occur in different disciplines. Students rarely participate in literary arguments. Students need to be taught to analyze and evaluate texts before they can write argumentative texts about them. However, this kind of learning gets them to the crucial points of literature, instead of questions that are mainly directed in such a way to merely find out if they read the text or not. Historical and community appeals also lend themselves to argumentative discussion and writing. These issues stir both controversy and need for explanation. Students need adequate strategies, support, and time to develop the skills that are needed.

Response:

Text to Self: As a secondary Language Arts teacher, these texts are very relevant to me. Narrative and argumentative writing are important skills that students need to master. However, they can be very difficult for students to grasp, or to understand how to efficiently formulate them. I feel like I am not as familiar with how to teach narrative writing, sometimes I think you can be too close to something as a new teacher and it can be difficult to adequately teach the topic.

Text to Text: These chapters relate to the reading from last week because they deal with writing and the teaching of writing. In addition, they deal with strategies which have been discussed many times throughout this semester. Students will develop overtime when given the tools and encouragement they need to succeed. Teachers modeling how to accomplish different steps are very important.

Text to World: Both of these types of writing are central to our nature. They help us to express and understand. These ways of communication build from childhood and develop through our lives. As the world becomes more connected through technology, effective communication and the wider audience increases the need for effective writing instruction.

Questions:

1.   Has anyone taught a dialogic lesson? Or have any ideas?

2.   What are some of your favorite things when teaching writing?

3.   Not really a question…but would like to hear about perspective of working with younger students as I’ve usually taught 6^th and above…

Writing Instruction

Writing Instruction

Synthesis:

Hinchman & Sheridan-Thomas Chapter 9

Students don’t often get the chance to participate in class in writing full texts, and when they do it is usually in response to someone else’s writing. This can devalue students’ identities as writers. Choices that writers make are very important; they choose what themes to bring out, and which ones not to. This choice brings forth specific messages that are deemed important. Writing is thinking. This is one of the most significant points of this chapter. People write for many reasons, but writing is above all a thinking process that helps people to express themselves clearly. Students must be allowed to be responsible for their own thinking; in order to do this, they must be given the freedom of choice. Writers work focuses around thinking, and so they work with larger chunks of meaning that have specific purposes and audiences. When students truly revise, not just correcting spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, they must work towards these ideas to make their meaning clear. Another point is that teachers need to know their students and what their students’ writing experiences are. Many students participate in writing outside of the classroom, and these experiences can have just as much impact on student writers as writing that is taught in schools. Students need to write for a variety of purposes. The ultimate goals are that students are college and career ready. This chapter talks about using writing to think, and writing to get points across. Students must learn to use writing in order to harness their thinking. One way to do this is to keep a writer’s notebook. These are used to document their thinking and to serve as a way to come back and build on compositions. Students need time to write in class every day.  

Hansen and Kissel

This text focuses greatly on student choice. It argues that students should be given opportunities to experiment with both content and drama. The studies find that students who were given choice in writing were more willing to take on teacher led or mandated testing curriculum later on. Students need to think of themselves as writers; this means that they need to be given opportunities to write for authentic and varied audiences. In many school settings, the teacher becomes the only audience and this does not lend itself to genuine writing opportunities. For many students, their first audiences besides their teacher include their peers. Students need to feel like their voices matter, and then they need to be given the tools in order to successfully communicate their ideas. This chapter talked about having students writes about issues that affect their community, in a way that the community would have access to their thoughts through the students writing about the issues. To be a writer, it is also important that students be readers. Reading and writing are very closely related, and students who read more are more likely to recognize and more easily learn good writing skills. The research revealed that the impact of students from low socioeconomic background not reading was more significant than reading was for students from high socioeconomic backgrounds. This is because the latter students have more access to resources and experiences that would make them good writers, besides reading. However, reading is important for overall academic success. Different backgrounds must be valued in all classrooms, and teachers that come from different backgrounds from the majority of their students need to be extra careful in their approaches.

Sweeny

This chapter focuses on new literacies. There are many new forms of technology that are considered forms of literacy. Students today are very experienced in using these technologies, and are even aware that you need to vary your usage when dealing with different audiences. However, they might need some guidance when it comes to using these technologies for school work. These literacies are very relevant to students because they use them often in their everyday lives. Also, these literacies make the idea of audience very clear because the teacher is no longer the sole person reading their work.

Response:

Text to Text: These texts relate to other texts we have read because they emphasize the importance of getting to know our students and that direct, explicit instruction is crucial to adolescent learning. The purpose and intended audience of the text have also been addressed in the texts we have read about addressing disciplinary texts.

