Author: kevinsolis

My biggest take away from this week was the emphasis on meaning and meaning making (thanks to the group presentation btw). In my perspective, a lot of teachers are not able to convey meaning simply because they do not put themselves into the shoes of their students, particularly with ELLs. Teachers already know the message they are trying to convey, the students do not. I enjoyed the example that was used in the presentation about using hand gestures to deliver meaning about why dogs are better than cats and how he used his hands to illustrate an argument analogous to how the legs of the table help support the entire structure.  This chapter provides a variety of examples and methods in order to help cultivate a culture of reading in the classroom.

I liked the idea of teachers being adaptive to kinaesthetic, auditory, and visual learners. Every class I had with a teacher who just stood at the podium and lectured made me want to shoot myself in the foot. Sure, there are some pretty engaging lecturers out there, but when he’s simply just reading off of his notes and not bothering to answer questions that his/her students had, then there is a problem. Zwiers encourages teachers to move and act out brick words to his/her students, to break it down, or have students experience the word for what it is. In an English classroom, for the most part, the only words students see bolded come from introductions or author’s notes preceding the actual text to be read and when there are words that are bolded or footnoted, they do provide and explanation that is very much surface level and not enough for students to fully comprehend what they are reading.

My biggest take away with this reading was the importance of questions and silence. Asking questions impacts the way our lessons can go and can be very good indicators of where we want to take the class. Asking the right questions is very important as it engages our students in higher levels of thinking and can helps us build on what our students already know (scaffolding). I find that too many of the questions on worksheets teachers give to their students to be quite closed-ended with next to no room for interpretation. Of course, there is a need for those type questions in the younger years of high school so that students will be able to identify quickly the main elements presented in a text – plot, theme, character, etc. Asking questions in class helps teachers to model the appropriate type of academic language that is needed to be used in the classroom.

Of course, the one question that teachers dread asking would have to be, “Does anyone have any questions?” More often than not, teachers will ask the question and leave very little room (usually one second) for response from their students. At the same time, teachers fear the dreaded “I don’t get it” response from their students. Sometimes we just need to have uncomfortable silences in the classroom to foster healthy discussion. As teachers we need to be open to receiving that type of feedback from our students for the betterment of ourselves and for the betterment of our lesson plans. More so, as inquiring teachers, we need to constantly question what we do/how we do/why we do in the classroom and figure out what worked and what didn’t and how could this have been done differently and how do you get better engagement from your students.

I absolutely love how much emphasis is made in this chapter about the importance of group work in the classroom. I totally agree that group work can have both benefits and hinderances when delivering the lesson. This chapter touches on the hinderances briefly but concludes with the fact that with group work, if facilitated properly, students have the opportunity to be more active in classroom discussion rather than passive.

It is very critical that as teachers we model what appropriate language looks like in a group setting. By teaching our students about the motto “respect, connect, build, and support,” students will have less of a fear of being shut down and feel like their ideas are not being personally attacked are diminished to being a dumb idea. This is where scaffolding comes into play. By modeling these behaviours when we bring the class together in the beginning of a lecture or discussion, student will be able to build their vocabulary and syntax to speak creatively and critically to each other and to us.

Though I find it quite annoying, one of the most effective group discussion/activities I have found is the jigsaw concept which can be facilitated in many different ways. By allowing students to break off into their own groups and finding things about their topic they can share and by splitting off and joining with another group who has a similar topic, the facilitation is solely on the students themselves.

Every student has a variety of needs and many of those needs can be fulfilled based on how we use language in the classroom to facilitate and moderate classroom discussion. We don’t need to utilize the traditional methods of lecture style teaching because most of the time students will just zone out. As teachers, we need to figure out ways to engage our students in the classroom.

Zwiers defines interpretation as “the process of understanding messages and underlying meanings from a text” (pp. 71). Teachers will for the most part have a different view of interpretation compared to a student with regards to a text. Students for the most part may just not find the text interesting at all. If we as teachers find ways to make students some kind of personal connection with the text, students will be able to analyze, critique, and have fun with the text.

Phrases like, “One way to interpret her words is…,” and, “If we read between the lines, and see that…” are great ways to illicit responses from students. You can then use persuasion and cause-and-effect thinking to help a student hone in on a particular view and have them think criticality about it.

Vo-ca-bu-la-ry. Students must continue reading at home as well as in school to improve their vocabulary. Vo-ca-bu-la-ry.

Teaching ELLs (English Language Learners) has always been something on my mind ever since considering a profession in teaching, a lot of which I learned through LLED 489B last semester. Something that was brought to my attention is how we validate our students’ understanding in classroom participation. Zwiers says that it is not enough to just correct what was said because it was phrased wrong even though the answer is correct, but that “we must create learning spaces for our diverse students so that they build from what they have and add the knowledges and language skills needed in future school and work” (12). Each student brings something different to the classroom, and for the most part, they are things that come from experiences at home or with their friends. The question is how do we value a student’s contribution in class and at the same time challenge the student in expanding his/her academic vocabulary.