Most Important Take-aways from Blogs

Take-aways

• The self introduction and literacy narrative at the beginning of the course were important to me because they got me writing expressively and reflecting on who I am as well as what reading and writing means to me.

• The active reading in the classroom blog was beneficial to me because it helped me take a more in-depth look and pre-reading, during-reading and post reading heuristics. I think these skills are so important for integrated reading and writing instructors to teach because they are transferable for our students. I took away skills I can use from this reading. I now know the importance of reading a little faster through portions of the text that I feel are not as important and slowing down to take a deeper reading of sections that need more attention. Through discussion with one of my peers I discovered a way to read a little faster when I have to by using my index finger as a guide as I read. I will also be able to teach these two strategies I learned to my future students so they can see if they work for them.

• Alexander & Fox’s historical perspective helped guide me in the literature of the past and see how the field of composition has transformed over the years. It was good to see what the important theories have been and make inferences about what the future may hold in our field.

• I think the readings and blogs from week 3 provided me with some of the most important take-aways in the courses. They showed me the needs of underprepared students and reconfirmed for me that as composition teachers we will have a very diverse student population in our classrooms that come with different problems/needs. I learned that there is a need for remediation because if not our students will not have a chance in academia. Composition instructors Goen-Salter and Gillote-Tropp offer a great example and solution to the problem with a ground breaking iterated reading and writing course.

△   I like the fact that the student and teachers are able to stay together for the entire school year and that if the student passes the integrated program they have already completed the college level writing requirement.

△   Students are introduced to many different types of reading materials and this will help them read for different disciplines.

△  The program also gives those students who do not pass the integrated program another chance to take the college level writing course.

△  I also like how they have given the course unit credit so students will not feel like they are taking the class for nothing.

△  The introduction of K W L +  (This was a huge take-away for me because I used it with my tutees at the Learning Assistance Center and found it to be a practical activity to foster my students in an integrated reading and writing course).

• The McCormick readings helped me take a close look at the cognitive, expressivist and socio-cultural approaches to teaching reading. Thought this I understand that these models cannot stand alone in a composition class and must be integrated to best serve our student.

• I think community building in the classroom is so important for our diverse student populations and I plan to implement it in my classes. What I took away from the Nicholas Sacra Nevaire article was that by cultivating community in the classroom teachers give their students a safe place to experiment and learn from their mistakes. A community classroom also fosters interest and intrinsic motivation in the students. Sacra Nevaire also reintroduces what I think is a very important idea of offering block classes for students so they can continue to work with the same discourse community and make a closer connection with the same teacher. This also enables the teacher to focus on salient errors the students are making and help students develop as writers.

• My Bridging the Gap blog helped me begin to envision what my integrated reading and writing course would focus on and look like.

• Facts Artifacts and Counterfacts: Theory and Method for a reading and writing course by David Bartholomae and Anthony Pettosky

Ø  Shows importance of annotation

Ø  Immersing students in an academic discourse community

Ø  The thought of a kind of composition laboratory where students share and build on each others knowledge

Ø  Really liked the group peer editing in class activity and could see myself implementing it in my classes.

• The Discovery of Competence: Teaching and learning with diverse student writers by Eleanor Kutz, Suzy Q Groden and Vivian Zamel.

Ø    Shows the difficult students have in entering an academic discourse community as well as that they all have language competence that they bring with them to the class.

Ø  Learning academic reading and writing is similar to acquiring a new language.

Ø  As instructors we have to begin to address that fact that we have a very diverse student population with very different needs.

 

 » Fellow Student’s Blogs:

I feel like the students we will eventually teach our class was composed of a very diverse student population. I gain a myriad of insights from peers bloging from different disciplines such as literature, composition and teaching English to speakers of other languages. I particularly like the practical examples from fellow student mentors who are already teaching and experimenting with integrated reading and writing in their classrooms. We started to comment on our peers blogs in the middle of the course. I feel I would have gotten more out of my fellow students blogs if we had to do less writing of our own blogs and a little more commenting on other peoples blogs.  

 

Memo to the English Department

10 December 2012

Dear English Department Dean:

As an associate professor in the English department here at Pasadena City College, I am writing to appeal for integrated reading and writing courses in our division. There is this idea that reading and writing are separate skills and that our students should have learned reading in their K-12 education, but this is not representative of the diverse student population in our classrooms. In any one given composition class that I teach I have native speakers of English, non-native speakers and generation 1.5 students.  Many of these students have never been taught necessary academic level reading skills.  

