teaching writing

In teaching writing research there are a number of issuses in recent research that do draw attention to different perspectives in first and second language acquisition camps. Some of these are authenticity, differences between L1 and L2 writing, and product versuse process.

Authenticity: How many writing exercises are authentic. what is the purpose for writing in the classroom. This is a real challene when trying to help students write for academic purposes. How can I help students become better academic writers. Real writing which is writing when the reader doesn't know the answer and wants to find out what it is. A strategy like this can be incorporated to create authentic and meaningful exercises for students.

L1 and L2 writing: research shows that students are less fluent and accurate in their writing. Students that write in their L2 have been shown to plan less when preparing to write. I think it is important to help students plan writing a paper whether it be there L1 or L2. Some students need help organizing their thoughts. Also, activities where students can broaden their vocabulary so that they can more easily express their thoughts and ideas.

Product vs. Process: in the product perspective the final form of the written sample is the most important. The written sample needs to a standard or certain criteria. Where as, the process perspective is more focus on the content and message that is trying to be conveyed by the author. As a an educator, I need to find an equilibrium between these two perspectives because students can not just write and not meet standards. Standards are a way of assessing a students progress. However, the content and message is also important. I think this perspective allows for more student creativity and is more meaningful for students.

emergent literacy: two perspectives

Two varying perspectives are outlined in Chapter 5 of P&B. They are the "reading readiness" and "emergent literacy" perspectives. The afore mentioned perspective is a more traditionalist view based on maturationist theories of development. While the latter is more contemporary and based research from children who learned to read before having formal reading instruction.

The reading readiness perspective has the children focus on four sub-skills auditor discrimination(identifying ryhming words), visual discrimination(recognize colors and shapes), visual motor skills(color inside the lines of a picture), and large motor skills(walk a straight line). By being able to complete these objectives the students then showed that they were ready to read. So this perspective believes that they are steps that need to be taken before learning how to read.

The emergent literacy perspective focuses on exposing children to rich environments that are filled with reading and writing in a variety of forms and purposes. From this children will construct knowledge about form and function. Emergent literacy encourages parents to read to children and emphasizes the importanct of home-school connections

Content reading and writing

Strategies to promote reading comprehension are grouped into three categories. They are prereading, during reading, and post reading. However, I will only be discussing prereading and during reading strategies.

Prereading strategies build a purpose and background for reading. Some techniques are simplying telling students why they are reading a particular text and what they will do with the information later. Building background through films, movies, video clips, newpaper articles, and field trips help students organize schema for the upcoming lesson. Students can also plays games or simulate situations at have real life implications.

During reading strategies building questions from the subheadings and headings and making sure that students read these. Doing this well help students create a purpose for reading.Clustering is an example where synonyms can be placed outside a main word and then students have to guess what word is in the middle and the word in the middle can come from the text. This can helps students generate meaning in context. Jigsawing activities and learning logs area also during reading activities for monitoring comprehension. Learning logs require students to formulate questions about what they think or puzzling over. This helps students assess their learning and also helps them get help. If many students are formulating similar questions than the teacher can discuss it to the entire class.

class 4/27/09

During class tonight we spent the entire time peer reviewing for our final portfolio, final paper, and final presentation. I thought it was great to see the work of my peers see how they learned and fulfilled the standards for effective practice. I enjoy comparing my work with others so that I can gain new insights about myself and teaching.

Class 4/13/09

Tonight's class was about reading and second language assessment. Class began with an with a class presentation from Jodi. She presented an activity on reading assessment. In this activity the class was grouped into groups of two. One person had to read an short story. The other student had to follow along and count all of the errors that the reader read. The number of errors were then subtracted from the total number of words. This information was then used to assess the students reading ability.

Next, the class was divided into two groups where we had to find definitions from our reading by using note cards and sticky notes. I like this activity and it is one we have used before. It is a good way to increase student vocabulary.

My favorite part of the night was the last activity. In the last activity we discussed two questions. The two questions were experiences with TOEFL tests and experiences in the classroom. I love hearing personal experiences from teachers in the classroom because it helps me prepare myself for what I will face when I am in the classroom. Also, learning about the TOEFL tests is something that in the future I will also be involved with because my future plans are to teach ESL in Germany after graduation. So the more I know about the tests the better I can help my students prepare for them.

Class 4/5/09

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend class tonight because of a meeting that I attended in New Ulm. The meeting ran longer than I had intended so I was not able to attend any of part of class. Hopefully, I will be able to catch up on what was covered in class when we meet next monday.

Emergent Literacy

This weeks reading focuses on Emergent Literacy. Two perspectives that are focused on in emergent literacy are "emergent literacy" and "reading readiness".

Emergent literacy focuses on social environments where reading and writing are purposeful. Through these contexts children can gradually grasp how to create these form through writing and understand the reading forms. This differs from the reading readiness perspective which focuses on preparing students to read.

The reading readiness perspective teaches students how to read and other skills that are deemed necessary to be able to read. These skills include reading from left to right, skipping, recognizing shapes and colors, and cutting in a straight line with a scissors.

Of these two perspective the reading readiness perspective is the traditional perspective. I believe that large motor skills like skipping are irrelevant in teaching a student to read and write. The most important thing is exposing young students to numerous forms of print that they can connect with. Creating an environment where students can explore anything imaginable can engage a student's motivation to begin reading and writing.