- What would these authors say to one another in a conversation? What would they agree on? Where would they disagree?
- What might Gee or Delpit say to any of these authors?
- Have you used a generalized or disciplinary literacy approach already in your classroom and you didn't know it? What are some examples?
- What are you learning about social justice and literacy in your content area?
- Is there a quote or concept that is causing tension for you? Try to name it and explore why.
Monday, August 28, 2017
Cullen / Gabriel & Wenz / Zwiers
In this week's reading you hear from Cullen, Gabriel & Wenz, and Zwiers. What are your thoughts about these readings? Here are some potential questions to respond to, but feel free to write about you are curious about and moved by.
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Zwiers supports Gee's idea that "a Discourse is a sort of identity kit which comes complete with the appropriate instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular role that others will recognize." (Gee 1989) Regarding persuasion, which is a key component of most ELA curriculum, Zwiers writes that
ReplyDelete"Persuasion is not as highly valued in some cultures as in the U.S. . . In particular, public conversations of this nature potentially create disharmony and might not seem appropriate to certain students."
This is because certain students have not adopted the discourse of persuasion - by American standards anyway. In fact, they may have a primary Discourse that is in stark contrast to the (American) Persuasion Discourse, especially if their culture of origin values attributes such as humility and group cohesion over others such as persuasion and argument. If an ELA teacher is unaware that some students have a primary Discourse that runs counter to writing a persuasive essay and participating in a formal debate, he or she will not be able to effectively help those students succeed with persuasion-related skills in an ELA classroom. This is why it is essential for teachers to understand their students' discourses as fully as possible. It's one thing to teach a skill. It's another thing altogether to push through multiple layers of identity in each student so that those students can LEARN a skill.
Cullen (2016) writes that "Across disciplines, titles and headings will likely differ, but what they have in common is that they give the reader a preview of what is coming." Her larger points are regarding discipline-specific literacies and how they intersect, but after reading Gee, I think it is necessary to think about students' discourses prior to the texts used in the classroom. It doesn't matter what the text is or how it intersects with the materials used in other disciplines if you don't know the students first.
I agree with your statement about knowing your students. If you don't know their backgrounds and their interests, you can't make a lesson engaging and at their level! If they don't understand the reading, or aren't engaged they will not gain as must knowledge as they should.
DeleteI agree, in order to be a good teacher you have to know your student. If lessons are not engaging students won't want to learn. When lessons are not engaging you are more likely to have behavioral issues. Teaching middle school I have realized students love any type of challenge. In order to review math concepts I make review games. The students are engaged and work together because they want to win the game.
DeleteBrittany - I don't see a publication year for the Zwiers piece; I would have cited it if I could find it.
ReplyDeleteIn this week’s reading, I found myself particularly drawn to the texts from Cullen and Gabriel & Wenz on disciplinary literacy. However, two bits that are causing tension for me come from the “Educational Leadership” piece.
ReplyDeleteUnder the instructional practice regarding disciplinary texts, Gabriel & Wenz’s recommend, “avoiding textbooks because they present knowledge as uncontroversial” (2017). Even after reading through their explanation about teacher argumentation, I still felt like I couldn’t agree with this statement. As an ELA content focus, despite that I personally am not an advocate for textbooks, I believe they are still a relevant text in literacy today. To either depend on them or avoid completely is to disregard their political backing and bias, and as someone who learned late in my education how politically geared textbooks can be, in a way I feel cheated from a chunk of my own education (and I certain don’t want my students to experience that).
In addition to that statement, I also don’t know how I feel about the tactic of teaching students to, “Do what ‘good readers’ do” (Gabriel & Wenz 2017). Maybe it’s just the wording that’s setting me off a little because I struggled immensely with reading comprehension through late elementary & middle school, but I think my big issue with the statement is that it’s used alongside the idea of “being like an expert”. To me, pointing the focus on a hypothetical expert will help prevent kids from comparing themselves to their peers. However from a student perspective, when I heard a teacher say “do what ‘good readers’ do”, I’d be thinking about a classmate next to me who could read fluently out loud in class, and ultimately I would label myself in my head as a “bad” reader.
