Author: randyc

Week 9 Reading: Zwiers Chapter 8

Key Points: Language for Academic Writing

1) Writing requires deeper thinking skills that challenge students to use language in order to organize facts, concepts, and opinions in strategic ways. By practising academic writing, it helps prepare students cognitively for later grades and post-secondary schooling.

2) Academic writing requires students to expand their vocabulary, vary their sentence structure, and learn how to use dependent clauses.

3) The students need writing guidance to avoid incorporating colloquial styles in their assignments because the norm fixates them down this path that may include redundancy factors.

4)  Benefits of reading can increase linguistic capital that helps demotivate students to rely on oral language to complete their sentences.

5) Writing expository genres: The writing of nonfiction/non-narrative texts. This is the form of academic writing most schools look for (biographies, lab reports, responses to literature, essays, articles, and persuasive letters). Expository genres often associate themselves with a trend that starts with a main point and then support that argument with evidence.

6) Some assignments require the art of persuasion within academic writing. In order to do so, students need to be able to break down the pros and cons of the issue, take a side, and express clear understanding to support their argument while providing reasons to refute the opposing side.

7) A list of writing activities that can help promote academic writing include dialogue journals, written recap, written dialogues, and perspective papers.

 

Reflection: After reading and presenting on this chapter, I understand more how one develops academic writing. Personally, I loved reading as a child and my parents encouraged reading by asking me to go to the library and borrow over 50+ books on a monthly basis. Since I’ve developed an enormous amount of linguistic capita at a young age I’ve neglected to learn the process on how academic writing is supposed to be–because I’ve been performing at standard/above standard without having to worry how detrimental it might be if I didn’t know how to write academically. This chapter really broke down the steps of acquiring academic writing and helped me understand how to notice where a problem may lie if a student fails to meet a certain standard.

Week 5 Readings: Zwiers Chapter 4

Key Points: Content-Area Variations of Academic Language

Language of Language Arts: Interpretation= process of understanding messages and meanings in text. Students can interpret a same text in different meanings–> need to find common ground. Persuasion= showing the reader/listener that the reasoning for your side is more logical than the opposing side. Also cause and effect.

Language of History: To describe the past, its interpretations, and its relevance to the present and future–> not a linear process. Cause and effect= most sentences are influenced by what happens in the previous sentence–> up to the reader to infer these connections. Interpretation= there’s a variation called “Skill of Generalization” –>”looking at events and interpreting them to come up with a principle/pattern that applies to other, similar events in the past or future.” Perspective Taking In History= in order to “think in someone’s shoes” one must learn about that person and his or her circumstances.

Language of Science: tend to be more technical. *Need to keep in mind that scientific language and literacy can differ significantly from others that students may use in other classes.*Description in Scientific Inquiry= students need to know how to ask questions in each step of creating an inquiry. Cause and Effect= hypothesizing possible causes and effects of scientific phenomena and using that sort of thinking to identify variables that can help students change their experiments to bring about better results. Interpretation= making careful observations and then figure out where the data will lead them to conclude. Comparison= requires teachers to have patience and effort teaching those who struggle in this area. (Students are forced to analyze and notice discrete characteristics).

Language of Math: can be seen as more foreign than other subjects. Less overlap of ideas, terms, and concepts found in other subjects. Need to be able to read in every direction. Interpretation= giving meaning to words or symbols. Problem solving= breaking down a problem into different parts, apply previous learning strategies/formulas, summarize main points and exclude extraneous information, organization of data in a logical sense, and compare the problem to previously similar problems.

Reflection: Another hard to get through chapter. This chapter serves like an encyclopedia section because of the diverse information it covers about language in different content areas. It may demotivate a reader easily if they are not fond of a subject matter. However, it does serve interesting approaches to each subject and how each subject defines interpretation differently. My favourite part was actually in the math section, (I’m a social studies discipline), where Zwiers talks about the different steps of problem solving. I love how he included the step to “exclude extraneous information” because that is crucial when reading a word problem, or performing simplification problems in algebra. Teachers tend to overlook that step quite often when teaching math.

 

Week 4 Readings: A Focus on Vocabulary

Key Points:

What is Vocabulary? (General) = Knowledge of words and word meanings.

Vocabulary as defined by teachers= hard words that students encounter in content area textbook and literature selections.

The article’s definition of vocabulary: words that students must know in order to advance their reading levels to understand demanding texts with comprehension.

Words come in 2 forms= Oral and Print.

Word Knowledge comes in 2 forms= Receptive and productive. (Receptive= words that we recognize when we hear or see them. Productive= words that we use when we speak or write.)

The importance of Vocabulary to Reading Comprehension:

(Trend: [If] students don’t have sufficient word knowledge to understand what they read, they typically avoid reading.)

Matthew Effects= “Good readers read more, become better readers, and learn more words; poor readers read less, become poorer readers, and learn fewer words.”

One of the solutions listed in the article: If children have the printed words in their oral vocabulary, they can more easily and quickly sound out, read, and understand them, as well as comprehend what they are reading.

Word Knowledge is “incremental”, “multidimensional”, and “interrelated”.

Word Schema= A network of knowledge related to a word.

Kinds of Reading Necessary to Produce Vocabulary Growth: The article indicates that students should read some text for leisure and some that challenges them. If the teacher offers some guidance when selecting books, it can greatly increase productivity during reading periods.

Rule of Thumb: Rare words that come up in literature very few times should be taught at point-of-contact, Tier Two words/words that come up in student texts that the reader might not necessarily know should be taught more because they are the ones that add most to students’ language knowledge.