Text to Self: As a secondary ELA teacher, I found these readings to be very relevant. There are lots of ideas that I would like to start in my own classroom, especially student notebooks and having them keep track of the different ways they compose in their own lives. I admit that I am nervous and intimidated about the idea of community projects but hope to learn more about them and to practically put one in place at some point.

Text to World: As technology changes, the meaning of writing becomes even more broad. We need to help students understand that their thinking matters and to help them find effective ways to express themselves. People need to know that their ideas have worth, no matter where they come from.

Questions:

1. What are some strategies for writing instruction that you use in your own classroom (at any level)

2.  How have you used or would you use different technologies while teaching writing instruction?

3. I am a little bit intimidated by the community projects…thoughts?  Have you tried any community type projects?

History and Art Literacy

Disciplinary Texts/ History & Art

Synthesis

Hinchman and Sheridan-Thomas Chapter 13

The attitudes expressed in the beginning of this chapter are often voiced in classrooms around the country. Reading history is seen as boring by students; teachers think that it is the English teachers’ responsibility to teach students to read, and reading history is not the same as literature. Texts in the core subjects are not very different in the early grades, but becoming increasingly different as students move through school. The text emphasizes the change by giving 9^th grade as an example. History teachers go to great lengths to teach history, but sometimes avoid or shorten text book reading because of students’ refusals or difficulties. However, being able to actually read and interpret texts is a crucial skill for truly understanding history. When talking to historians, researchers found that historical readings focus around three skills: sourcing, contextualizing, and corroborating. In history, readers must focus on the author and the perspective, as well as what perspectives are left out.

Jetton and Shanahan Chapter 8

History requires different protocols and strategies than other texts. History is open to bias, perspective, and interpretation. One of the main points of this chapter is that history is intertextual, and that that includes the “text” that each person has inside of them. This chapter closely follows the history readings of two students: Brad and Aeysha. Their teacher, Ms. White, has a very exploratory approach to teaching history. Students read multiple texts about a historical event. When they do this, Ms. White is encouraging them to attempt to read like historians. While reading multiple texts about an event, students can either become frustrated or intrigued with the problems and discrepancies that that the texts create. These students deal with these issues very differently. The chapter explains that this might have to do with their background, or the text that they have in their head. In addition, all history texts are also hypertexts-they interact with other texts that have been written on the topic. Readers of history must be aware of the context, author, purpose, and possible bias. In history, many things can be considered texts such as media, visuals, and internet texts are all historical texts. There are many things to consider including powerful criteria, satisfactory reading protocols, and ongoing arguments about the texts. Also the organizational ideas of significance, causation, progress/decline, and change/continuity also determine how readers analyze the texts. These things are highly scrutinized by historical readers. The text emphasizes that reading must be “all texts all the way down”. All texts must be given a chance and read thoroughly. Only through reading multiple texts and asking questions can meaning be made about history. Evidence within texts must be used with other texts to make sense. Sometimes, everyday reading techniques do not work for history; how to read history must be taught explicitly.

Jetton and Shanahan Chapter 9

The arts also have multiple literacy requirements; in addition, multiple artifacts qualify as texts. The arts are about making meaning: which is exactly what literacy is. Through music and visual arts, meaning is made in many ways through different elements. The common core standards focus heavily on performing or creating, and then on listening/seeing and analyzing/interpreting. Each genre of the arts has different techniques for assessing meaning. For example, for music in general a conductor’s movements and sheet music have meaning and a certain way to read them. For visual arts, shape and color have meaning. In addition, music and visual arts also often involves reading written texts that include criticism, history, and introductory materials.  Students interact with musical and visual arts and connect with them almost on a daily basis, so teaching students how to read them can be very effective.

Response

Text to Self: As an English teacher, I feel like history and the arts are very closely tied to what I do. They both require literacy that is similar to Language Arts, and often intersect and overlap in content, themes, and context. So, I feel that learning how to better address these different types of texts is directly relevant to my subject. Very often, students are drawn to one of these subjects, if not both, and it is crucial to show how literacy can help them to understand the meaning behind them.

Text to Text: These texts relate to the other texts that we have read in this class because they are disciplinary. There are multiple skills necessary for reading multiple texts. Texts and literacy have a broad definition that centers on meaning making. Students engage better when they can explore and are taught the appropriate elements to look for in a text.