I’m curious to see what others to think on both of these topics.
You bring up an interesting point! I just recently hung up a poster in my classroom near our library that says "Good Readers..." and now I wonder if what the connotation of that phrase is for my developing readers? As we continue this class and explore what "literacy" is, I hope to change my presentation of what reading really is to my students.
DeleteWhen reading Zwiers text, I couldn’t help but refer back to the article written by Cullen. I noticed a couple similarities between the two pieces of text. Zwier said “Unfortunately, too many schools see language development as the responsibility of the language arts or English teacher.” When reading that sentence, I immediately returned to the Cullen article because I remembered similar words. However in her article Cullen said, “According to O’Brien et al., many content area teachers do not believe that teaching reading strategies is part of their role and that this sort of teaching is better left to English language arts or English teachers.” One difference is that in Cullen’s article, the source she referenced (O’Brien, Stewart, & Moje, 1995) went on to say that many teachers were concerned that teaching literacy will consume time that they could be using to teach their curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI can’t help but wonder if the teachers that were interviewed had been given the training and tools on how they could incorporate literacy into their lessons. As a math teacher I feel the stress of having to follow a pacing guide and teach as much of the material as possible. However, I was surprised I to see that I am doing a lot of the things that they specified. I teach my students the essential math vocabulary words they need to understand what they are learning. I try to incorporate the math terminology when asking guiding questions. I also teach my students strategies to scaffold word problems so that they aren’t overwhelmed with all the wording and can extract the most important information. We also review what different symbols mean when they are used in the lesson I am teaching. I can’t help but think that those teachers may be doing some of the literacy strategies that were specified by Cullen and Zwiers without realizing that by doing so, they are teaching literacy to their students.
I enjoyed Cullen’s article most. I found the table provided to be extremely helpful. In Table 2, I loved how Cullen broke down her chart into three sections: discipline, distinctive features, and demands and strategies. The reason why I felt this chart was so helpful was because it allowed me to clearly see how literacy can be presented in similar ways across different content areas but the strategies for breaking it down may differ. It reminded me how similar math and science literacy demands and strategies can be. I like the demands and strategies column because it reminds a teacher what aspect of their content area they may need to break down for students so that they truly understand the lesson.
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ReplyDeleteJeff Zwiers makes an excellent point when discussing how teachers need to learn how to see the learning process from the student's perspective. It's difficult to support the growth of a student who has no pre-existing knowledge of a subject when we view the material as an individual who has vast experience or even achieved mastery in a topic. This point is later reiterated in the piece by Gabriel and Wenz, which leads them to discuss the various instructional strategies that could be used to most effectively achieve cross-disciplinary literacy.
ReplyDeleteI feel as though this is an important concept to grasp because, as Zwiers says in his introduction: “Each discipline uses variations [subregisters] of academic language that… then branch off further and become more specialized as they form the highly technical languages of higher education.” (Zwiers pg. 69). At a basic level of literacy, a lot of language is useable across each content area but as the subjects get more complex, so does the language. The “type” of literacy, if you will, evolves into different subgenres that are no longer interchangeable. In science for example, a lot of the vocabulary becomes specific to the field of science involved, instruction becomes procedural, and thoughts become abstract.
This is a lot different from the literacy that you need to succeed in other classes. Cullen briefly touches upon this observation in a “what if?” statement where she describes the following sentence in a chemistry textbook: “The despondent chemist tenuously grasped the test tube and lifted it feebly over the dancing blue flame of the Bunsen burner, fluttering the cylinder back and forth like a tiny flag signaling his surrender to the very science he was studying.” (Cullen 2016). Although there is nothing wrong with the sentence structurally or grammatically, this type of sentence would feel out of place in a science book as the type of literacy is out of place. It is written more like an ELA sentence, and not so much a scientific process that can be followed and reproduced. I liked how this illustrated the concept of different styles of literacy across content areas that are don’t always work if you attempt to swap them in and out.
