Co-Authoring Classroom Texts

William Burns

ENG 333

Co-Authoring Classroom Texts: Shifting Participant Roles in Writing Activity

I liked this reading by Larson Maier because Maryrita’s approach to teaching is awesome in a way that she evolved these students involvement to create a new learning experience.  She made her class so that it was a community of kids wanting to learn. Instead of the teacher forcing her students to read certain books or write what they learned down, these students were excited about reading and wanted to do the best they could. “ She constructed a context in which she and her students were authors together, struggling over questions and problems authors struggle over.” I personally love reading and I would of enjoyed this classroom very much. Even if someone didn’t have a previous enjoyment of reading I think they would thrive in this setting and come out of it a better reader and writer.

I enjoyed this article because it was very interesting to learn about Maryrita’s teaching style and Larson was very in depth with the research and you could tell a lot of time went into this. As a future teacher I would love to implement these types of teaching strategies with my students. As far as I could tell Maryrita’s schedule was somewhat the same as most first grade teachers but she implemented reading into different aspects of her teaching. It’s always a great thing when you can see the spark light up in a child when they actually want to go out and learn something without the teacher telling them so.  It is very smart to make the child their own author because they can then have a personal connection with what they are writing and want to do the best they can. Dewey stated that kids learn more with hands on activities and this is exactly what Maryrita is doing with her classroom.

Readicide

            I plan on reading the book “Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and what you can do about it.” After looking at all the different books, this one looked especially interesting. I love reading and it would be very interesting to learn why students are having a hard time learning to read and what I could do as a future teacher to aid them in furthering their reading skills. I read the short review on Amazon and I thought it was very interesting how he said that “it is time to recognize a new and significant contributor to the death of reading: our schools.” I already agree with this because schools are taking away the love of reading for children and replacing it with monotonous text reading that discourages the child. I hope that after reading this book I will gain insight on how to become a better teacher of reading to my children and how to spur them to have a lifelong love of reading.

Wells

William Burns

Eng 333

Wells

I think that Well’s idea about how the “classroom is seen as a collaborative community” relates to Dewey’s article and adds an extra dimension. I like how Wells describes a classroom as a community and not just a collection of individuals. It is important for there to be discussion within a class setting to generalize what you are learning about and bring a different perspective from all the students to the forefront. I think it is very interesting that the diversity and background of each individual makes each lesson unique in a way that no two lessons can be the same with different individuals. Dewey relates to Wells in a way that they agree that achievement depends on a collaboration of these individuals past experiences and backgrounds as a whole. Each person has a different perspective and it can only help to share what each person thinks.

Literacy

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Literacy

In the article the “Ethnography of Literacy” by John F. Szwed, I agree with his stance that literacy is very important in our society. It’s important in everyday aspects of life whether it be getting a job, graduating from school, or just being a functioning member of society. I was surprised to hear that literacy rates are down as much as they are. I remember reading an article that stated that they were deciding on how many jail cells to build in California by how many students could not read by the third grade. As a future teacher, literacy skills will be one of my main focuses with the children because without these skills you can’t get very far in life.

            Szwed writes, “The stunning fact is that we do not fully know what literacy is. The assumption that it is simply a matter of the skills of reading and writing does not even begin to approach the fundamental problem: What are reading and writing for?” (pg. 422). I thought this quote from Szwed was interesting in the way that he steps back from the implications of literacy in the classroom and focuses on the importance of literacy within our society. I agree that literacy is important, not in the way it is tested by experts, but by ordinary people in ordinary activities in our society. When meeting someone you immediately base how smart that person is by the ay they speak and write without even meaning to. If we want to come off as a intelligent society then we need to focus our efforts as teachers to educate our students in reading and writing.

            I believe that it is important for students to gain a respect for reading and writing and an understanding for the importance it will bring them in their lives. Also, students need to know what they enjoy reading and writing because this will lead to a future enjoyment of literacy and they will not need a teacher to aid them in the discovery of new knowledge. I think that if our new generation of teachers can focus on these facts and implement what we know to the youth then our literacy problem can be resolved. The main importance is to have the students want to learn this. As a kid it is not very fun to work on grammar but it is our jobs as teachers to make this interesting and pass on our knowledge.

Teaching

 The article "The School and the Life of the Child" by Dewey was very interesting and brought about some very important ideas. The main thing I took away from this article was that we need to center our teaching around the students in a way that keeps them engaged with the classroom and not just mindlessly listening and taking notes. An important idea Dewey stated was “If you begin with the child’s ideas, impulses, and interests, all so crude, so random and scattering, so little refind or spiritualized, how is he going to get the necessary discipline, culture, and information?” (pg. 38). It is important to give the child the correct resources for them to want to learn on their own. If the students have an interest in what they are doing then this will prompt them to learn at an increased pace. Most teachers tell the students that they must learn the information because it is part of California’s standards. Instead of mindlessly dumping information down the students throat it would be much more beneficial to have the students want to explore the content themselves. When learning it is important to come across obstacles and work them out in a way that will help you learn the information in a whole new light. Once this is achieved then the information that is taught means a lot more to them and is retained at a higher rate.

            This article brings up memories of a clear-cut classroom setup that I experienced with almost every classroom from kindergarten through 8^th grade. The desks were very close together in rows that were all facing the front of the class. Students learn in different ways and I found that I work better in a group setting. Once I arrived in high school we had a few large tables with about four to six students at each desk. It allowed for the students to talk amongst themselves and come to conclusions that they would not have come to on their own. I believe learning is meant to be done in groups and I succeeded in this setting. It is also important to keep in mind as a future teacher that each student is unique in the way they learn. Instead of grouping every child together it would be much more beneficial to teach to each style of learning individually.

            In the Ken Robinson video that we watched the other day he talked about how we are grouping kids together and running our schools like factories. School systems are grouping kids together and expecting them to be all the same when learning in class. We need to separate ourselves from this sort of teaching and prompt the students to be interested and driven to learn and grow as a student. I believe this article agreed a lot with the video and it should be kept in mind when going into the teaching field.