I believe reading and writing should be integrated in our composition classes because the two skills foster one another. Before students can write academic level essays they must be taught how to read actively.  There are three elements to active reading and they are making inferences, anticipating what one is going to read and the art of selecting (van Woerkam 2012). These three aspects of approaching reading facilitate students in getting the most out of the texts they read. I argue that students should be taught active reading in their writing classes so they can then use the skills they have learned (that are fresh in their minds) on writing assignments in the same class. Students will then be able to transfer these skills into other courses where they write papers. I also strongly believe that students should be using heuristics such as annotating as they read texts.  When students write in the margins of the text they are reading we see reading and writing working together.  Reading good texts in a composition class also helps students generate ideas for their writing. In my experience when I am teaching independent writing classes my students’ papers lack originality and solid evidence to support their arguments. When reading is integrated in a composition course well written articles, essays and books can serve as templates for students to produce better writing.    

Students need to be taught that reading is a part of the writing process. According to Kutz, Groden and Zamel (1993), “…it is not through learning facts but through thinking, working with others, and having the opportunity and the need to perform certain intellectual operations and see things in new perspectives that people come to value their own knowledge and acquire new ways of thinking.” I propose to teach a course that is a kind of composition laboratory where students develop both reading and writing skills along with their peers. Having students read and discuss what they have learned amongst their fellow classmates will help them acknowledge different opinions and facilitate them in their writing. Please consider my proposal for integrated reading and writing courses in our department. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully

 

Michael C. Andrews

Associate Professor, English

   

Unit Brainstorming

The working title for the course Jessica Brugler and I are working on is Becoming a Member of the Academic Discourse Community.  The course would be for both native and non-native beginning writers.  Our course is based on Bartholomae & Petrosky’s idea of placing students within a discourse community so they can learn the language of academic reading and writing.  We also incorporate elements of Kutz, Groden and Zamel’s theory that every student has something to bring and that learning composition is very much like learning a new language. 

 

We are planning to develop unit two of this course and our topic focuses on Acknowledging student’s Linguistic Competence; Every student has a language to bring; Building on one’s linguistic knowledge; Bringing one’s language & adapting it to the language of academic discourse.  This unit will build upon pre-reading, annotation and pre-writing heuristics that were taught in unit one.  The previous unit will have begun to introduce our students to academic discourse and have given them some tools they can use to further develop their writing process.

 

This second unit will help them assimilate even further into the new academic language they are learning and facilitate them in developing arguments and claims.  In unit one our students have been doing expressivist writing and will continue in unit two only they will start to incorporate taking a stance in their writing.  We begin unit two with a writing to read activity where the students write an anonymous letter to a friend.  This assignment will give the students an opportunity to express their identities in their writing as well as see the diversity of their fellow classmates.  Our goal is to show students that there are benefits to both being a native English speaker as well as a non-native. And to debunk the myth that native speakers find learning this new language of writing easier than non-native speakers due to English being their mother tongue.  The students first homework assignment will be to write a personal narrative about their experience as beginning writers. We then wish to give our students a taste of academic success by having them read short stories from How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life by Tom Miller.  It is an interesting book of 55 short stories of second language learners having success at learning English.  We would probably give our students a choice of several stories from the book and have them read two.  The stories are about three to five pages long.  It stated in The Discovery of Competence that national statistics indicate that almost half of every entering group of first year students at public institutions of higher education have dropped out by the end of the first year.  Our motivation here is to give our students confidence that they can be successful.  We would then assign a paper similar to the one in Facts Artifacts and Counterfacts (p. 32) only have the paper topic be recalling a time when they experienced success.  We would formally teach thesis statements and give activities facilitating students in taking a stance.  We like the idea of having students volunteer their papers to have them critiqued by the class and foster their revision. This is something we would have modeled previously in unit one. 

 

The end of unit paper assignment would be as follows:

Argument Essay                                                                                                                                                                                                       

●       Formal (thesis statement, reference class readings, 1 outside resource)                                                                                                                                                                                                    

 

●       Informal (expressivist, personal experience)                                                                                                                                                                                                       

 

●       Prompt: Has your current knowledge of English facilitated or debilitated your transition into academia?

 

 

 Jessica and I will bring an example of the grid for our unit to class.  The subsequent unit of our course would continue to immerse our students in an academic discourse community helping them build on and incorporate their linguistic competence into the new language of academic reading and writing that they are learning.  The papers assignments would progressively become more formal.