I agree that sometimes teachers forget that students don't have the pre-existing knowledge and that students don't have the same perspective as them. Reading Zwiers piece reminded me of the movie Freedom Writers. The teacher goes in and assumes they have heard of the Holocaust. She has to adjust her teaching and take into account the cultural differences between herself and the students.
DeleteHave you used a generalized or disciplinary literacy approach already in your classroom and you didn’t know it? What are some examples?
ReplyDeleteIn this week’s readings, I found the Three Directions for Disciplinary Literacy by Gabriel and Wenz to be the most helpful in identifying ways I use both generalized and disciplinary literacy approaches in my classroom.
Disciplinary Literacy Approach
“The central goal of disciplinary literacy instruction is to help adolescents develop “insider status” in these communities. In that light, disciplinary literacy instruction can be viewed as an apprenticeship in which students are carefully guided as they engage in specialized ways of thinking, reading, writing, and talking (McConachie et al., 2006).
Before my new position at the middle school this year, I taught elementary grades K-5. Within that time, I have worked at various grades and with students at various levels. Teaching every subject every day led itself to having to work under this approach.
I like to think students gaining “insider status” would be the same as gaining mastery in skills to help them across all content areas.
Examples of this in my classroom entailed using a workshop model. During the workshop model, students would be put into groups according to the needs of students and objective taught. I would work with one group at a time as they rotated every 20 -30 minutes depending on skills needed, time, and schedules. Students in rotations would be working alone, with partners or as a group. Groups entailed assignments like project based learning research to “think like an engineer”, or using critical thinking skills to solve a math problem “like a mathematician” or read “like a detective” or reflect on their current learning and make steps to move forward to master content. As an elementary teacher I was their teacher for every content. “These teachers explain why they do what they do, and then provide opportunities for students to practice those skills.” (Gabriel and Wenz) Using this type of practice helped my students to use skills across content areas as well.
I really like your workshop model! It allows students to be in charge of their own learning, as well as being a fun and engaging task!
DeleteI love using this model in my classroom! Additionally, students enjoy the different rotations and the ability to move around the room. When possible, I try to incorporate a rotation that involves some form of art. Students also have the opportunity to learn how to be a collaborative group member.
DeleteAs a future Math Teacher, I did not realize the importance of literacy in my content. Zwier and Cullen both made excellent points about the challenging aspects of reading a math textbook. On page 92, Zwier lists all of the challenging components of reading a math text. One of them stated, "A student must read not only left to right but right to left, up and down, and even diagonally when reading graphs and tables, for example." (Zwier 92). As I read this line, I laughed knowing all too well how true this statement is. The funny thing being that because of my math background, and becoming familiar with this type of reading, I had forgotten how truly foreign that would be to a new math student. All three articles stated that teachers have come accustom to spitting out the content, and have not taken the time to full immerse the students in the language of the content. Cullen states, "..many content area teachers do not believe that teaching reading strategies is part of their role and that this sort of teaching is better left to English language arts or English teachers." (Cullen) However, leaving math content reading strategies to the English teachers will most likely cause students to lack the skills needed to read math text books. Math reading strategies, and understanding the terms is not all transferable in other contents (check out page 92 of Zwiers' article as well as Cullens' Discipline chart). Both Zwier and Cullen describe concepts only math students would need to understand in order to reach the next step of mastery. Cullen talks about the idea that the words "the", "a", and "of" all becoming meaningful and can change the outcome of a math problem drastically.
