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.