LLED 360

The reading on “Language for Academic Writing” is one that resonates strongly with me.  I can’t stress enough the importance of writing.  As stated by Zwiers: “Academic writing usually requires the thinking skills of analysis, casual reasoning, argumentation, and evaluation” (Zwiers 196).  These skills are valuable and will be used in any job that a student will apply for in their future.  Furthermore, writing is extremely important because it teaches students to learn “new ways to organize and present new language” (Zwiers 195).  For many students, they only experience oral language at home and do not engage in any type of written language.  As teachers, we are able to give students the tools required to express themselves in another form of language that they will only benefit from in the future.

After completing my short practicum over the past two weeks, it has reinforced in my mind the importance of both reading and writing in the classroom.  The benefits that come from reading and writing are immense.  In every classroom that I observed, students were required to read some sort of text and respond in writing to those texts.  For example, I observed a chemistry class.  The students were given a worksheet where they were required to read a word problem, analyze the problem, and then answer the question appropriately using both mathematical skills and writing out a final answer in a sentence.  In the drama class that I observed, students were asked to read a script that they would later be performing, analyze the script, and then write a series of stage notes that would be able to assist them in their performance.  I also observed numerous English and Humanities courses.  In these classes, students were continuously asked to read texts, decipher their meanings, and often argue for or against a particular point.

These numerous observations have affirmed in my mind that reading and writing are two of the most important skills that students can take away from their education.  We can scaffold the language of writing by giving students a variety of activities for analyzing texts and expressing their ideas.

Erin Milne

This week’s chapter on academic writing made me think about how difficult academic writing must be for some students who are ELLs.  When thinking about the types of academic writing that high school students have to undertake, a few things come to mind such as science lab reports, English essays, or short answer questions on tests.  Each of these examples represents a very different style of academic writing.  I think that many of the writing strategies provided in this chapter would be very useful for ELLs and are strategies that we as teachers must use in our classrooms.   During my practicum I saw some writing strategies in use by some of the teachers I observed.  One of these strategies was used in a Social Studies 11 classroom, where students were put into groups and given a question.  In their group, students were then asked to come up with a thesis statement based on their question, as well as three supporting points and a concluding sentence.  The next day, the groups presented their arguments to the rest of the class.  After, students were then asked to choose a partner who was not in their group, and pick one of the group topics to write a paragraph on.  The partners then wrote a “proper” paragraph with a topic sentence, supporting points, and concluding sentence.  The teacher told me that she would repeat this activity for every unit this year as she was trying to get students to learn to write proper paragraphs before even writing proper essays, both skills that her classes needed to work on.  Something else the teacher did to help students was to intervene in their partnerships.  For example, two ELL students who were struggling in the class paired up with each other because they were friends. However, the teacher split them up and paired them each with a non-ELL student because she knew by their writing level that they would not be successful together, but could be scaffolded by another student who could write at a higher level.  The teacher also paired other weaker writers with stronger writers in the class for this reason.  I thought this was a good strategy because she did not single out the ELL students or other students who were weak writers in the class by telling them what she was doing.  Overall I found the strategy to be a very good exercise in writing a proper paragraph and I could see myself using a similar strategy in the future.

Zwier’s chapter for this week relates directly to a lesson I taught for a Composition 11 course last week. According to my SA, this course is intended to enhance academic writing and act as a supplementary course to their required English 11; it is largely targeted towards students who just emerged from ESL.

Zwiers points out that graphic organizers can be very useful in teaching students how to write academically, as structure becomes critical in this genre of writing. In order to help the Comp 11 students organize their thinking and understand the structure of the standard 5-paragraph essay (which I don’t entirely agree with, though this is what is taught by most teachers), I suggested using graphic organizers. My lesson was comprised of modelling how to identify the thesis statement and topic sentences in a sample essay, and transferring that info to a graphic organizer. The visual I used was the common sandwich/hamburger template for organizing essays, one which I’m sure many of us have encountered. I then broke the students into groups with the task of creating their own graphic organizer to better remember and eventually internalize the essential components of a 5-paragraph essay. Some interesting ones took the form of a human body, a caterpillar, and a house.

Hence, teachers can use graphic organizers (and encourage students to make their own) to teach the structure of academic writing, which can be just as important as the language used in academic writing.

