I can't figure out how to make it stop highlighting my text. Anyway, I picked out what I thought were the more important blog posts.

Week 2: What is reading?

We discussed the idea of being an active reader. This is something I do constantly but I realized that not every student is aware of active reading. I tried to use an analogy that encouraged students to pretend that they were actors on their favorite movie set rather than a passive audience. I was trying to correlate the reading process with this approach but I don't like the analogy I used. I was trying to explain that students should be as "active" as they are reading as actors are when they are filming a scene. Students shouldn't just read a text for information as if they were watching a movie; they should question it and analyze it to find its meaning. This way, students should have a much deeper understanding of the text in addition to a superficial summary.

Week 3: Debates about remediation and basic writing

This was an interesting topic because every incoming college student is coming in with a different set of skills, but the expectations are largely the same. College students will need basic skills such as reading strategies, critical thinking abilities, and know how to manage their time. I mentioned community colleges in my blog and I'm starting to like the idea that most students should be required to attend a community college. The expectations and demands of a traditional four-year university dwarf the responsibilities of a high school student and many of them are not ready for such a drastic change. Being in an environment where they are forced to take on additional responsibility while having more low-stakes grades (and less student debt) can ease the transition and reduce stress.

Students who need additional classes or help to prepare for their first semester of college should be allowed to take a remedial course. This course should emphasize the skills they will need for success while providing them with positive encouragement. The class should focus on general study skills and basic reading and writing. I think two semesters is the longest any student should be allowed in remedial courses. This blog assignment was particularly useful because it helped me think about a diverse student population with various needs.

Week 4: Theories of reading and writing

We had a brief discussion regarding how are class should approach our blog assignments, but most of it was self-explanatory.

I found the McCormick reading for this week very difficult but extremely useful. Actually, to say that it was useful seems like a bit of an understatement because our approach to teaching reading and writing were based off her ideas. I'm still finding new information or details that I missed when I go back to the reading. Nevertheless, the blog was helpful because it helped me organize some key thoughts from the reading.

Week 5: McCormick and Lesson planning

This week's blog was useful because it was the first time I received serious feedback from classmates. Having their input on ideas that I wasn't sure about or had difficulty expanding was very useful.

Week 8

This blog was a good spin on making note of difficulties. By deliberately picking something that was challenging to read, it helped me attempt to understand the mindset of students who struggle with reading. It helped me analyze what I was doing when I struggled and it gave me a glimpse of what students might try or feel when they come across material that is either uninteresting or just plain difficult.

There were some weeks where the blog assignments were meant to be reading summaries or platforms for sharing ideas. Those blogs were useful in that they helped me retain or remember the material, it felt like it could have been done in another format other than a blog. I thought some assignments could have just as effective using an iLearn forum.

A course memo:
There are some areas that need some further developing

Hello,

I don't want to sound like I have all the answers, but I believe that we should start implementing an IRW English curriculum. I have been inspired by recent readings that suggest that our "traditional" approach may not be as effective as we once thought.

My primary inspiration was from Kathleen McCormick. She outlines a study she took part in that was meant to analyze student responses to writing assignments. Students were given an intentionally vague writing assignment and asked to respond. She found that the overall student response made it very difficult to neatly categorize them into groups. Most students did not just "summarize," "respond freely to," or "interpret" the text. Most of their essays were hybridizations; most responded with a "review and comment" paper in which students summarized the reading and then offered their opinion or observations.

She did find, however, that students often struggled with "integrating one's own ideas and knowledge into the written conversation with one's sources" and "interpreting source texts for a purpose of one's own". I think this proves that there is a link between reading and writing that we are currently missing. Students can be misunderstanding "the nature of writing by confusing the thinking process with the written product." They view writing "as a procedure whereby the writer puts closure on ideas rather than explores and develops new ones."

McCormick also brought up some assumptions that typically guide or influence student writing:

Their need for closure - Students often feel that they must come to an explicit conclusion regarding a particular issue. They strive to achieve closure through arguing against the alternatives

Their need to be objective - Some students struggle because they are torn between a desire to remain "objective" while developing their own ideas. 

Their avoidance of contradiction - Most students did not mention that contradictions existed in their text and only a small percentage briefly acknowledged them.

San Francisco State has a IRW program that is a year long. By maintaining the same group of students for two semesters, it givers teachers more time to diagnose and address the needs of their students. Also, by keeping the same group of students together, it helps create a sense of community and encourages students to communicate and cooperate. Students in such an encouraging and welcoming environment are likely to learn and retain more.

This idea of IRW isn't brand new; it certainly is not the first time that somebody has tried to argue that reading and writing are inextricably intertwined. It's just that the social and educational contexts are different.

Our developing unit

The main goal of our lesson plan is to start familiarizing students with academic writing. They will learn pre-reading strategies and note taking skills which will later help them generate ideas for their papers. Unit one will cover the notion of audience and the basic components of the standard academic essay. Unit two will involve more student generated content and peer feedback. Here they will fine tune and solidify their understanding of the essay components such as the thesis and supporting paragraphs. Unit three will continue focusing on peer reviews while bringing in outside research. Students will learn and practice how to incorporate other ideas into their writing. Students will be expected to continue revising and proofreading their work on their own or with classmates. Unit three and later unit four will also attempt to teach students how to evaluate their sources and selecting texts for their assignments. The final unit will wrap things up with self-reflection.

The reading/writing skills are meant to start relatively light with a larger focus on content generation then develop to include deeper analysis and critical thinking. For example, students start out with strategies that will help them look for and retain the key ideas from their readings. Ideally, students will not only be able to then retain and paraphrase the ideas, but also analyze and compare such thoughts with other readings from their outside research.

