{"content":{"sharePage":{"page":0,"digests":[{"id":"53428772","dateCreated":"1335466938","smartDate":"Apr 26, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"AvaMarron","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/AvaMarron","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53428772"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Ava's Post","description":"April 19th reading directly related to many struggles I deal with in my classroom daily. Zwiers said "readers are able to reread confusing parts of the text, acknowledging that they are confused and thus repeating the mental comprehension strategies to better understand the text. This "mental multitasking" Zwiers says, is one of the biggest benefits students get from reading academic language.
\nMental strategies for reading are so hard for me to explain to my students. I read much better silently and during read aloud times I have always struggled. If a person reads and comprehends through only certain strategies should we push them to read in other ways?
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\n Zwiers gives strategies to help students better digest academic language. The one that I am most familiar with and like the most is the "think aloud." My school pushes this but many times my students tune out and are not doing the heavy lifting it takes to truly master a reading skill or strategy. I feel like more guided lessons and group work then a significant amount of you do time helps students utilize these skills effectively.","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[],"more":0}]},{"id":"53241626","dateCreated":"1335204565","smartDate":"Apr 23, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"Cdoonan","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/Cdoonan","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53241626"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Christine D's post","description":"This week's reading really addressed an conundrum I have been dealing with since I started teaching - the fact that my students struggle a great deal with accessing, processing, and producing academic language, in both reading and writing. When asking myself the question, "what really are the tangible benefits of putting academic language in front of my students, knowing they are going to struggle with it?" Zwier's following point struck a cord: readers are able to reread confusing parts of the text, acknowledging that they are confused and thus repeating the mental comprehension strategies to better understand the text. This "mental multitasking" Zwiers says, is one of the biggest benefits students get from reading academic language. Zwiers also provides several strategies to help students better digest academic language. The one that I am most familiar with and like the most is the "think aloud." I have been coached a great deal on presenting great think-alouds during my model in reading class. This provides a lens into my strong reader's mind and allows students to witness all the mental processes that accompany reading academic language. My question is, however, is it best as a teacher to model think-alouds that verbalize all the thinking that accompanies reading academic text or just the thinking that connects to that lesson's aim? As I was reading this, I realized all my think-alouds had been geared toward one specific objective, but rarely encompassed all the advanced thinking that goes on in my head when reading the text. Are these think-alouds really showing my students how an advanced reader dissects academic language?
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\nI also really appreciated the fact that Zwiers includes a section on text organization. I, as a new teacher, completely overlooked the importance of these for less-advanced readers. When teaching a lesson on text features, however, I was shocked to see how little my students knew about the importance of things like titles, headings, and pictures. It became clear to me that understanding the importance of and extracting meaning from text features is in fact a very important skill necessary to really understand most academic texts.
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\nFinally, I thought a lot about my own teaching practices with respect to pre-writing that does very little to set students up for success in producing writing using academic language. The pre-writing organization we have taught our students at my school is very structured, but we stress that each box in this chart must only contain a word or phrase so that too much time is not taken up in the pre-writing process. While I think this is important point to stress for some students who struggle with time on timed tests, Zwiers discussion of more "academic language" - focused pre-writing encouraged me to think about how to use academic words and phrases in pre-writing organization. All too often I see students who have set up elaborate pre-writing charts with great ideas and evidence, but they unfortunately are unable to weave them together into a cohesive essay. Many times, the "brick" words are even there, but the "mortar" words\/phrases are missing and result in writing that is far from academic.","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[],"more":0}]},{"id":"53095342","dateCreated":"1334872740","smartDate":"Apr 19, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"amandajhall","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/amandajhall","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53095342"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Amanda Hall's Post","description":"Chapters 7, 8, and 9 are by far the most practical and also most profound in his entire book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these chapters each of the practical applications that he discussed aligned with the larger theme that spanned across the three chapters which was: academic writing is a cyclical process that requires both teaching into as well as ownership over (via production).
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\nChapter 7 focused primarily on the common core skills that readers must be taught and develop to read academic language and to write with it as well. His key skills bare similar relation to Bloom\u2019s taxonomy. I particularly, enjoyed his section on creating scaffolds for teaching academic language. I think that the \u201cread aloud, comprehend aloud, and improv aloud\u201d will work really well for my students with attentional disabilities. His \u201cmarking up long sentences\u201d is another strategy I will also teach to my students so that they don\u2019t feel so overwhelmed by academic language in their reading.