Synonyms: Teachers should teach those casually as they come up to increase their student’s vocab knowledge.

Morphemes and Morphology: words that cannot be broken down into smaller parts= morpheme. Morphology= study of word formation. (Derivational suffixes useful to teach: something like -ial should be mentioned to students that it means (relating to) )

Cognates: e.g. Luna= latin root. Lunar= english literary academic word.

Reflection: Very interesting read. I can’t even summarize all the key points on here. As I was reskimming the article I can’t help but to keep highlighting the key points I found in this article. My most favourite parts of the article include learning about the Matthew Effects: how a proficient student will do better and better and how a struggling student will be less and less motivated to read. Also, I found out some root word examples in the derivative suffixes section that even I wasn’t even clear about in the beginning (-ial) so it really intrigued me to pay more attention when I come across something like this to keep in mind to alert my future students about these certain endings.

Week 2 Reading: Zwiers Chapters 2 and 3

Key Points: Language for Academic Thinking

Zwiers Definition of Academic Learning= the set of words, grammar, and organizational strategies used to describe complex ideas, higher-order thinking processes and abstract concepts.

General and Specialized Language= students learn new levels of understanding language & vocab through what they already know.

Bricks and Mortar= (Brick: technical words that are specific to a discipline)(Mortar: words that are used to create smooth-flowing and logical sentences and paragraphs.)

Functions of Academic Language: 1) To describe complexity 2) To describe higher order thinking 3) To describe abstraction.

Features of Academic Language: 1) Using Figurative Expressions 2) Being Explicit for “Distant Audiences” 3) Remaining “detached” from the Message 4) Supporting Points with Evidence. 5) Conveying Nuances of Meaning with Modals. 6) Softening the Message with Qualifiers. 7) Using Prosody for Emphasis.

Features of Academic Grammar: 1) Long sentences 2) Passive voice 3) Nominalization 4) Condensed complex messages 5) Clarity.

Reflection: This chapter was extremely hard to get through in my opinion. Trying to keep the key points short as possible because there were way too much notes I took on this chapter. My favourite part was the features of academic grammar section because it really defines what older students are submitting through their writing assignments. I also believe these characteristics are what demotivates students from learning when they are required to do research on a scholarly article or having to read through dry material in a textbook. It really emphasizes the importance on why teachers need to be engaging during class time and also teach via allowing students to critically come up with an answer themselves.

Key Points: Cultivating Academic Language Acquisition–> Based on 3 principles: Language acquisition Basics, Building Habits of Connection, and Building Habits of Communication.

1) Language Acquisition Basics: a) Receiving Input. b) Producing Language. c) Negotiating meaning. d) Modelling Academic Language. e) Modeling with Think Alouds. f) Scaffolding Thinking and Learning. g) Gestures and facial expressions. h) Linguistic enabling.

2) Building Habits of Connection: a) Connect with Metaphors. b) Connect with Examples. c) Personify. d) Use language to authentically do and think.

3) Building Habits of Communication: a) Use controversial or provocative statements. b) Co-shape conversations. c) Repeat student responses. d) Rephrase student responses. e) Have students paraphrase. f) Use comments to enrich classroom talk (i.e. prompts) g) Conduct meta-discussions. h) Stop to think how we think. i) Focus on deeper levels of talk.

Reflection: Very useful ways to allow teachers to understand how to facilitate a discussion properly that promotes student learning. The most important part I found in this chapter was the talk about linguistic enabling. Firstly, the chapter really overlaps well some of the content in my other education classes. Talks and examples of scaffolding really intrigues me when learning through this course. In linguistic enabling, it talks about how it is bad to overuse scaffolding and how teachers accept oral and written responses that are not sufficiently at the academic level it should be at.

 

Week 1 Reading: Zwiers Chapter 1

Key Points: Understanding How Students Use Language

1) The Role of Home & Community: Because diverse students learn and think differently than mainstream students, a common mistake teachers make is assuming common knowledge and procedures among learners. The book emphasizes that “Teachers need to align students’ backgrounds with how we teach, what we teach, how we use language, and how we expect students to describe their learning.”

2) Diversity of Students: Their cultural backgrounds can range from a) Breaks from schooling. b) Short school days. c) Introverted personalities. d) Weak academic English. e) Peer pressured to become more colloquial. f) Constant relocations/moving.

3) Capitals, Registers, and Expectations: Capital= valued knowledge that gets passed onto most mainstream children. (4 types: Social, Cultural, Knowledge, and Linguistic) Register= an adjusted way of talking within a certain setting.

Invisible Criteria: Teachers expect certain ways of talking about texts and expressing ideas in writing without indicating to their students these sorts of criteria. *Pedagogy of Entrapment*= a symptom of a situation where schools demand from students the academic discourse skills and knowledge that teachers don’t teach.

The Need to Value and Challenge: This section of the book teaches us to not devalue a student’s way in trying to make sense of the world. But at the same time we need to challenge students to expand their linguistic capital.

Being on the Same Page: “When ideas are transformed into speech, transmitted, and then turned back into ideas, some things are lost in translation.”

Agreeing on Importance: Teachers need to know from students what they think is important in their learning, but at the same time, has the ability to redirect students back on track if they veer off a goal during a discussion.

Hierarchical Thinking: Example: Involves a main point. Then support it with several logical reasons and evidence. Finally summarize it.

 

Reflection: I think this is a great introductory chapter to hook teacher candidates into being aware of how a student’s language understanding can greatly affect their learning and quality of work produced. My favourite part of the chapter was the talk on invisible criteria/hidden curriculum because I think it alerts me into thinking carefully during each lesson on how to define my expectations clearly to my students.