Recognition and observation are applicable to all aspects of

life. Recognize that you, yourself, the teacher is a student

and you will succeed as an effective teacher.

Take interest in your students

Observe their behaviors (i.e. are they tired, misbehaving,

etc.)

Remember that teaching is a human service and students

should be seen as humans, and not just children

Watch and learn

Kid-Watching

"They are effective observers and listeners, which leads

them to solid ‘kid-watching’ decisions" (Allen, p. 7).

Teachers who "kid-watch" are not only concerned with students'

reading abilities or students' abilities to answer a list of

comprehension questions correctly. These teachers nurture the

entire student, and they know that students should be seen as

people with interests, lives, fears, and dreams.

Inference Huh?!

Inference is simply a fancy word for drawing your own personal conclusion. Many students

are asked to make an “inference” based on the information they have read in the text.

However, the word itself—inference—can throw students off and us as teachers can

experience losing another student into blankness.

Beers (2003) offers some techniques to resolve the inference confusion:

(1). recognize the antecedents for pronouns (2). figure out the meaning of unknown words from context clues

(3). figure out the grammatical function of an unknown word (4). understand intonation of character’s words

(5). identify characters’ beliefs, personalities, and motivations (6). understand characters’ relationships to one

another (7). provide details about the setting (8). provide explanations for events or ideas that are presented in the

text (9). offer details for events or their own explanations of the events presented in the text (10). understand the

author’s view of the world (11). relate what is happening in the text to their own knowledge of the world

(12). offer conclusions from facts presented in the text.

Correspondence

Writing To Learn

Reading and Writing Strategies

Teacher-Student Correspondence

Falk

(1979) s

tate

s th

at la

nguage, in

clu

din

g re

adin

g a

nd w

riting, “

cann

ot b

e ta

ugh

t in th

e tra

ditio

nal

sense; it m

ust b

e le

arn

ed th

rough

…exte

nsiv

e e

xposure

to a

nd p

ractic

al e

xperie

nce w

ith th

e u

se o

f

language in

actu

al, n

atu

ral c

on

texts

an

d s

ituatio

ns” (a

s c

ited in

Gam

bre

ll, 1985, p

. 512).

Student

Teacher

The u

ltimate

key to

help

stu

den

ts e

xerc

ise h

ealth

y a

nd e

ffectiv

e w

riting h

abits

is to

incorp

ora

te

the w

riting th

ey a

lready u

se in

their d

aily

lives s

uch

as, te

xtin

g, n

ote

writin

g, e

mailin

g, e

tc. In

additio

n, in

clu

de w

hat o

r wh

o th

ey m

igh

t be m

ost c

urio

us to

learn

about s

uch a

s, th

e te

ach

er.

Teacher-Student Correspondence Writing Activity

1. Use question prompts to engage in controversial discussions on paper between

you and your students

2. Prompts can be aligned to the topics that you are teaching

3. Use this communication method to get to know your students in a short period of

time, and throughout the course of the year

4. This activity can also be used as an assessment. Ask students questions regarding

the material you are teaching, and ask if they understand the information or

whether they are having issues with the material. Mostly leave it open ended.

5. Utilize this tool with a writing assignment and have students respond to a prompt

in which asks what area of the writing assignment they might need the most help

Example Prompt

"What bothers me the most right now is..."

Example Response Prompt

"The best advice I can offer you is..."

Referenced Article

Dialogue Journals: Reading-

Writing Interaction

Helping children learn to read

and write as naturally as they

learn to talk, dialogue journals

offer interesting lessons for

teacher and student.

(Gambrell, 1985)

Gambrell (1985) makes a wonderful

suggestion, an activity in which all

teachers, for all grade levels can use

in the classroom to encourage

writing.

The Activity: Dialogue Journals

Helpful Guidelines to follow when using dialogue journals:

1. Materials: Make sure to use bound notebooks such as, marble notebooks in order to avoid

ripped pages.

2. Motivation: Motivating students to write in dialogue journals is fairly simple for younger

students, however in order to encourage older students, simply ask how the students feel when

they receive an email or a letter from a friend. Most children, and adults feel very special when

they receive a letter.