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\nChapter 8 had a really profound statement that I liked: \u201cwriting requires deeper processing than reading alone entails.\u201d While this may seem obvious, I thought it was nicely worded to describe the multifaceted complexity of the writing process. In this chapter Zwiers also broke writing up into genres and explained how to teach academic language into different genres of writing. He really pushed the reader to think about the suitability and purpose of different forms of writing and then contextualize academic language within that framework. I thought that idea of proper placement was really fundamental to our understanding of academic language for writing.
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\nFinally, chapter 9 might just be a teacher\u2019s best friend. It discussed ways in which we should assess academic language, formally and informally, orally and in print. His piece about the importance of academic feedback was the most important part to me because like he said, I agree that \u201cthe most powerful modification that enhances achievement is feedback.\u201d This idea makes academic language a practical means of communication between student and teacher which serves as critical practice for the world that awaits them.","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[],"more":0}]},{"id":"53095152","dateCreated":"1334872424","smartDate":"Apr 19, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"jmiller76","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/jmiller76","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53095152"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Jason Miller Post","description":"One key point that Zwiers raises is that we need to be aware that very often it is the structure of the academic sentences that throws off our students. It may be the constant use of pronouns or inverted sentence structure that presents challenges to our students. One way to combat this issue is by using think aloud strategies to model how we as content experts comprehend these sometimes cryptic and arcane passages.
\n I know that I sometimes focus too much of my working brain power on the content and less on how it is presented in text. As a reform to this practice, I hope to pay more attention to the way things are phrased in order to make comprehension clearer for my students. Zwiers also suggests that in we need to make sure that we are not just translating academic language for our students. We need to provide the tools so that they can comprehend by themselves. I think the challenge is creating the space and time in our classroom so that it becomes second nature to focus on the literacy aspects of the content that our students can access the content on their own. I am definitely a fan of the role playing of different parts of the readings to encourage comprehension and engagement !","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[],"more":0}]},{"id":"53091086","dateCreated":"1334865778","smartDate":"Apr 19, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"dschall2","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/dschall2","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53091086"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Douglas Schall's Post","description":"Chapters seven, eight, and nine of Jeff Zwiers book, \u201cBuilding Academic Language,\u201d were, in my opinion, extremely insightful and useful. Chapter seven begins with a description of the skills a reader must possess in order to comprehend the academic language of many texts and school related readings \u2013 the combination of comprehension strategies and other higher order thinking skills such as, \u201cclassifying, synthesizing, inferring cause and effect, predicting, interpreting...\u201d and so forth. He then presents different strategies that will aid in the teaching of brick terms, as well as common mortar words and phrases found in academic writing. In addition, chapter seven discusses the use of academic grammar. This section was particularly helpful for me, because I have struggled to come up with a way in which I can break down sentences in a meaningful, and timely, way for my students. Such a skill is vital for math students when tackling multiple choice questions. (I must also thank Zwiers for the visual that shows what students can do so as to provide a visual\/kinesthetic display for the differences between the measures of central tendency.)
\nChapter eight discusses the importance of teaching, or more accurately modeling, the differences between written and spoken language. Again the importance of teaching academic grammar is nicely summarized by Zwiers: \u201cGrammar is important, though, because knowing certain rules and patterns can accelerate the growth of [students\u2019] academic writing abilities.\u201d Zwiers then proceeds to offer many different examples\/templates from graphic organizers to prompts and posters that address common pitfalls\u2014organization, conventions, and grammar\u2014for students who are poorly equipped to write in an academic setting.
\nLastly, in chapter eight, assessment-driven instruction was discussed. It was asserted that as teachers we should view assessments as tools that will enable us to better teach content, not simply a way to calculate a grade. The highlight of the chapter was the detailed sample lesson plan. I like all the rubrics, performance based basements, and other tools that Zwiers details, but I can\u2019t help coming back to the fact that as a math teacher most of these tools will not be of great use for me. Assessing one\u2019s mathematical performance is simply not as subjective as is assessing a persuasive essay. Sadly, there seems to be little that Zwiers suggests that well really addresses the numerical illiteracy of many of my students. That is, what is a good solution for teaching basic mathematical skills? We\u2019ve spent much time discussing literacy as a reading and writing component, but what to do when a student is struggling with basic mathematical computational skills?!!","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[],"more":0}]},{"id":"53072370","dateCreated":"1334845423","smartDate":"Apr 19, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"LEM0N","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/LEM0N","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53072370"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Lemontrel's Post ","description":"Brief Summary
\nIn Chapter 7 Building Academic Language, Zwiers discusses ways to expand our students' academic language and comprehension of academic language during reading. He begins the chapter mentioning benefits of academic reading. According to Zwiers, three benefits of academic reading are learning new language, rereading confusing text, and building students multitasking reading skills. He moves on to include different strategies and activities teachers can use to build our students' language. One activity I am looking forward to trying after testing is lyric summaries. I envision these summaries taking up
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\nIn Chapter 8, Zwiers concentrates on two areas of academic writing, ways to develop academic writing and ways academic writing influence academic language and thinking. Zwiers argues that students tend to think that writing is spoken word written down. As a result, the essays they write reflect the way they speak. Since these students do not posses that linguistic capital of many of their affluent peers, they are not able to reliably write what "sounds right" to them. Zwiers claims that providing students with a variety of models would benefit students greatly. Zwiers ends the chapter providing different writing activiites teachers could use.