Thoughts on The Discovery of Competence: Teaching and Learning with Diverse Student Writers by Eleanor Kutz, Suzy Q Groden and Vivian Zamel

Suzy Q Groden begins the book with a short story of how she recued two birds that were stuck in a catwalk between two buildings at the university where she teaches.  It was a powerful metaphor of the struggle new writing students go through finding their place amongst an academic discourse community and how composition teachers have to guide them in learning what the authors refer to as a new language. Eleanor Kutz, Suzy Groden and Vivian Zamel explain how all teachers must contribute to helping their students, but a majority of the responsibility falls on composition teachers. With their book the authors have taken an action research approach with the aim to help students recognize that they bring a certain amount of competence from their outside lives into their new discourse community.  The three teachers explain that teaching is an ongoing learning process and that composition teachers need to adapt to their changing classrooms as well as question traditional curriculum that does not address diverse student’s needs. 

Kutz, Groden and Zamel find that theories of cognitive and intellectual development are not as useful for them because they are faced with students with many different backgrounds that will not fit neatly into such molds. The authors hope they can create an environment where the students can realize their potential and develop as writers. Like Bartholomae and Petrosky’s they argue that students need to be immersed in an academic community to then become a part of it.  I also see similarities in their theory that the academic discourse community speaks an academic language that new writers must acquire.  The authors even compare the process to that of 1^st language acquisition.  They look at students writing in new ways thinking of the possibilities of their writers rather than focusing on errors.

I feel like I can really relate to what the authors are proposing and I think it complements Bartholomae and Petrosky’s model.  I see both cognitive and socio-cultral elements in this teaching theory.  I like how it addresses ESL and other diverse members of the student population.  I truly believe in immersing students in the academic discourse community so they can be a part of it and I want to build my unit plan with this in mind.  I also agree with the authors that academia has its own language that needs to be acquired by the novice writer.  The only thing I found missing in this book so far was the practical way to accomplish these goals.  I would have liked to see more of a unit plan showing future composition teachers how to use this model.  Perhaps I will find that by reading the remaining chapters.  The past two weeks reads inspire me that we can possibly create composition unit plans that will address the needs of the current diverse student population and help them acquire the language of academia         

Comments on Empowering Revision by Nicholas Coles

Coles begins his argument explaining that novice writers do not like to revise their work like experienced writers do.  He describes how the act of revising for the inexperienced writer is just fixing surface errors and making different word choices where as the more seasoned writer is willing to let go of their first draft and make changes to the meaning of the paper.  Coles suggests giving students subjects they have a stake in and will want to write about.  The author talks about how experienced writers revise their work to generate knowledge and to have something to say about a subject. Coles goal is to get the student to shift from not only writing about general things, but also being more particular. The author then talks about two methods (feedback from peers and teacher comments) that help his students achieve this goal. 

I think Coles approach fits into Bartholomae and Petrosky’s course because it immerses the students into an academic discussion with their peers.  The peer feedback method made me think of students having the chance to test out their writing on the audience they are writing to.  It is like getting a taste of your audience’s reaction to aid your revision. I would like to include this type of activity into my unit plan. My only reservation is that not all of the students would have the opportunity to have their paper up for discussion, but I still think the students would learn from this activity because they get a sense of the audience they are writing to and it prevents them from the thought that the teacher is the one and only audience of my paper. After this exercise I think would be a good time for the instructor to initiate a little discussion about audience. I think the teacher comments are also beneficial to students revising their papers because it encourages them to actively read their own papers.  They are analyzing them to find what is significant (something they should be doing in all their readings) and making sure they are conveying that which is significant in the writing.  Through my feedback as an instructor I would want to foster my students in expressing what they want their readers to understand from reading their papers.           

Comments on Facts Artifacts and Counterfacts: Theory and Method for a Reading and Writing Course by David Bartholomae & Anthony Petrosky

I began reading this book very casually since Mark said it was a lot of reading and asked if people were having difficulties with it.  I guess my strategy was if I approached the reading as reading for pleasure I may retain more.  It was not until about the eighteenth page that Bartholomae and Petrosky reminded me that this was a foolish idea so I took out my highlighter.  I like how Bartholomae and Petrosky want to show their students that they can read for pleasure.  Some of my best professors were ones that got me excited about reading outside of the classroom.  The authors talked about if a reader could remember everything they read from a text it would be madness and that the writer has the opportunity to be creative in their composition.  I think if these thoughts are conveyed to student readers and writers it would take a lot of the burden off them in regards to reading and writing.  I like the idea of making the course like a graduate seminar and immersing low level students in an academic discourse community because it may help facilitate them rising to that level.  I believe we read in this course about creating materials that are just slightly above our student’s abilities so they can learn. I believe this course does that with this type of setup.  The collaborative learning environment of this course is also appealing to me as teacher because I believe we can learn from our peers as well as inform them about things they may not fully understand.  I think the bound book of student writing is a really cool idea as well, but I do not know if that would be possible in a regular sixteen week remedial or freshmen writing course.  One of my questions would be with the current state of education and funding being cut, would this fifteen student two teacher course be freezable today?  One of my favorite activities from this course was the one where students write a journal entry selecting a quote from each chapter that seems to be the authors main point of the chapter and then they have to explain how and why the quotes they have selected relate to the authors overall message. This enables the student to analyze a text and discover what they think is significant about what the author is saying.  That seems to be one of the core objectives of this course.  I think this is something I would like to add to my unit.  I will have to ask my partner what she thinks.        