ReplyDeleteReading all three of these articles has opened my eyes to just how important it is to stress literacy in my content. I may be very confident in my own math reading abilities, but that doesn't mean my students know what to look for. It is my job to not only teach math concepts, but to teach students how to read math, how to understand math, and how to pick out important ideas. Cullen states that not providing students the knowledge of terms, strategies, etc. is a form of "linguistic enabling". (Cullen 92). I want my students to know why something works, not just how. To be able to give my students the knowledge of why something works, it requires proper language skills.
Gabriel and Wenz discuss different directions for disciplinary literacy that I will use in my classroom in order for my students to gain master in math content literacy. The direction that I like best and would most likely use in my own instruction is the Engagement in the Discipline. I would try to engineer teachable moments. I want my students to figure out how to solve problems on their own without me just standing up at the board showing them how to solve the problem. After they solve the problem, then we can come back together as a class to discuss the results and deepen their understanding of what is going on. I will teach the students certain components and model how to understand problems when necessary, but I want my students to learn how on their own. It will all for students to have a deeper understanding of math, and be more engaged in their own learning.
Sydney,
DeleteI love Cullen's idea that particular words and symbols have specific meanings in mathematics. I can recall many times where I have taught my students the meanings of specific words and their associated math operation. Its exciting to read about something and realize that you are doing some of the things that highly effective teachers do. Thanks for sharing your post.
-Bill
To summarize, what I have taken away from reading these articles is that literature is in all contents. They can be overlapped, but all still have unique features. Without learning the specific skills and language within each content, the students will lack full understanding of what they are learning. By learning strategies and language, the students will be able to master the content, make new discoveries, and build upon their learning with even harder topics. I believe that students should be engaged in their learning, make discoveries, and ask questions in order to direct their learning. As a teacher, I will let my students take charge in their learning rather than modeling every topic. Students will gain a better grasp on the topic, and fully understand why the math works rather than just how. I cant wait to implement all of my learnings from these articles to my future classroom.
ReplyDeleteI think all of the authors would agree that literacy is different across content areas and requires the use of specific strategies. There also seems to be a common theme of dispelling the myth that teaching literacy strategies is a job only for the English teacher to do. Zwiers makes the point that although language development is taught in English classes, it tends to be all of the other subjects where students actually have language difficulties. They would probably all agree that there is an ever increasing need for disciplinary literacy instruction specific to our content areas, as was pointed out in the Gabriel and Wenz article.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Zwiers, I noticed that I’ve been using “Personification” (pg 12) to teach many events in history without realizing it. During lessons, I will often take on the role of whoever/whatever we are talking about and add dialogue to a situation to try and make it more current and life-like so the students can form a connection to it in hopes of better understanding the events of history. Too often history is presented in a very dry and distant manner. Students need to see some kind of personal connection to the story in order to make sense of it.
Specifically with social studies, I thought it was interesting how Zwiers talked about the “invisible connections” that our students have to make when they are reading historical texts. It made me think of how I should go about teaching students what to look for when they are reading, and what strategies that would best help them to understand and analyze content specific material.
Cullen’s teaching with social justice also has a strong place in the social studies classroom. In social studies, we are constantly going through texts and trying to identify opinion, biases, and how certain experiences shape how people recall and write about events of the past. Cullen makes the point that to be a socially just teacher, we must identify how those same factors have an effect on the way we teach our subjects. In the article, Cullen states that “Culturally responsive teachers also seek to understand how their own backgrounds, experiences, and biases may influence their teaching, such as having different expectations for various student groups based on stereotypes.” (pg 14) We need to make a stronger effort to get to know our students and their backgrounds, and also to be aware of how our own culture and experiences have an effect over how we teach our content and the kinds of expectations we have for our students.
As for Gabriel and Wenz, I think their model of Discipline-Specific Strategy Instruction would work best in a social studies classroom. Students need to work with carefully selected texts that are specific to the content area they are in. Textbooks would not be a good choice because they are too general and don’t contain any of the practices or conventions that experts in the field would use. Most importantly, teachers would need to explain and model what they are doing, as well as provide opportunities for students to try out these new skills.