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\nChapter 9 is full of examples of how to incorporate the development of academic language in lesson planning and assessments.
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\nTwo useful ideas I have gained from Chapter 8 are incorporating written recaps at the end of my math classes and the activity try these terms. I generally include an oral reflection at the end of our classes, but I have never asked my students to write their thoughts on paper. Written recaps could be helpful once or twice a week to allow my students to practice more writing in math class, and it could provide me with another tool to assess my students learning. Try these terms could be a good Do Now that allows my students to practice using appropriate vocabulary for different mathematical concepts.","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[{"id":"53089144","body":"Lemontrel,
\n It's great that you're still looking for ways to incorporate reading and writing into your math classes. Another strategy that Zwiers suggests is to have students assume different roles during a lesson in order to create a more literacy based lesson even in a math class. For example, one of your students could be an exponent for the entire period and explain the function of an exponent when ever it arose in a problem.","dateCreated":"1334863423","smartDate":"Apr 19, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"jmiller76","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/jmiller76","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"}},{"id":"53091412","body":"Lemontrel,
\nI too like the idea of a written recap for math. Like yourself I usually reserve a few minutes at the end of class in order to verbally review what was covered that day and to attach the day's learning to what's coming up the next day. I would recommend that you also try using a non-stop writing activity for your math class. This was the literacy activity that I had used for our last assignment in this class and it turned out to be a pretty great way to assess where my students were at in regards to their understanding of more conceptual math scenarios. I've used this for finding the Relative error, measures of central tendency, and misleading stats and graphs. The task requires students to articulate their understanding of the lesson at hand. In addition I'd recommend having the students provide, in their own words, a real life example of the concept.","dateCreated":"1334866234","smartDate":"Apr 19, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"dschall2","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/dschall2","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"}}],"more":0}]},{"id":"53058464","dateCreated":"1334806669","smartDate":"Apr 18, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"terrencekumar","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/terrencekumar","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53058464"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"terrence's post","description":" In this week's selection of reading, Jeff Zwiers offers an enlightening analysis of what obstructs certain students' progress in literacy and useful methods for adapting lesson plans to address these obstructions. At my school, I do not spend hours suffering because students choose not to study. I do suffer when I see students working as hard as they know how, but continuing to fail. The textbook is currently a worthless resource for them because the academic language might as well be Chinese, and the academic language I use in class in incomprehensible to them.
