Chapter 1 and 8

When reading both of these chapters, the information in them look quite familiar. I noticed that both of these chapters talk about most of what we have already discussed with the previous articles we had to read. Although I don't mind re-reading any information (it's actually better to do that to learn) there was new information that spiked my interests and pulled me into the reading. Yes, I wasn't looking forward to reading the chapters, but after bringing myself to it, I walked away from it learning more.

In chapter 1, I really like how this talked about different structures that we as teachers can use for literacy development. I think everyone has heard of the think-pair-share because in our CIR class last semester, we definitely used this a lot for many activities of learning new strategies and even discussed some lesson plans that have that in them so it was good to know that I had a knowledge of this already. The other thing that I was use to and had seen before was jigsaw. We had to use that (for my first time) last semester also in CIR for learning about literature circles. We each had a part to play or role to tell about certain things in a chapter. The roles vary from leader to illustrator (which I was) and it really helps with understanding the text more because you break it up as a group and have ways to help your peers better understand text in ways they probably wouldn't as a teacher just having a regular classroom discussion. I really liked doing this because I learn better when peers teach or say something so this was really effective for me. There was also more discussion in this chapter about reciprocal teaching which we learned plenty about last semester.I was glad to know that most of the things that I knew were from prior knowledge and although I don't mind learning new material, I was glad that I knew as much as I did.

In chapter 8, like the article we have read previously, talks about knowing or showing students how to write to learn. I really liked in this chapter of how it explains different writing skills that we could use as teachers. I have seen some of these before but I really like of how it went into detail of each skill and what a teacher can do with students and the skill. The next thing that really stood out to me when reading were using writing prompts. There were different things such as: admit slips, awards, crystal ball, etc. I think these were really unique and great ideas for a classroom to use. When I was in middle and high school, my teachers would have bell work for us to do when we came in and although that was great learning and helped us, we were doing grammatical errors rather than writing and putting our interests with it so I would most likely pull this idea(s) into my classroom. I also liked how this chapter also broke down each subject area in which writing is being learned and how to use it in those subject areas and in extracurricular activities too. In most classes like math or what not we usually don't think about integrating writing with math but really having the students write out how they came to the solution they did and explain the reasoning does help the student learn more.

These chapters were very useful and I actually enjoyed reading them and finding out what I know and learning new material. I will honestly say that I will hold to my word and use these strategies and structures in my classroom because they are effective and can help students with literacy development.

Content Area Literacy in Elementary Classrooms Respons

While reading this article, I became more aware of using expository texts while teaching as well as  helping the students in improving literacy skills and being able to read. The main points in this article that I believe are important would be the two subheadings: Making the case for content area literacy and help students become strategic readers and writers of informational texts. I believe this because under the first subheading, there are numbered headings that break down the information about informational text with students at school and how early exposure to it can change or make things worse/better in the long run. It also talks about motivating children, because when children read something they want to know about from real world things, it motivates them to know more about. They also talk about how it increases new knowledge domains which means it will develop their vocabulary and comprehension and reading fluency. The other subheading talks about different ways of reading informational texts and working with students on them how it can improve their reading with informational texts and their writing skills as well. This was two headings were really helpful to me and important because I think as a future teacher, I need to know about the ways that I can help my students and get them involved with informational texts while helping them with improving literacy in other content areas. I know for some students it is hard to be "motivated" or wanting to read informational texts, but with this article, learning the different ways to help the students with informational texts is really helpful. I guess the question that I might still have would be are there different learning strategies or ways for a student with learning disabilities with informational texts. The barriers that I might have as a future teacher would probably be the ways for my students to really interact and want to read the informational texts. I know it's a learning process with whatever content area it is, so with different ways of learning and integrating literacy in the classroom I think it will make it better.