One quote I personally connected with was from the Zwiers article: “As experts in our content areas, we teachers often have “expert blind spots” that keep us from realizing that much of our complex and abstract knowledge has become concrete and basic to us.” (pg 2)
I feel that we forget on a daily, and even hourly, basis that what we are teaching is all new information to someone; that not everyone has had the same experience with the material and content that we as content-specific teachers have had. We need to figure out how students learn, where they’re getting stuck and what confuses them so that we can teach the content in a way that is understandable and makes the information usable in other applications outside of the classroom.
Briana, your comment about using personification to make history come alive makes me wonder if you have used RAFT (projects with a Role, Audience, Format and Topic). Check it out if you haven't already.
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Deleteit comes to literacy across the board, I believe that all of these authors would agree on its’ importance. Literacy is not just in regards to the ability to read and write, but to interpret and analyze information that is absorbed while using it properly in the necessary context. These authors discuss how imperative it is to use strategies to enhance depth of knowledge within all subjects. Gabriel & Wenz and Zweirs use strategies to analyze material and learn by “doing” and where Cullen agrees, she stresses the importance of culture; learning is not simply necessary to learn, but to “critique socially unjust power structures in society.” Cullen is aware of all that is happening in our society and wants to ensure that all teachers are integrating this into their classrooms.
ReplyDeleteCullen, Gabriel & Wenz and Zwiers all stress the importance of literacy in the classroom and how society around us can benefit (and also hinder) students’ learning. Delpit describes five rules of power within the educational system and this aligns closely to Cullen’s beliefs about teaching culturally responsive literacy strategies. Both of these authors would not only discuss what they agree upon, but I believe that they would argue the positive and negatives about power in not only the classroom, but how power affects our culturally diverse society. Gee discusses how everyone has their own “identity kit” and how everyone has their own discourses, but also how they could use these skills and this knowledge to encourage diversity within our educational system and our society as a whole.
When I taught fifth grade last year, many students were required to remember mathematical terms and phrases in regards to algebra such as: coordinate, x-axis, y-axis, horizontal, vertical, line plot, mean, median, mode, range, etc. While the notes were given and students were trying to absorb this information, many of these terms were taken in one year but left out the other. Mathematics can be a very visual subject using graphs, models and other visual aids. As we progressed through this unit, I found that with each term, I would follow with an image in relation to that term and as students were given worksheets and assignments, they were able to relate the image they were seeing to the word associated with it. Where students can learn skills to learn to read, write, and analyze throughout all subject areas, using discipline specific strategies and visual aids benefitted my students in an astronomical way.
Every day, social justice is something that is present. The relationship between a student, teacher, or any other civilian and their society is a constant give and take. Where my content area is mathematics, I find that many individuals are pushing back against the Common Core. Society has chosen a program that hopes to align all schools across the nation, but many teachers and students struggle with the change in how students are being taught and the time spent on subjects and skills that may not be necessary. I feel as though I have a strong mathematical background and when I had to begin teaching certain strategies to my students, I began to see the disconnect between some skills and topics taught.
Gabriel & Wenz stated “… apply these same skills to act for social justice by challenging accepted knowledge and generating new knowledge.” Where this quote is strong and I believe what it says, I struggle knowing that as learners gain new strategies, society will challenge them back when accepted knowledge is questioned. I ensure that my students know the power they have on their own life and education and how they have the ability to be all that they hope to be. As they grow older and society changes and evolves, they will begin to question and fight back what is accepted knowledge, and it may be found that they must be on the defense. In this sense, they must not only have the skills to challenge accepted knowledge, but also have the skills to fight for the generated knowledge they have acquired.
The first word in the first paragraph is missing! Supposed to have "Where" in the beginning, hah.