Bridging the Gap

I would like my final unit plan to focus on the needs of ESL students in their successful transition into academic writing.  The theme of the course would evolve around this particular student population and what skills they require to be successful in academia.  International students come to America with many skills they have acquired in their home countries.  Many of them have used the grammar translation method to learn English so they bring a great knowledge of how the language works, but have little training in the structure of an essay and writing thesis statements.  Even with a good foundation in English grammar ESL learners still have difficulty applying it to the academic writing that is required in our schools.  I believe this student population does not just magically become ready for freshmen composition.  I think these students need to become familiar with the academic writing process both in regards to grammar and style. 

This would be a beginning-of-the-semester unit catered for ESL writers making the transition into academic writing.  I would want this course to introduce ESL students to an academic discourse community and give them a sense of belonging as well as confidence that they can become academic writers.  The orientation of the course would be a mix of expressivist and critical academic discourse.  The goal of the course being to foster ESL students in expressing themselves with their writing and also enabling them to write for an academic audience. 

I would probably want to start the unit with pre-writing heuristics and an autobiography writing assignment leading to a short presentation of the students writing.  I believe this would help build community because many international students want to express who they are and a little bit about their culture.  The readings for this unit would not only focus on the difficulties that ESL students have making the transition into academic writing, but also articles and readings about all novice writers.  I would want the ESL students to feel a part of the academic writing community and see that all new writers have difficulties.  Again my goal would be to give these new writers a sense of confidence and nudge them towards becoming successful academic writers.  These are just a few of my ideas.  I am excited about creating a unit to enable international students to bridge the gap in their transition into academic writing because I truly believe this is a need for ESL students.  

 

Community in the Classroom

In his article Community-Building In The Classroom: A Process, Nicholas Sacra Nevaire talks about the importance of building community in the classroom to help students be intrinsically motivated to learn and feel safe to take risks in their learning environment.  The author goes on a little political rant comparing American culture to that of an Aboriginal society to prove the benefits of community vs. individualism. Nicholas Sacra Nevaire goes on to give a definition of community and why he feels it is needed in the classroom.

What I took away from this article was that by cultivating community in the classroom teachers give their students a safe haven to experiment and learn from their mistakes.  A community classroom will also foster intrinsic motivation.  Both a safe environment to learn in and motivated students will decrease some of the anxiety that students feel.  I am a firm believer in the linguist Stephen Krashen’s theory on anxiety effecting students ability to learn in the classroom.  The Affective Filter Hypothesis (Stephen Krashen 1982) speculated that learners have a filter that affects their ability to learn.  If the student is anxious and not motivated when learning then they will have a high filter which will make it difficult for comprehensible input to reach the brain. If on the other hand the student is comfortable and motivated, then their filter will be low and they will learn.  This is a prime example why community is so important for students in the classroom.  The more comfortable they feel amongst their peers and teacher the better equipped they will be to learn.

I also liked how Nicholas experimented with allowing his students to only ask one question a day and having them rely on their fellow classmates for other answers.  I do not think the one question a day method would work in a composition class because I would want my students to critically think, but I do think it is a good idea to facilitate students in helping each other out with unanswered questions.  I think one of the best ways to learn is to teach what you know to someone else.  Students that do not fully understand will benefit from the help of the classmate that explains things to them and in turn the student explaining will learn from teaching what they know.

I also see the benefit of Nicholas’ suggestion of keeping students together for consecutive semesters.  This enables the community to get to truly develop over time and takes some pressure off of the instructor in having to reestablish a new community every semester.  I believe that our Composition for Multi-lingual Students program here at San Francisco State already practices this community-building idea in its English 201 to 202 track.  I think this is a great idea and I also like the idea of block courses where students can stay in the same groups in classes of similar disciplines.  