During my short practicum, I had the opportunity to observe a grade 9 English class.   After the lesson I had a brief conversation with the teacher, during which she lamented the fact that many of her junior classes had come into high school unequipped with some of the basic language requirements expected to be met by the time they reached high school.  Some demonstrated fairly shaky understanding of some of the key features of academic writing, such as identifying parts of speech such as verbs, adjectives, proper nouns etc.

Her remedy to this was to return to the base expectations of the curriculum, building the foundations of language and giving them the basic tools of academic language before asking them write creatively or expressively.  I liken this to the arts;  a student could have grandiose ideas of  a project or piece they want to undertake, yet without the tools to enact their concepts such as an understanding of line, form, shape, shadow, tone, color etc., their voices are lost or misrepresented.  It is difficult to make the translation of thoughts and ideas into any type of language, especially academic or school writing.
One way to teach academic language is to repeat the brick words in context, and to have to students repeated the words.  Hand gestures are a great way to model language in a kinesthetic way, for example when talking about ‘form’ and shape’ having the students create forms with their hands, and then in turn asking them to describe the gesture with adjectives such as round, sharp, straight, large etc.  Perspective writing can also be another useful tool as it incorporates a theatrical quality that is fun and interactive.  Asking students to embody the person, object, or place, and having them describe something from an imaginary perspective are effective methods to add humor and imagination into the writing process.

Kathy

At this point in our education, many of us have become fairly proficient in academic reading and writing within our disciplines.  It has becomes so familiar and so far to say ingrained in our minds that it is easy to forget that this type of academic language is learned, and would not come naturally to many native English speakers, never mind English Language Learners.  I am becoming aware that some of the vocabulary and terms used in art, such as objectivity, aesthetics, formal, might have incredibly different contexts outside the discipline.

Keeping this in mind, teachers must play the careful game of simplifying and explaining complex terminology and paraphrasing them into more digestible sentences, as well as building up their tolerance to these sorts of texts.  One suggestion that I would make for the more visually inclined learners is to associate themes to colors.  For example you may ask students to group things like statements, predictions, persuasions, and questions, into red, blue, green, and purple instead of simply highlighting through an academic text.  Anything that helps make stronger connections between the words and the ideas will increase understanding of the subject.

I like the texts suggestion of using kinesthetic activities to break down complex texts.  These include the more, some might argue, intuitive gestures such as hand motions and emphasizing word intonation, as well as involving gestural metaphors, swooping hand gestures for broader concepts, abrupt or condensing motions for simpler ideas.

Kathy

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.

This chapter provides a good variety of effective examples to teachers on how they can introduce academic language in the classroom.  Some of these ideas include ways of verbally conveying what was taught, the use of color coding, and hand gestures.  Throughout this chapter and the rest of the book, I noticed a huge emphasis on both verbal communication and group discussion.  I believe that both are underused in classrooms, especially in my field, the art classroom.

My experience with high school and in particular art classrooms, the presence of discussion is non-existent.  I recall the preference for a quiet classroom by all of my teachers.  In my opinion, the quiet classroom can be both beneficial and debilitating.  For certain activities such as reading or writing, it is important to have quiet time so that students won’t be distracted with extraneous noises.  However, for classes such as art class, PE, home economics, tech class, and even the other academic subjects (math, English, socials, science), it is very important that time be carved out for public chatter.  I believe that talking to your classmates is an integral part of the student experience but this must be mitigated with time spent listening to the teacher and to other students.  Dealing specifically with the art classroom, I think it would be beneficial to spend time talking about WHY we make the art we do.  I have a personal interest in social justice and creating projects around that would help facilitate critical thinking and discussion.  One very common way of integrating this into the classroom would be to do art critiques.  My high school never held any critiques but I think that having a group critique about the overall process of the work would be beneficial.

I like the other ideas mentioned including the use of role playing and lyric summaries.  This makes the topics engaging and fun.  The students can learn about the topic without having to rely on rote memorization of facts.  When students can apply aspects of their learned knowledge in other classes or displayed in other ways, it shows that learning has sunk in.  The chapter also emphasized the need to speak aloud.  The idea of reading aloud in post-secondary or even in senior high school may seem a bit silly but it proves to be effective.  A couple of weeks ago I read aloud and the person beside me was like “oh you just have to read it in your head”.  I thought, “Oh right.  Who does that anymore?”  Surely enough it can work when trying to comprehend new material.  I like how art gives the flexibility of learning through different senses.  You can learn about different smells of materials, the tactility of clay, the textures of paint, and the sight of colours.  This is why I truly believe that art should be taught in schools.