The paper assignments range from simple narratives to more complex position papers where they must support their argument with logical and textual evidence.

placeholder for discovery of competence reading

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Brief points on community building

Studies have shown that a strong sense of classroom community contributes to a positive student outcomes; they will do better than those who don't. Unfortunately, many American schools traditionally use competition, awards, and achievement based grouping to encourage learning -- which likely undermines a child's sense of community.

Students with a high sense of community showed:

Greater academic motivation and performance

They liked school better and enjoyed class

Empathy and motivation to help others

increased conflict resolution skills

More altruistic behavior

Teachers should consider:

Use welcome notes

Visit children and their families

Celebrate success

Use class meetings to take notes and identify possible issues

Down play competition

Display everbody's work

Use non-competitve games

Involve all children

Rotate classroom responsibilities

For school principals:

Organize schoolwide acitivities

Start a buddy program

The Bartholomae reading

I like that much of the writing was low stakes. The teachers seem to put an emphasis on strategies that would get the students to start thinking. I was actually somewhat intimidated by the expectations the students were expected to meet. The reading material was not particularly  demanding, but I was intrigued by the part where they must sit down for an hour and write. I have  never had to do such an assignment outside of the classroom. It made me think about how such material would be graded. The amount of writing a student can produce usually varies from individual to individual. How would teachers know that the student produced as much as possible within the allotted time? It usually takes me a fairly long time to write anything. I feel like some students will be unfairly penalized or forced to rewrite the assignment when they have, in fact, written as much as they could. I started to wonder if assigning a minimum word count that students are required to meet but free to exceed. And on a slightly unrelated note, I also questioned legibility. Some students are notorious for having illegible handwriting. What would be the appropriate response in that case? I definitely want to include this part into my own unit but I think I will use a word count requirement rather than a timed session.

It correlates well with our discussions in class because much the material and class discussions are student based. The course is designed to get students reading and writing but it also does it in a way that will get students engaged. There are some handouts, but they serve as a space for writing down details and class isn't lecture driven . I like that the students were able to read new material with a more critical approach by the end of the semester without being intimidated. 

Chapter 7 introduced perspective as another approach for editing or correcting mistakes. The text suggested that students often and usually have a method behind their mistakes; there was logic behind their mistake. It might have been wrong, but once analyzed, it becomes much easier for teachers and tutors to help the students realize and fix their own mistakes. But I think this "logic" is very difficult to find. The example student and tutor initially struggled to make smooth progress. The student knew he had to change his sentence structure, but he couldn't distinguish his commas from his periods. The tutor did make some key suggestions and seemed to follow the text's approach of switching perspectives. She asks the student to explain his usage of commas but he wasn't able to explain his logic very well. I think the most he could do was explain his original intent and the tutor had to guess what he was trying to say. I like the idea but I felt that the success rate is largely dependent upon each tutor's abilities and the student's ability to explain their position.

Nevertheless, this translates well for any prospective teacher or tutor. Since students who are in developmental English often don't know enough formal grammar to understand their mistakes, it gives the teacher new insight into the problem. It felt a little bit more psychoanalytical. It's a fresh approach for many teachers because they are no longer looking for mistakes and meticulously correcting them with red ink. By attempting to understand the students' thought process, they just might be able to gain new insight into the students' struggles. 

These are some ideas I started toying around with. I know I started rambling at one point. I felt like I was desperately trying to explain something and it got much too wordy. If anybody is interested/confused about any of it please let me know.

I like the idea of a technology related theme. It is a theme with plenty of real world applications and seems like a easy topic to introduce in a classroom setting. And given today's technology obsessed youth, it should be an interesting topic for students. My one worry is that that schools and teachers everywhere are thinking along the same lines. Students might think that the topic was chosen purely because they are expected to like it. Given that this year is an election year, I like the idea of having a unit on social class, but I feel like that would be very difficult to pull off without becoming blatantly political; a social class related theme would feel too much like a political science class. I think it could be interesting and informative for students, but they would likely disagree. I think the best theme would be a combination of technology and the environment. The government is becoming more wary of climate change and more and more people seem to be taking a step towards becoming more self-conscious about the environment; "going green" is becoming more accepted (hopefully it hasn't reached overkill yet). Any theme that brings up current issues, however, runs the risk of becoming too preachy. To avoid that risk, I think it is a good idea to bring in two themes. The first half of the semester could focus on new technology and it could slowly transition into issues with climate change and the environment. Any ideas or topics discussed in the first half could then carry over by illustrating the solutions new technology has to offer.

As for class orientation, I want to focus on a cognitive approach but I would probably try to find a good blend of cognitive/expressivist. I like expressivist activities such as reader responses because they are very good ways to get the students thinking about the reading and can also help students come up with writing topics. The cognitive approach should cover most of the significant sociocultural contexts related to a reading. I could be confusing the perspectives, but it seems difficult to provide students the background information necessary to fully understand a particular literature/reading piece without providing a good snapshot of that particular time and place in history. I want to make sure that students get all the necessary information they need so that there isn't any confusion or misunderstanding of the text. I wouldn't be so concerned about students obtaining the "right" answer. I would, however, expect them to come to a conclusion with enough textual evidence to support whatever claim/conclusion they came to. I'm going over this idea in my head again, and it seems counter-intuitive to claim to take a cognitive approach without teaching students to find the "right" answer. I like the critical thinking and textual analysis students are expected to do as a part of the cognitive approach. Their acquisition of such skills supersedes them finding the "right" answer.  

This unit would likely take place in the middle or near the end of the semester. The course workload would assume that students have solid reading and writing skills. That being said, it doesn't mean that they won't learn additional material, but they would be expected to be able to read and write at the college level. I would like to plan a course that can refine and expand on those skills and strategies that students have learned. So I suppose I am looking for students who would be enrolled in freshman composition.