\n Zwiers identifies my students' toils well with his list of the five strategies Students who Read Below Grade Level (SRBGL) in chapter 7 page 166. Furthermore, he offers useful strategies for combating these deficits and working these strategies into the lessons without sacrificing time that would have been spent on content curriculum. My personal favorite is the Anticipation Chat. This strategy incorporates genuine conversation into the classroom where the students can practice using their academic language, learn from each other, correct each other, and disagree with each other. I only wish that he spent more effort on how to handle the most difficult part of this. Zwiers writes, \u201cAs long as the environment is safe to make such guesses and errors, this kind of learning can happen. And along the way, students should use academic... language to make their conceptual changes.\u201d Encouraging shy, embarassed, and fearful students is difficult with teenage students, and far too often the shy student needs the most help.","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[],"more":0}]},{"id":"53058184","dateCreated":"1334805916","smartDate":"Apr 18, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"sdeuitch","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/sdeuitch","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53058184"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Sarah's Post","description":"Chapter Seven "Language for Academic Reading" was both helpful and unhelpful. The Key Comprehension Strategies for Academic Reading have already improved my academic reading activities with my students. I never thought of academic reading as being divided into separate strategies and skills - but now that I read them, it makes perfect sense. It also makes sense that students who haven't been read to or who haven't read much would have difficulties with these skills. What I didn't like about this chapter and discussion were the techniques for improving academic reading with students. Reading aloud and narrating your thoughts make sense, and are techniques I use quite often. Acting out reading and creating poems and songs, however, seem very juvenile techniques. Some high school students may be interested in that, but I cannot imagine ANY of my students doing those assignments - no matter how many points they are worth. This book is supposedly grades 5-12, but it really does not seem geared towards high school at all. I would definitely appreciate some original ideas (besides read and think-alouds) that would work with high school adolescents.","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[],"more":0}]},{"id":"53055862","dateCreated":"1334800392","smartDate":"Apr 18, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"BridgetGaitor","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/BridgetGaitor","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53055862"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Bridget's post","description":"In chapters 7 and 8 Zwiers provided useful techniques for the classroom. Zwiers discussed the use of lyric summaries in the classroom. I completely agree that lyric summaries can be very useful in the classroom. As a teacher and a graduate student it would be very time consuming and unpractical for me to create lyric summaries. I have used lyric summaries in my classroom that I have found online or through colleagues. Before reading chapters 7 and 8 I have always used \u201ccomprehend aloud\u201d but never knew the term for it. Comprehend aloud is constantly used in my test prep classes. It allows my students to analyze their thinking process and how they should think for the test purposes. My students hate to \u201ccomprehend aloud\u201d but they understand its importance.","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[{"id":"53058374","body":"Bridget, you made a good point that I neglected to make in my own post. Not only would my students refuse to create lyric summaries, but it would be very impractical time-wise. I suppose I should think about it as finding my own lyric summaries and using them with my students rather than them creating them. So far I have been unsuccessful in getting my students to "comprehend aloud" - they think it's stupid and they don't really understand why it's important. If you could share how you managed to convey that importance to them, that would be awesome!","dateCreated":"1334806454","smartDate":"Apr 18, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"sdeuitch","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/sdeuitch","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"}},{"id":"53058596","body":"Hello you too, I noticed your struggle with the time requirements of lyric summaries. An english teacher and I found a way around this in my school. As he was teaching sonnets, he addressed music-related topics like meter and rhythm. So we worked together. He explained to them that almost every line in the verse of a song will have the same rhythym, and a very simple but common rhyme scheme is AABBCCDD...... After he did all of this work, I just had my students go home and each prepare 2 lines with 10 syllables that rhyme. The next day they all came to school and shared their lines. The class then broke up into groups of 4 or 5 and made complete songs by combining each person's work. It saved a lot of time, and the shared creative aspect helped them commit it to memory.
\nI hope this helps","dateCreated":"1334807102","smartDate":"Apr 18, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"terrencekumar","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/terrencekumar","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"}}],"more":0}]},{"id":"53054892","dateCreated":"1334798469","smartDate":"Apr 18, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"christinepeters13","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/christinepeters13","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"},"monitored":false,"locked":false,"links":{"self":"https:\/\/ctge5549spring12.wikispaces.com\/share\/view\/53054892"},"dateDigested":1532919351,"startDate":null,"sharedType":"discussion","title":"Christine P'a Post","description":"I really appreciate how Zwiers offers increasingly useful knowledge for the classroom. To be specific--my classroom. Hence, as a primarily global history educator, I like ways to boater literacy with history instruction. I found the historical lens for discussion and prewriting to serve as a very probable instrument for learning to increase the usefulness of mortar-like words.
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\nMy students recently took a global history regents predictive. Needless to say, the scores were far below where they needed to be, especially with the June regents quickly approaching. The greatest hindrance to their success on this exam was the writing portion. On only a few exams did I see students successfully make historical connections using the language appropriate to the historical content. Vocabulary, such as feudalism, were clearly not retained by students. However, despite this, I remain hopeful and see this as a tool for my students to engage with review of the material","replyPages":[{"page":0,"digests":[{"id":"53054928","body":"Just to clarify, I'm referring to chapter 8 of Zwiers.","dateCreated":"1334798525","smartDate":"Apr 18, 2012","userCreated":{"username":"christinepeters13","url":"https:\/\/www.wikispaces.com\/user\/view\/christinepeters13","imageUrl":"https:\/\/ssl.wikicdn.com\/i\/user_none_lg.jpg"}}],"more":0}]}],"more":true},"comments":[]},"http":{"code":200,"status":"OK"},"redirectUrl":null,"javascript":null,"notices":{"warning":[],"error":[],"info":[],"success":[]}}