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ReplyDeleteAt all of our Professional development meetings we always here that we all teach literacy. I believe that this is a newer approach. Years ago many teachers would have said that, “teaching literacy strategies is often associated with English Language arts”(Cullen, 2016). In modern day teaching, “these strategies are integral to learning in all academic subjects.” I firmly believe at my school that all teachers believe that they are responsible for teaching literacy. What I never heard of was disciplinary literacy strategies. I found the article by Cullen very interesting because it really put things into perspective for me. Being an RtI teacher I get many students refereed to me for history and science. There teachers would write that the student were struggling in history and science due to reading comprehension. I would then give the students a reading comprehension benchmark and they would score average. I was always wondering why they were struggling in these subjects. After reading this article it made sense. Some of those students were struggling in those subjects not because they could not comprehend but because they did not know the disciplinary literacy strategies for that subject. Those students have learned basic literacy skills but they have not mastered “disciplinary literacy, which involves “technical uses of literacy”(45) within the academic disciplines.” (Cullen, 2016) After reading this article I would love to learn more about Incorporating disciplinary literacy strategies into content areas.
ReplyDeleteOne concept that caused some tension for me was the Model Expert practice talked about in the Gabriel and Wenz article. The article states, “Teachers using this approach reflect on their own habits as expert readers so they can name and demonstrate these routines for students.”(Gabriel & Wenz, 2017). What really bothered me was ”their own habits”. I have an issue with this because every person is different. One habit or strategy might work for one person but not the other. By taking the expert approach we are ignoring the students needs. I personally think this strategy is too teacher centered. There are many practices and if you are only modeling the ones you use it is diminishing the thought that people learn in different ways. I do believe modeling is a great way to teach discipline specific strategy but I think teachers should model more than just the ones they use. At the end of the article they give a recap of teaching disciplinary literacies and I agree with their statement that you have to uses multiple approaches to implementing disciplinary literacy instruction. Gabriel and Wenz state, “ Each of the approaches exists on a continuum that spans different instructional goals, materials, and strategies, but they can be used in complementary ways within a single classroom, especially when teachers feel empowered to integrate them to meet the needs of the students.” (2017)
Ashley,
DeleteI am just as curious as you are regarding disciplinary literary strategies that we can use in the classroom. Although it is unfortunate that generations of students were provided broad and basic literacy skills, I am convinced by all of the evidence from these readings that disciplinary literacy is going to improve the overall education of students to come. As emphasized by many schools and educators (as well as yourself and your experiences), literacy is essential for any sort of educational or work-related endeavor.
Other than that, I felt like I could really relate to the second part of your blog. I agree that only learning "what the teacher does" is very limiting to students and their exposure and practice with literacy in all forms. Not only does it work against providing an low-stakes experimental environment for the students to figure out their own strategies, but it also establishes clearer stances of power (the teacher having the power & authority, while the students passively absorb the knowledge). Great work!
The importance of literacy in mathematics was modeled by each professor in the math department at Rhode Island College, and that is something that resonates with me today. Being the analytical person that I am and possessing a unique set of tools that are acquired over time, have helped me to be particularly successful in teaching math content reading strategies to my students. The crosscutting techniques that teachers apply in the classroom to make connections between the core disciplines like math, science, social studies, and English language arts have proven to be highly effective. In addition to applying crosscutting techniques to make connections between subjects like math and science, it is imperative that strategies for improving literacy spans beyond the efforts of the English language arts teachers to the teachers of specific content.
ReplyDeleteReflecting on content I teach as a middle school mathematics teacher and my own personal experiences as a student throughout my life, I can relate to how “students must use symbols to adeptly read equations as they gradually become experts at math” (Zwier 94). When teachers take the time to teach reading strategies specific to the math content, students develop into stronger mathematical thinkers and real world problem solvers. On the other hand, when teachers rely on the English language arts teachers to take on all of the responsibility for improving students’ literacy, many students experience struggle to conceptualize the math they are trying hard to learn. As a result, many students show somewhat of a fixed mindset about their ability to be successful in math. Teachers that truly believe that all students can be successful in math and are willing to do whatever it takes to help them be successful, ensure that they are teaching reading strategies that make every student’s education equitable.