3. Time: Use 10 minutes of class time per day for students to write in their dialogue journals in

order to show students that these journals are a serious contribution to their education. In

addition, teachers can make writing in the dialogue journals a part of independent work or

students can use these journals to respond to Do No prompts on the board.

Book Group

Write Beside Them

by Penny Kittle

The Writing Workshop

Model

1. Allow students to write

freely

2. Hold independent

conferences with students

3. Allow students to peer

review in order to take

ownership of their work

4. Observe your students

5. Focus on the grammar

portion towards the end of

students' writing

The Seven Frequently Asked Questions About Teaching

Writing:

1. What do I do when some of my students simply do not finish

their work?

2. What do I do if my student limits his or her writing to only

one topic all the time?

3. What do I do with a student who has great ideas but does

not write clearly, spells incorrectly, and does not use proper

grammar?

4. What do I do for students who have just arrived from

another country and must write in English?

5. What do I do to encourage my students to revise their

papers?

6. Should I allow my students to write about anything?

7. Does heterogeneous grouping really work?

Seven Suggestions and Answers:

1. Be persistent. Basically, take on the role of a nagging parent, but without the nagging part. If you

see the student in the hallway, remind him or her that he or she still needs to hand in a paper.

Allow the student to come during lunch, after school, etc.

2. A student who writes only about one topic all the time is not in jeopardy of falling behind in

enhancing his or her ability to write well. In fact, it is actually a great idea for the student to be

engrossed in his or her topic so deeply that he or she can always write on that particular topic from

another angle.

3. Establish whether the student is not concerned with conventions or whether he or she does not

know how to use conventions. Allow the student to type his or her work on a word processing

program in order to eliminate some errors as he or she writes. Finally, find a way to publish the

student's work in order to emphasize the importance of paying attention to grammatical conventions.

4. Allow the student to write as much as he or she can in English, and allow him or her to write in

his or her language. The student can translate the written work at a later stage, and it can help to

encourage his or her peers to help during collaboration.

5. Share a piece of written work that you may have and revise it in front of the class as part of a mini

lesson. Also, allow students to trade papers with one another, provide a worksheet guide, and let the

students make corrections on one another's papers.

6. Too much freedom can warrant some very graphic stories from our teenage students. Make sure

to converse with students about their ideas in order to ensure that the ideas are appropriate.

7. Mixing and crossing-culture grouping works to enlighten students on their peers work ethic,

behavior, etc. Often times, students who are privileged and students who are underprivileged can

teach each other a great deal about life, and the ways in which each student approaches life,

lessons, and especially, written assignments.

Case Study

The First Hand Experience of

a Literacy Specialist To Be

Student's Level of Interest in Selections

of Genres

Sci-Fi

Mystery

Classics

The Lo

ttery

by Sh

irley

Jackson

(19

48

)

The History of the

Lottery by Winning

With Numbers (2006)

Death by Stoning:

The Condemned

by Head, T (2012)

Retrieved from: http://civilliberty.about.com

FYI

The results of the QRI-5 (Leslie & Caldwell,

2011) revealed that the student was able

to read high school level texts. Therefore,

“The Lottery” (Jackson, 1948) fit the

student’s criteria for texts in which she

favors, and the story is read in grades 9-

12. Subsequently, two short nonfiction

texts titled, “Death by Stoning: The

Condemned (Head, 2012) and “The

History of the Lottery” (Winning With

Numbers, 2006) were read in order to

build background knowledge regarding

punishment by stoning and how the

lottery began.

Chosen Texts

Coding Strategy

1. Concepts or facts the student already knew was marked with a

check (√)

2. Information the student found confusing was marked with a

question mark (?)

3. New, unusual, or surprising information in which was understood,

but shocking to the student, was marked with an exclamation point (!)

4. After all the reading was done, the student replaced all of her

question marks with an asterisk (*)

After (Lemonade)

After Building Background Knowledge

The First Hand Experience of a

Literacy Specialist To Be

Case Study

Part 2

Before (Lemons)

Pre-reading Strategy

Addressing Controversial Issues:

Justice, Double Standards,

Corporal Punishment, etc.

