 | Seeing the world through your students' eyes |
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A fantastic article crossed my desk this week from The Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network. http://foundationsforliteracy.ca/pdf/ReadWriteKit08.pdf Foundations for Literacy: An Evidence-based Toolkit for the Effective Reading and Writing Teacher. The whole document is 144 pages but I have given various sections of importance links to look at. Applicable information for the classroom.
Example:
How conscious are you about your language knowledge and reading skills? Try reading the following words from Old English aloud:
gadertang delan lafian campwig faecnig tacnberend
How successful were you? Did you realize what skills you used? If you did read these words, you were able to sound them out using sounds of the letters or letter groups. You did not have any other clues as to how to pronounce the words.
The following is an excerpt from the famous nonsense poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. Read it aloud.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
Again, how successful were you and what skills did you use to read the words successfully? Did you guess the words? Did you try sounding them out? Which words did you seem to understand in this excerpt? The pattern cues to indicate what role the words played (syntax, grammar) (e.g., the ‘-y, the ‘-s’ for plural, the punctuation, the sentence structure with simple words such as “and”, “the”, “in”, “were”) all help in understanding the text. Because the patterns are familiar to you as an English reader, you can read the above excerpt fluently, with expression, as if you understood its meaning.
These skills – sounding out letters and breaking words apart into patterns – are learned. We all sound out words and we may not be aware of it. We learned these skills consciously at one time, and as we improved, they became automatic and unconscious to us; children need to go through the process of learning the skills consciously and practicing them until they become automatic.
If you would like to learn more about this topic open the attatchment and read more.
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| Re: Seeing the world through your students' eyes |
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Here is another snip-it of the document. |
| Re: Seeing the world through your students' eyes |
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Something more to think about. |
| Re: The writing process |
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The document also talks about the writing process. Here is a brief idea of what you can find in the text. Steps in developing writing 1. Acquire knowledge 2. Retrieve knowledge 3. Plan text 4. Construct text 5. Edit text
Acquire knowledge: receive information (e.g., through reading and listening).
Retrieve knowledge: pull together acquired knowledge and express it in language.
Plan text: understand purpose and goal of writing; know planning processes and steps; know various text structures; be able to use or invent organizing tools to develop writing.
Construct text: understand and apply text conventions such as paragraph structure; organize information from broad to specific; and understand your perspective.
Edit text: recognize errors and places for improvements; monitor construction and cohesion and revise; apply writing mechanics (e.g., capitals, punctuation, and spelling).
Suggested writing activities • Model the use of writing frames, templates, or graphic organizers to give students an understanding of narrative structure. • Ask students to take a text and break it down to its skeletal outline; this helps understanding of how writers develop a story. • Present students with two sentences, and ask them to combine the sentences to make one more complex sentence (e.g., “Brownies taste good” with “Mary likes to eat brownies” to create “Mary likes to eat brownies because they taste good”). This activity helps young writers with sentence structure and grammar. • Ask students to insert descriptive words into otherwise plain sentences (e.g., add “black” “big” and “quickly” into the sentence “The spider ran up the wall” to make the sentence “The big, black spider quickly ran up the wall” (Wren, 2002b). Extend this activity or teach at a more advanced level with a discussion of synonyms to substitute for words (e.g., “The enormous black spider rapidly raced up the wall”).
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