Something that stood out to me was how Zwier and Cullen described how specific words found in a math text book have specific meanings that students must ascertain in order to successfully perform correct computations. I have always supported my students’ literacy by doing things like creating a math word wall where math terms, words and symbols are referred to throughout the year. I have always and continue to meticulously support my students’ literacy by teaching my students how to dissect applied math word problems into a list of given information, define clue words that indicate specific mathematical operations, and interpret pictures.
Considering that students rely so heavily on the use of language to learn new math concepts and persevere in solving math problems, it is easy to understand how, “Students seem to have more language-based challenges in their science, math, and history courses” (Zwier 70). I have found that the reading strategies I have taught students have been retained and reapplied more efficiently with new math concepts. Overall, the articles affirmed some of the positive things I am currently implementing in my math classroom to support students’ literacy in math while also increasing my awareness of the need to continue to grow as a teacher.
Regarding culturally responsive teaching with social justice, the following quote resonated with me: “A primary goal of culturally responsive teaching is to ensure that students from diverse backgrounds have meaningful opportunities to experience quality instruction that consistently incorporates cultural components to support learning” (Cullen, 2016). Last year, the English Language Learners (ELL) were part of my team. Our ELL teacher co-taught the class with me and selected books for the students to independently read. At the beginning of the year, I like to begin my classes with a Book Talk based on their summer reading selections. This is a very informal assignment where students discuss their books in the form of a 2 minute commercial. One of my ELL students read, Esperanza Rising, which is a story about a young girl who migrates from Mexico to the United States due to a tragic incident in her family. Although my student was very nervous, she approached the front of the room and started her book talk. Within seconds, she made a personal connection to the main character and openly discussed how hard it was for her and her family to come to the United States from Libya. After her presentation, she asked if anyone had any questions. One student asked about her hijab and she explained that it was part of her customs. The student’s book talk lasted for about ten minutes and provided a wonderful opportunity for her to talk about her culture, as well as her feelings about her family’s move. I remember approaching the ELL teacher in awe from what had just happened and her response was simply, “I really thought she would enjoy the book!” I didn’t realize it then, but our ELL teacher had purposefully selected books so students could make a personal connection. This careful attention to each and every one of her students laid the groundwork for an amazing experience.
ReplyDeleteZwiers states that teachers may have expert blind spots, “This often leads us to skip over information that novices need, because we have lost the sense of learning in the early stages of the discipline” (Zwiers, 2014). This quote made me reflect on my teaching practices, especially at the beginning of the year. I am always anxious to begin the sixth grade curriculum after the first few days of school. However, after my first year of teaching sixth grade, I realized that many students are not ready to start evidence responses. The time needed to review reading strategies and conventions is time well spent.
I like that Zwiers quote! It is so true, and something I have to remind myself often.
DeleteThese readings really made me reflect on my own teaching. As I teach both ELA and social studies, it is important to remember how important literacy is to both areas. Zweirs states, "Students and teachers must have a common ground when it comes to meaning" (71). This is crucial to remember as an educator. My students come from a variety of backgrounds and it is unfair to assume we are on the same page about deeper meaning. On top of that, their deeper thinking skills are just developing, and need to be supported.
ReplyDeleteOn the other side, focusing on Social Studies it is essential to teach students skills necessary for the literacy of the subject. Gabriel and Wenz write, "So, rather than drawing from a general toolbox of literacy skills to apply across disciplines, the goal of disciplinary literacy instruction from this perspective is for adolescents to develop multiple sets of highly specialized literacy tools that allow them to 'read like a historian' or 'write like a scientist'". In this way, my students are getting specific literacy skills that they understand help them become experts. I like this idea, and want to work on teaching these skills in a way to help them become better "historians".
Here is the link to our Photovoice Blog:
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