Difficulty Reading Salvatori

Difficulty Reading Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition by Mariolina Salvatori

When I first started reading the Salvatori article I once again found myself going back and re-reading portions of the text that I did not understand the first time around.  This is obviously a reading strategy that I use that was made evident through this activity of reading difficult texts.  I found several difficulties I was having getting through the Salvatori acticle.  I did not fully understand the metalanguage or difficult vocabulary the author was using for example Salvatori states, “I began to see that what Coles was indicting was a particularly enervated, atrophied kind of reading” (Salvatori 442). The author goes on to use other vocabulary like gridded and pharmakon that I had troubled making sense of.  I found myself not having the background knowledge for particular terms that Salvatori was using.  Another issue I was having was the author’s introduction of theorists and their theories.  I believe Salvatori just assumes that her reader already has knowledge of these theorists and their theories.  My strategy for getting a deeper reading of this text would be to highlight the difficult metalanguage/vocabulary and try to look up their definitions to derive more meaning from the text.  Another thing I would try and do is do research on the theorists she mentions and see if I can get a better understanding of their theories. Another problem I had was when the author gave definitions of terms in another language.  I am not really sure how I would overcome this type of difficulty other than trying to look up the translations for these words.  Although I found Salvatori’s article slightly difficult to read I understand her argument for enabling students to take deeper reads of the texts they encounter and to not only derive their own arguments, but understand the writers argument as well.

 

Difficulty Reading Faulkner

Difficulty Reading The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I chose to read some William Faulkner for my difficulty reading because I have heard that he is a difficult read.  I’ve never read any of his novels before.  However, I did pick up As I Lay Dying once and did a little pre-reading of it, but never bought the book or continued.  I thought The Sound and the Fury may be a good text for this assignment so I picked it up at Aardvark books and just started reading. It was hard for me to just dive in because I always like to do a little pre-reading first.  I read the first ten pages of the novel and I would have to say one of the difficulties I was having was the large number of characters being introduced and then the quick time shifts where as a reader I couldn’t tell which characters were in the scene at any given moment.  One reason I think I was having difficulty was because I couldn’t figure out what was happening right from the start.  The author was using the pronoun ‘they’ without introducing who ‘they’ were.  And this ‘they’ were hitting something which gave me the impression they were playing golf.  I used to bartend on a golf course so my golf repertoire helped me a little here if I was correct in my assumption, but I could have been wrong because the author mentioned a caddie which later turned out to be one of the characters names.  There were also moments when the text would become italicized and a character named Luster was mentioned.  Luster seemed to be scolding the narrator and then the author would shift back to un-italicized text and there would be different characters introduced.  It was also hard to figure out what was going on with the main character.  All of the other characters seemed to be treating him like a dog or a child. I also think I was having difficulty with the language of the text.  The characters seemed to be speaking in what seemed like a southern dialect that I am not familiar with.  I noticed that one thing I do when I have a hard time with a text is go back and re-read passages. If I had begun to read this text on my own I would definitely go back and do some pre-reading.  I would read the back of the book and try to get a sense of the main characters.  I would read the authors biography to see if I could gain a little insight to the historical repertoire of the text.  Maybe I would annotate the text by highlighting the characters names so I could keep track.  I know this would continue to be a difficult text to read because looking forward I noticed that the first chapter is 75 pages and the story didn’t seem to be going anywhere in the first 10 pages I had read.  I usually have a hard time putting down a book once I begin.  If it is difficult I just try to read through my difficulties.  I’m sure that is what I would do with this text if I had time to read it.   

Ideas and Elements for an IRW Course

I would want my IRW unit plan to focus on community building, identity and culture.   I would also like to introduce students to pre-writing, pre-reading and active reading activities in this unit.  These are of course just ideas and elements and I would remain flexible in removing or adding different elements.

The first day of class would begin with a student meet and greet activity like Bonding Bingo so they begin to get to know each other and get comfortable with their future reading audience.  I would assign students to begin a blog and their first assignment would be to reflect on how they feel about reading and writing.  The next class there would be a discussion on reading and writing. What students like to read and what types of reading they do.  I would also ask the students who likes to write in their free time or for classes. 

Next I would assign a literacy narrative on the blog. I would want there to be lots of discussion in this unit so I would let the students share some of their literacy experiences the next day in class.  I would begin to facilitate my students in pre-writing activities by having them practice heuristics like brainstorming, freewriting, looping, and clustering/webbing. 

The next blog prompt would be for students to write an autobiography using a few of the heuristics to get them started.  Then I would put students in groups of two and have them interview their partner and write a two to three page biography about the person they interviewed on the blog. 

I would then begin to introduce pre-reading activities such as reading the title of an essay, the author’s biography and the first and last paragraphs to help students choose what essays or articles they wish to read.  I would then give the students a choice among several identity/cultural essays like Judith Ortiz Cofer’s The Myth of a Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria or Leslie Marmon Silko’s Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit. The next class would involve group and whole class discussions about the essays they just read and then I would assign a low stakes freewriting activity based on their chosen reading.  A blog post would be due about which pre-writing heuristic worked best for them. 

