Reading and Writing
"So let us wage a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism, let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world. Education is the only solution."
-- Malala Yousafzai
To find an answer to my compelling question, I needed to discover the integral role writing has with reading. Often I have seen writing being overlook and a priority put on reading. Prior to the NLGL program, I was guilty of this. Through New Literacies and Global Learning I discovered that writing actually complements reading instruction, allowing each to support and strengthen the other. A reading component I've begun using to assist with comprehension is reciprocal teaching. It allows students to come at their reading in four different ways to increase their understanding of a text. I have also incorporated several writing components into my classroom to help with written comprehension. These include increasing the amount my students write, having them write about texts they are reading, and teaching them the skills to write different types of genre.
Reading for Comprehension
I chose to learn more about reciprocal teaching so I could bring a scaffolded discussion approach into both small and whole group teaching. The four strategies - predicting, questioning, clarifying, summarizing - have been shown to increase student reading levels as well as retain information. Modeling writing skills and setting goals when answering comprehension questions is an effective means of teaching self-regulatory skills and maintaining those skills for use beyond the instructional phase. (Skunk, et. al., 2007) Most all students, whether at the primary level or high school, using different modes of kinesthesis, visuals, and auditory to engage students can assist them in retention of information. Reciprocal teaching encourages this.
|
|
|
Journaling to Improve Writing In ECI 509 Special Topics of Writing, we wrote in our own journals and often. We shared our writing with colleagues who offered constructive criticism. I found over the course of writing journal entries often, I became more creative and added more detail to my writing. Journal writing has become a 4-5 day a week activity in my classroom. To motivate my students with their writing, once a week they choose one of their writings to read and post on Seesaw for me and their classmates to see.
This document is the journal writing we did in ECI 509. Another important aspect of writing I found, and can be seen in this document, was getting feedback from peers. This too has been incorporated into my student's writing. Classmates comment on their peers writing they chose to post and then use that information to rewrite their posting. |
The peer feedback is also used in guided reading. Students are given comprehension questions from mCLASS question stems. They write their answers and then we go over the questions as a group offering feedback on the answer and how to better answer the question.
Character Journaling for Comprehension
As part of the scaffolded reading experience, the book read was Wangari's Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa by Jeanette Winter. I chose to have my students do a character journal. I chose this to help my students stay engaged and practice writing detailed summaries at the conclusion of reading the text. If done properly, students can role-play, helping them to better comprehend the text and keep track of details from the story. In using this resource, my goal was to engage the students more and encourage independent thinking. I found that my students had a difficult time writing as a character. They were able to put information down in their journals about what was read, but often did not write it as if they were the tree. This experience allowed me to add another dimension to the character journal. Now I have students create their own character puppets, tell their observation as if they are the puppet and then write it down. This method has been more successful.
|
|
Standards
Literacy
RL.1.1 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
RL.1.2 Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.
RL.1.3 Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.
RI.1.1 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
RI.1.2 Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.
Science
1.L.1 Understand characteristics of various environments and behaviors of humans that enable plants and animals to survive.
1.L.1.3 Summarize ways that humans protect their environment and/or improve conditions for growth of the plants and animals that live there (e.g., reuse or recycle products to avoid littering).
Social Studies
1.G.2 Understand how humans and the environment interact within the community.
1.G.2.1 Explain ways people change the environment (planting trees, recycling, cutting down trees, building homes, building streets, etc.)
1.G.2.2 Explain how people use natural resources in the community.
1.G.2.3 Explain how the environment impacts where people live (urban, rural, weather, transportation, etc.)
Writing
1.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts in which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and provide some sense of closure.
1.W.3 Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and then provide some sense of closure.
Literacy
RL.1.1 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
RL.1.2 Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.
RL.1.3 Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.
RI.1.1 Ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
RI.1.2 Identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.
Science
1.L.1 Understand characteristics of various environments and behaviors of humans that enable plants and animals to survive.
1.L.1.3 Summarize ways that humans protect their environment and/or improve conditions for growth of the plants and animals that live there (e.g., reuse or recycle products to avoid littering).
Social Studies
1.G.2 Understand how humans and the environment interact within the community.
1.G.2.1 Explain ways people change the environment (planting trees, recycling, cutting down trees, building homes, building streets, etc.)
1.G.2.2 Explain how people use natural resources in the community.
1.G.2.3 Explain how the environment impacts where people live (urban, rural, weather, transportation, etc.)
Writing
1.W.2 Write informative/explanatory texts in which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and provide some sense of closure.
1.W.3 Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and then provide some sense of closure.