Text to World: History and the arts permeate society and are more accessible now with technology. Students come to school with ideas and a running texts about both history and arts. So, these are very relevant to them and are easy to understand that there is a message there that is trying to be made clear to them. Popular culture and the media present both history and the arts, so students must be able to understand how to effectively read these texts in order to function in society.

Questions:

1. What about other art forms or other electives, sports, or “extra-curricular” activities, can we, and how would we get in touch with these literacies?

2. How do we move students from discomfort to discovery?

3. I feel like these texts are missing conversations about how to access technological texts…thoughts?

Disciplinary Texts-Science

Disciplinary Texts/Science

Synthesis:

Hinchman and Sheridan-Thomas Chapter 17

This chapter follows the year long journey of a chemistry teacher, Will Brown, and student Eduardo. Eduardo is a troubled young man who does not care about school. He is defiant, removed, and disruptive. The teacher uses many techniques to help students to effectively read and understand science. His strategies engage students with the texts in a way that is encouraging and effective. Students work closely with others as well as in a whole class setting. Through the teacher’s work with students as Reading Apprentices, helps them to understand that reading is a tool for learning. The teacher took great care to help students understand how to understand science, as well as how to do science correctly. Through the use of preambles, K-W-L, expert groups, reading logs, bringing reading into the classroom, explicit reading instructions, team reads, cooperative labs, and inquiry, Mr. Brown leads students through a highly rigorous but valuable course in chemistry that teaches them how to problem solve. Through Mr. Brown’s strategies, Eduardo was able to overcome his aversion to science class. Eduardo was able to achieve success through the teacher’s attention, working with a “teammate”, engaging in class discussion, and realizing that success is malleable. Student learning is closely tied to their identity. As the text states “When we ask students to learn something new, we are asking them to become someone new”; students must adjust many times as they go through school. This accounts both for students who are defiant towards learning and students who are very eager to learn.  The key features in Table 17.2 illustrate how an ideal classroom that is geared toward student success would look like. This includes such features as a focus on learning rather than accountability, teachers are generous to student behavior, teachers know their students and work with them, teachers use metacognitive conversation to encourage learning, teachers support in-class reading, writing, and talk , and intelligence and performance are seen as malleable factors.

Jetton and Shanahan Chapter 6

This chapter focuses on the difficulties present in reading science. Reading science texts has several issues. Firstly, different scientific fields require different types of reading. Even within one field, scientist read for a variety of reasons. Science teachers can be skeptical to teaching reading because they might feel that the reading strategies are not relevant to their field or teaching science content. However, if teachers and reading specialists work together, they can work out effective ways for students to navigate through science texts. According to the text, science teachers often forgo using textbooks and other texts and instead just teach the material themselves. This is not helpful for students; science concepts can be very difficult to grasp. Students learn better when reading, and when they have been taught to read purposefully and strategically. Students are often asked to participate in hands-on activities. These activities are not sufficient to teach scientific concepts because the equipment that students have to use is not as efficient as that of professional scientists. Also, students are just that, students, and their amount of error in a scientific experiment. This chapter talks about vocabulary, comprehension, and writing and how they specifically relate to science. The vocabulary section was really detailed, but looked effective for more comprehensive understanding of a word and its multiple meanings and relevance. The comprehension for science focuses on analysis and prediction. Writing focuses on hypothesis and the RAFT strategy.

Response

Text to Self: I think at some point many of dealt with students who didn’t feel like the learning taking place was worth the time. Teachers struggle to connect with students, but it is crucial to student success. In addition, developing effective strategies can often feel irrelevant depending on how it is presented to teachers the first time, teachers need time to find and have help discovering other options for “general” strategies. Teachers need to willingly and proficiently listening to each other is crucial; we need to put our students’ needs first.

Text to Text: This chapter relates to the other readings we have had about disciplinary texts. Science is different from other subjects, but there are many different types of reading involved. Science requires a lot of reading, but like other subjects, not a whole lot of time is spent on understanding the reading, instead teachers see the main concern as being the content. Disciplinary texts need to be taught explicitly. Students and teachers need to work together to explore the content and use effective strategies.

Text to World: Students that study science face many difficulties. There are multiple reading and writing skills that are necessary for success in science class. However, these are not often explicitly taught, and students are expected to be able to learn the material and using these tools without help from educators on how to navigate these texts. In order for people to better understand the world, we as educators must work together in order for people to decipher how texts work in the scientific field.

Questions:

1. What do you do for students who do not feel like they can succeed in school?

2. How do you handle accountability versus academics?

3. How do you guide students through texts where they will struggle?