Next I would have lessons on annotating a text and creating a thesis statement.  They would then be assigned to begin working on a rough draft for a short essay on the cultural essay they had chosen.  The students would then be assigned to read a play and we would have discussions and readings of it in class.  I would do a lecture on structuring their essay and the students would then bring in copies of their chosen identity/cultural essays and have peer reviews.  I would give a lesson on adding sources and ask them to incorporate one or two sources and revise their drafts.

  At this point the students should be getting an idea of how they write and what works and doesn’t work for them so I would do an in class activity where students draw their process.  This will help the students visualize what they do when they write.  They would then hand in their drafts and have a student teacher conference where they would get more suggestions on revision. I would give a lesson on writing a works citied page and their first paper would be due at the next class meeting. 

The students would then go and see the play they read about in class and begin writing a paper about it.  Again they would bring in rough drafts for peer editing and revise those.  Then once again have a student teacher conference and revise again.  I would then allow my students to choose between the two essays they had written and revise it again being sure to  include good structure, a thesis, two sources and a works cited page. 

The last assignment would be a blog reflecting on all the reading and writing they did in the unit. The students could compare it to their initial thoughts and feels about writing in their first reflection blog.  They could explain how they have grown as readers and writers and what they think will work well for them going forward in regards to having to write papers in other classes.       

McCormick’s Chapter 2 on the Three Reading Approaches

Several Take-aways:

The Cognitive Reading Approach

What I got from the reading on the cognitive approach was the importance of the reader taping into prior knowledge and experience to better understand what they are reading.  I found the experiment around the wrestling story most interesting because I have no background in that sport so I assumed like the music class that the protagonist of the story was in jail. But later analyzing the line “He was being ridden unmercifully” (21) clearly shows the story is about a wrestling match.  This example also illustrates one of McCormick’s arguments against the cognitive approach for not allowing readers to decipher their own meaning of the story after reading it and reflecting on it.  It also stifles critical thinking by not allowing discussion of different opinions of what the story is about. And I think the most important thing to take away from the cognitive reading approach is that there is hardly ever one specific meaning that a reader gets out of a text.  I had a literature professor during my undergrad that would give us quizzes with three questions on them.  He said if you got one answer correct you would get a C, if you got two answers correct you would get a B and if you got all three correct he stated, “You knocked it out of the park.”  This professor unfortunately never returned any of the quizzes so I had no idea where I stood in the class and it showed how he thought there was only one meaning behind all the readings and if you didn’t answer those three questions correctly you were wrong.  I would never want to teach reading like that and stifle my student’s imagination and critical thinking.  

The Expressive Model       

Where the cognitive approach to reading seemed rigid, the expressive model seems lax.  One would think the expressive model would be difficult to teach because the chapter didn’t give any practical examples.  I got the impression that this approach is highly focused on the reader and possibly gives too much freedom of thought without other viewpoints from fellow students or the instructor.  However, the approach does have some value in that it promotes intrinsic motivation in students and allows them to relate readings to their own experiences.

The Social-Cultural Model

This approach explains how reading is a social process and that students should read with critical literacy.  McCormick introduces new reading pedagogical practices and shows that reading can be taught differently than the other two reading approaches.  For example having students retell cultural narratives to experience reading from a different cultural perspective.  I look forward to discussing this approach in class tomorrow so I can get a better understanding of how it works.

  

     

The Blogging Process

A successful blog for me is one where I have truly expressed my thoughts.  I like to write anecdotes and practical examples so I can envision my ideas more clearly and reflect on how things would work in a teaching context.  I also feel I've had a good posting when I receive comments and questions from my peers.

As a reader I like a posting that is easy on the eyes with a bold title so I can begin thinking about what I'm going to read.  It also helps to see the persons picture on their blog so you can remember who did the writing.  I prefer to read a narrative blog with stories and practical examples rather than bullet points.

I like to receive comments on my blog that give me insight on how my ideas could be utilized as a teacher in the composition classroom.  I also like when people ask me questions about what I wrote because then I can think more deeply about the topic.  Sometimes answering a persons question on a blog I have written can be difficult, but it really helps me analyze and reflect on the topic at hand.  I would also like to highlight good teaching ideas made by my fellow bloggers and ask them questions that might help them produce even more ideas.

I like both the write to read and read to write processes so I think we should do both in our blogs each week.  I think the instructor should give us a prompt and questions on the topic of the week and allow us to write freely on our blogs about the subject.  Then we should also be assigned one reading to summarize and reflect on in a blog posting.  We should be asked to read our fellow classmates blogs and comment on at least two of them that sparked our interest or that we have questions about.  I would also like to get occasional comments from the instructor about my blog.  And as for the thorny question, I think the blogs should be counted as participation and graded as stated on the syllabus. 

