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.