Motivation to Read: Responding to Prompt

“You’re given the power to kill people simply by thinking of their

death and twice repeating the word goodbye. People die a natural

death and noone will suspect you. Are there any situations in which

you would use this power? [Explain why or why not]” (Stock, 1985,

p. 19).

Student develops a conversation with the text.

Instructor models by responding to the question

prompt.

Student and instructor continue to stop every ten

minutes to respond to what they have read in the

text.

A heated debate of why, and when this power can be

used, and the debate revealed the student's ability to

write persuasively. In addition, as the instructor and

student continued to read the story, the prompt lingered

in the student's head and it caused her to revert back to

her original answers and change her mind often. Great

reading behavior!

The Book of Questions

by Stock (1985)

The First Hand Experience of

a Literacy Specialist To Be

Case Study

Part 3

Visual Literacy

"You Gotta See it to Believe it: Teaching Visual

Literacy in the English classroom" by Seglem &

Witte (2009)

Strategy: Tattoos (p. 218)

Reference:

Seglem, R., Witte, S. (2009). You gotta see it to

believe it: Teaching visual literacy in the

English classroom. Journal of Adolscent &

Adult Literacy, 53(3), pp. 216-226.

Lesson Objective: Evaluate and

interpret the symbolic significance of

the multiple images presented, and

create one to two paragraphs in which

will demonstrate student's inferences.

Materials:

Two printed copies

of a tattoo design

Two handouts:

Relationship of

Two Images and

Death and Eulogy

Colored Pencils

Journal Notebook

Why Use It?

The tattoo strategy

utilizes popular

culture as a means

to engage students

in critical thinking

skills such as,

interpretation,

synthesizing

information, and

transforming one’s

background

knowledge into

more, non-linear

literary

inquisitions.

(See following

pgs. for student

work, etc.)

Procedure:

Analyze picture,

write a few

sentences

describing the

reason why the

artist may have

drawn the picture

Give each image a

name

Write the images

down on the

Relationship of

Two Images

handout

Explain the

relationship

between images

Choose 3 pairs of

images

Put 3 pairs of

images on Death

and Eulogy

Worksheet

Write one

paragraph eulogy

for each image that

is identified as a

eulogist

The Image

Hmm, group work,

technology, multiliteracy,

public writing, good

reading behaviors, blogs,

hands on teaching,

brochures, creativity, oh

my!?

Thoughts and Reflections

Nontraditional Writing Projects

A wonderful, and effective way to write

about the information we learn in class or

learn about ourselves was the travel

brochure. Although the idea was to hone

in on a topic such as ancient Greece, or

WWII and explore different areas in which

some events have occurred, I was able to

utilize my creativity and out-of-the-box

thinking to expand on an issue that was

very personal. By taking a previous

assignment and integrating it into the

travel brochure assignment, I was able to

learn more about myself and my learning

disabilities. As a result, upon finishing the

travel brochure, the entire assignment

made me realize how open ended the

assignment can be if my students choose to

take the same route. In addition, the

assignment explored a different type of

writing that is often overlooked in the

classroom because of the push to infuse

conservative writing into our students

minds. Ultimately, the parody of the travel

brochure actually helps to make the writing

process more fun and it will surely help

students remember important information.

Revisiting Old Assignments is a great way to Travel

Group Work Creates Learning Harmony

Collaborative Work

I must be honest. I am not a huge fan of working in

groups. Group work tends to create a burling

anxiety for me, and since I have very strong opinions

and a strong personality to boot, I have a tendency

to bump heads with my group members, or worse, I

suppress all of my leadership qualities for the sake

of keeping the peace. However, I have discovered a

wonderful quality in human beings when they are

bound together, whether forcefully or willingly, we

are always there to rescue each other in times of

stress and uncertainty. During the book group

presentation, I was taken aback by my group

members' amiable nature and immediate instinct to

rescue me from falling apart in front of the class. I

know now that collaborative work groups are not

simply to create heterogeneous groups or to

have students help each other in order to lighten the

teacher's load. No. Collaborative work groups

remind us humans to push aside our pride, be open

to suggestions, and allow others to help you.