What My Course for Under-Prepared Students Would Look Like

The course would start right away with a community building or meet and greet exercise so the students would start to get to know each other.  I would also use group work and whole class discussions throughout the class to assist students who feel more comfortable talking in small groups as well as those who like to speak to everyone.  This will help with generating ideas as well as critical thinking.  I would like to have students read and write cultural narrative/essays in the beginning of class because I think people like to explain their culture to others.  With a student population of international students, generation 1.5 and other diverse backgrounds this will also help community building.  The students could also revisit the cultural essays that they have written later in the semester and do revisions once they have developed more skills and understand their writing processes.

I would include pre-reading lessons like reading the title of an essay, author biography and first paragraph to help students make assumptions about what they are going to read.  As well as analyze any images that may accompany the text.  This will help the students pinpoint arguments and main points.  I would also want to facilitate active reading in my students by having a lesson on making annotations as they read in the margins of the text.  Reminding students to underline main points or what they feel is important, writing question marks on passages where they have questions and jotting down emotions or feelings they have as they read.  I would teach pre-writing heuristic techniques like brainstorming/listing, freewriting and clustering to help students get started with their writing.   I would also lecture on writing thesis statements and structuring essays.  

I would want to incorporate technology into the class by showing students how they can use their cell phones for brainstorming or to jot down ideas.  I would use blogs so students would be writing often.  I believe the more the student writes the easier it will be for them to get started.  I also liked an activity we did in English 700 where you draw your writing process.  I think this exercise helps the student visualize how they write and what works for them.  Of course I would not introduce this until later in the semester when students have a feeling of what writing processes are.

I like the idea of introducing students to different types of reading and writing so along with cultural narratives I would also have them read essays on controversial issues, magazine articles and short stories.  I would possibly even have the students write a movie review and if time is permitting I would have them tackle a short novel.  The goal being to introduce them to readings and writings similar to what they may experience in other courses.

I would also have students do peer editing of each others papers, but I would do it a little different by allowing the students to take their partners papers home and work on it rather than having them feel rushed to read and review on the spot.  Then after they have had time they can come back and discuss their thoughts with their partner.

At the end of the class I would have the students write a reflection of the class. How do they feel they have improved in their reading and writing?  What do they feel they have learned? How are their thoughts and feelings about writing different then at the start of the course?  Do they feel more prepared for writing they will have to do in other classes? What else would they have like to get out of a reading and writing course like this one?    

Summary and reaction to Critiquing the Need to Eliminate Remediation: Lessons from San Francisco State by Sugie Goen-Salter

Sugie Goen-Salter covers a lot of the same ground that she did in her earlier article with Gillotte-Tropp, but goes a step further.  She argues for universities such as hers to be the place for incoming freshmen to learn integrated reading and writing skills so they can successfully transition into basic college level writing courses.  Goen-Salter goes even a step further by showing how her and her collogue Gillotte-Trapp have created a year long program to help prepare community college teachers to teach integrated reading and writing. 

I find this article very inspiring because Goen-Salter and Gillotte-Tropp’s IRW program offers a solution to remediation.  Goen-Salter shows that the first year of college is the place where students should learn basic reading and writing together in order to transition into academia.  Goen-Salter and Gillotte-Tropp’s teacher education program should also put a dent in the remediation problem by giving future community college composition professors the tools they need to teach integrated reading and writing.  Goen-Salter states, ‘To help prepare new faculty to teach integrated reading/writing, my colleague Hellen Gillotte-Tropp and I created a year-long graduate seminar (“Seminar in Teaching Integrated Reading and Writing”) as part of the San Francisco States MA and graduate teaching certificate program in post secondary reading and composition”(100). This may sound like a dumb question, but is this our class that she is referring to?  I guess I am confused by her saying it is a year-long graduate seminar while our class is one semester.    

 

Summary and reaction to Integrating Reading and Writing: A Response to the Basic Writing “Crisis” by Sugie Goen and Helen Gillotte-Tropp

In Sugie Goen and Helen Gillotte-Tropp’s Integrating Reading and Writing: A Response to the Basic Writing “Crisis” The authors discuss the need for remedial programs for college students that are not ready for the first year college level writing course.  The authors describe the diverse student population at San Francisco State University where they teach and argue that these students are not learning the skills they need to make the transition from high school to college.  Goen and Gillotte-Tropp go on to explain the implementation of the 1997 remedial policy that only allows students one year to get to college level reading and writing.  The policy also only allows 10% remedial courses.  Goen, Gillotte-Tropp and fellow faculty at San Francisco State University developed a remedial integrated reading and writing program in 2000 that links instruction in both the skills of reading and writing.  The program is also a year long as opposed to three semesters.  The authors then break down the program into six principles and objectives.  Then the article takes on a case study approach comparing the integrated reading and writing program with the conventional program.   

