Author: del10

In chapter nine, “Building Language into Lessons and Assessments”, Zwiers mentions some ways in which we can build thinking and language into the way we design our lessons and ultimately assess our students.  The topic of assessment is of great importance and I believe it to be one of the most difficult aspects I will face as a teacher.  It seems at present that there is a movement towards changing assessment strategies from the more conventional test methods to allowing the students more options for which to present their knowledge.  I agree that we need to allow the students options from which to present their knowledge; however, I also feel that tests benefit some students.  Therefore I feel that we as future teachers must find the balance between how students are graded at present and at the same time combine new strategies to help properly assess students who don’t perform well in test/exam situations.

Another important issue which I think needs to be addressed is the importance of clarifying exactly what we as teachers expect from our students.  We must provide our students with clearly laid out instructions, as well as examples (when possible) of the project or work expected.  I can recall many times during my high school days where I was left somewhat confused as to what exactly was expected of me by the teacher.  I want to make sure that my students don’t have the same negative experiences with unclear expectations as I had.

My experiences during the short practicum were on the whole very positive.  I was excited and nervous with the opportunity of teaching a Spanish 11 course.  The importance of scaffolding became apparent early on, as everybody in the class was new with the language and ultimately fairly unaware of how to use it properly.  Also of importance were the uses of cognates, which helped the students to get a grasp of the meaning of the Spanish words in English.   Fortunately with Spanish, the cognates work well with the English language and are easily incorporated into a lesson with little initial preparation necessary.

In regards to chapter eight on language for academic writing, many useful activities were presented which can be incorporated into both my social studies and Spanish classes.  I was particularly fond of the written recap activity, which allows students a few minutes at the end of class to write down what they have learned during the lesson.  These few minutes are usually unproductive, as the students have crossed their threshold of focus.  This allows students to think about and process what they have learned in class.  It also; however, allows the teacher the ability to know if the students really understood the material that was presented during the lesson.  I do feel that the use of a few prompts such as “I learned that…, I do not agree with…, etc.” are necessary to get students to really think about their responses.  Perhaps also as a modification to this recap activity could be changing the questions to:

1. I know that…
2. I still need to learn that…

The article “ A Focus on Vocabulary” highlighted the importance that vocabulary plays on a students academic success.  If students lack sufficient vocabulary they could possibly suffer the “Matthew Effect” which is that the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer”. This means that the students that have good reading skills, read more and improve their vocabulary, while the students who lack good skills, read less and don’t improve.  Another important part of this reading was the part pertaining to tier 1 (common words), tier 2 (words students are less likely to know but will encounter), and tier 3 (rare words).  It was stated that teachers should focus mainly on teaching only tier two words as they are encountered many times in students reading.  Having had previous experience in teaching a second language abroad, I could relate to many of the themes touched upon in the chapter.  For example the section dealing with cognates was for me an important part of the chapter.  In my future teaching, instructional methods such as these will be necessary for my second language classes in high school.  As teachers, this chapter is of great importance as it makes us aware of the value of vocabulary and also provides us with some techniques to teach our students.  With the ever-increasing number of ELL’s that we will have in our classroom, the value of seeing the importance of vocabulary instruction cannot be dismissed.

I felt that chapter four in “Building Academic Language”, presented in a useful manner, the way each discipline uses language.  I have never thought in great depth about how each discipline uses language differently, but looking back at my own high school experience discipline specific language was of great importance.  From a young age I was very interested in Science, but in the later years of high school, I struggled with many terms relating to the discipline.  The part that struck me in the chapter was the statement that “too many schools see language development as the responsibility of the language arts or English teacher”.  This is a big problem, as I recall from my high school days, that language related to certain disciplines such as Science was definitely not taught in English class.  In regards to the section relating to History, it is important to give our students the skills so that they can think critically about past events that they will learn.  Our students must be able to take information from a variety of sources and then come to an idea of what they think really happened, rather than blindly believing what the text or teacher tells them.  Furthermore, Zwiers mentions the importance of interpretation in History, and how we must piece together clues from the past in order to come to an idea of what really happened.

Language for Academic Thinking

Chapter two in “Building Academic Language” delves into the topic of academic language.  It begins by defining the differences between social language (the less complex language used to build relationships) and academic language (more complex abstract language).  The most interesting part of the chapter for me was the part relating to bricks and mortar.  The bricks are the content specific words, while the mortar are the words which hold the bricks together. (Zwiers, p. 22)  This idea of bricks and mortar is something that I have never really though about.  This use of bricks and mortar and more specifically academic language in general, is extremely important in allowing complex ideas from a subject to be expressed verbally.  I believe that many of the ideas that I have gathered in this chapter, will be of great benefit when I begin my teaching.  These ideas such as bricks and mortar will hopefully allow me to better explain the subject material to my students.

The article “Supporting Secondary Reading Through Functional Language Analysis” brought to light the many challenges that high school students face when presented with academic materials.   It also mentioned that each discipline or subject uses different language structures in order to present the knowledge.  The importance of the teacher was stated within the article and that “a teacher’s close reading of even small portions of text with students, helped to maintain their engagement” (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010, p. 588).  It goes on to talk about functional language analysis, which helps students to recognize language patterns within each discipline. (p. 591)

In my own experience there were times during high school where I struggled during certain classes to fully understand the text.  The teachers were unable to properly explain the material to me or the other students or simply were unaware that it was necessary to explain it in more detail.  I too believe that it would be a difficult concept to introduce simply because I have never thought about it before; however, I definitely think that it has value.