LLED 360

It was interesting to read this chapter on academic writing right after the short practicum because I actually used one of the techniques Zwiers suggested in one of my classes. At the beginning of the second week of my practicum, my sponsor teacher gave me the opportunity to help my Science 10’s carry out a lab. Since it was their first lab of the year, I felt it was necessary to spend some time before the lab to remind them on how to write a lab report. After brainstorming for some time on how I would carry out my lesson, I decided to develop a lab report template for my students to follow. On the lab report template, I listed headings for six sections I wanted them to include in their lab report (title, purpose, procedural diagram, observations and data, analysis and conclusion). Underneath each section heading, I provided short descriptions (around 1-2 sentences) to help guide my students on how to complete each section. I even labeled where I want them to write in their name, their partner’s name, and which block they were in.

However, I did not believe just handing out a copy of the template would be enough for my students to truly understand how to complete it. As Zwiers mentioned in this chapter, it is important for teachers to model how to write within each content area (219). After handing the templates out, I spent the next five minutes going over the entire template describing in more detail what I expected in each section. I even turned on the overhead projector to show my students how I would represent the collected data in tables and graphs under the ‘Observations and Data’ section. Hopefully by setting an example for my students to follow, they would encounter fewer problems when completing their lab reports at home.

When reading chapter 7, in several moments I thought to myself that Zwiers was getting repetitive, since I felt I had already seen many of the claims the author makes. Nonetheless, as I looked more attentively to these claims, I realized that, in fact, they are also pointed out in the two articles we had previously read in this course: “Disciplinary Literacies Across Content Areas: Supporting Secondary Reading Through Functional Language Analysis” and “A Focus on Vocabulary”. While the first work regards the need for teachers to scaffold students into reading academic language (which is qualitatively distinct from their previous language foundations and therefore requires new skills), the second work conveys the positive or negative cycles that students may enter depending on their language abilities–and even suggests the same “analyzing words” and “looking at the context” techniques to expand vocabulary that Zwiers proposes (190). By looking at the two paragraphs of Zwiers conclusion (192), it is possible to identify the strong bridges between the first paragraph and the former article, as well as between the second paragraph and the latter article, which confirm the extent to which Chapter 7 greatly overlaps with these two works. This, however, certainly does not make this Chapter less important, since these are issues that ought to be constantly reflected upon by educators, and since the Chapter also contains new, and rather important, considerations, such as the oral scaffolds for academic reading (167). 

I really enjoyed the group presentation on the use of pop culture in the classroom and certainly could relate to some of the examples provided. At the top of the presentation when the group members staged a conversation that exemplified “speaking in code” as it might seem to someone that is not familiar with the pop culture reference being discussed, I could relate it to my experience of watching a sporting event. While I will occasionally watch a hockey game for entertainment, I in fact know very little about the rules of the game itself. Therefore, when I am watching with a group of people that enjoy analyzing the game and responding to the calls that are made, I often feel very isolated and disconnected from the whole experience. Yes, I could ask questions about the rules or do my own research so that I would have a better understanding and be able to contribute. However, if this same situation happened in the classroom with a student feeling lost and disengaged from the conversation involving a pop culture reference, I’m not convinced of the likelihood of a student taking the initiative to research or ask questions about the reference.

I do think that bringing pop culture into the classroom can be a great learning tool, but as the teacher I would want to do as much as I can to set up the lesson in such a way that I am not excluding students from the learning experience. I believe that even with a little bit of background explanation of the pop culture material I am referring to, it will make a huge difference to the accessibility for all students. For example, if I were teaching a lesson on the structure of writing stories and wanted to draw reference to “How I Met Your Mother” as an example of telling a story through flashbacks, I would not simply just refer to the show as an example and assume that most of the class would understand. Instead, I might frame the discussion by describing what the show is and how it uses flashbacks as a tool to tell the story, and perhaps then show a clip from the show so that everyone could understand my reference.

Sara Martens

I thought I posted this weeks ago! Oops.

I found this chapter interesting because I did not realize how many different actions are required for reading and comprehension. An individual must pick up on how the author is using their words and phrases, align oneself to that usage, and then they need to “chunk” like information together. They must also read and interpret abstract text on a level that they can ask their own questions about it, and must be constantly meta-reading. This is an overwhelming amount of information to process on a sentence by sentence basis, especially for students who are being introduced to academic texts for the first time. I realize that when I assign readings for art history or art theory I must be conscious of this fact. The chapter has given some great tools on how to interact with the students in their readings. Because I find that I process more when I read aloud, I plan on using the “read-aloud” and “comprehend-aloud” in my classes so students have a jumping off point for their reading. Hopefully, an introduction to the literature will help them get excited about where the text is going. I have had experiences where I am assigned an academic reading, do the reading, and still feel like I have missed the main point of the article when I come to class and hear others discussing it. Perhaps a “comprehend-aloud” exercise would equip my student to understand the process of interpretation so that they can bypass the same confusion. However, I would not want to overuse either of these techniques and make students feel annoyed and unintelligent when they do the readings on their own. It will be interesting for me to find that fine line in my teaching.