This seems like a great program for many reasons.  I like the fact that the student and teacher are able to stay together for the entire school year and that if the student passes the integrated program they have already completed the college level writing requirement.  Students are introduced to many different types of reading materials and this will help them read for different disciplines.  The program also gives those students who do not pass the integrated program another chance to take the college level writing course.  I also like how they have given the course unit credit so students will not feel like they are taking the class for nothing.  I am interested to know in more detail how the PPP and KWL+ skills are taught because I did not get a clear understanding from the reading.  I would also be interested in how one would teach collaborative and /co-authored projects.

The Reason They Are Here

In my first semester here at San Francisco State University I was interviewed by The Golden Gate Xpress about whether I as a student thought immigrants living in California should have access to financial aid.  I said, “I think if they’re here and they’re serious students they deserve an opportunity for an education.”  I feel the same about students who are not quite ready for college level work.  Most students come to college because they want to learn and they should not be left out.  Everyone should have access to an education and what better place is there to get the skills one needs then in college itself? 

 I do not think I was exactly ready for college level work returning after a sixteen year absence, but through good teaching I developed my skills and learned how to be successful.  My return to school began at a city college and I am a whole hearted supporter of that system.  I am not saying that students must be sent to city college if they are not ready, but it is not a bad place for a student to take the time they need to develop their skills. However, I am also a believer in prerequisite classes and placement testing.  Students should also be able to take courses that require some writing so they can develop their skills. 

Instead of the California government making cuts in education they should be supporting programs beginning at the high school level.  The academic writing class has a much different face then it had twenty years ago.  No longer is the writing classroom all native born speakers of English.  We now have many international and generation 1.5 students.  Our institutions need more programs to meet the specific needs of this state’s diverse student population.  It is obvious that there are many students in university that are not up to speed and teachers and administrations have the difficult task of trying to meet these student’s needs. 

In regards to reading and writing, pre-reading and pre-writing skills are both essential to perform at the college level. Pre-reading helps students select the best sources for their academic papers and pre-writing helps them get started in the writing process.  There is also an academic register that students need to acquire so they can communicate effectively with their teachers and peers. Students also need to be introduced to different writing processes to see what works for them and what does not.  Another skill we have yet to discuss in class is critical thinking. Students need to be able to evaluate sources and pose arguments.  This leads to being able to write thesis statements and structure essays.  As future composition teachers our hands are full with trying to help students be prepared for academic level reading and writing, but if we put our hearts into creating courses that meet our student’s needs we may be able to help them with the reason they are here: to learn.             

Summary of Chosen Reading

A Historical Perspective on Reading Research and Practice by Patricia A. Alexander and Emily Fox is a focus on the historical transformation of the study of reading over a fifty year period. Alexander and Fox looked at particular eras and the main views and research of those times.  The researchers also looked at both sides of opposing theories of the time. They first looked at 1950-1965.  At that time the post war baby boom increased the number of students in schools and emphasized reading problems. The main research of this period focused on Skinners behaviorist theory and remediation was thought to be the solution to students reading difficulties. From my understanding of the reading phonics was used and the thought process was that students could be trained how to read.  The Gestalt theory opposed behaviorism with a linguistic stance.

Then Alexander and Fox looked at 1966-1975 where the field began to look at different disciplines in regards to reading. The researchers discuss Noam Chomsky and his theory of universal grammar. Chomsky’s idea is that every human being is hardwired with a system of grammar in their brains. Reading research took on a psycholinguistic stance that all human beings had the ability to read.  At the end of this period it was found that reading had to be looked at aside from speaking and acquiring language.

During the period of 1976-1985 the federal government began funding reading research and the fields of psychology, communications and English formed a community of research.  There was a focus on reader’s knowledge and how well that helped them read.

1986-1995 saw research in social and cultural anthropology.  This research focused on literacy and real world situations that took on a more social approach.

 Alexander and Fox label the current period “The Era of Engaged Literacy” (51) because readers are no longer reading in just the traditional ways. Hypermedia was introduced during this time and offered non linear texts.  Research was also done on motivation and student interest.  The researchers bring up the fact that young readers may develop their reading skills more quickly through technology, but they have never lived in a world without the World Wide Web and have to learn to evaluate where their sources are coming from.

In the end Alexander and Fox explain the importance of their historical perspective.  We can learn from reviewing the literature and research of the past and see how the field has transformed as well as look to what the future may hold in reading research.