ELAHolly


 * Textbook Survey—English Language Arts **

As you peruse your content area textbook, please complete the following activities and/or questions. You may place your responses on this page.

1. Write a bibliographical entry for the book using APA format.

Burke, J. (2008). //The English teacher's companion: a complete guide to classroom, curriculum, and the profession// (3rd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

2. What is the author’s background in education?

Jim Burke is an English teacher at Burlingame High School in California. He is widely recognized in the field of education. He has written multiple books and was even awarded the 2000 NCTE Exemplary English Leadership Award.

3. Skim through the Introduction: Teaching English in the Twenty-First Century. What are 2 key insights that you gained?

1. I was a little surprised that many schools now have open enrollment policies for advanced classes. 2. I found the graphic organizer for 21st Century skill within English interesting and potentially helpful.

4. Looking at the Table of Contents, what are the 4 main sections of the book?


 * 1) Foundations
 * 2) New Directions in Teaching English: Implications
 * 3) Issues in Teaching English—Inevitabilities
 * 4) From Becoming to Being an English Teacher

5. Which chapter should you definitely read before you begin the unit project?

The chapter titled “Composing a Curriculum: How to Plan a Unit of Study.”

6. Which chapter will be particularly helpful with planning assessments?

The chapter titled “Measuring Student Progress.”

7. Look through the Appendices. Which 2 appendices do you think you will find most helpful during student teaching? Why?

--New Teacher Checklist --103 Things to do Before/During/After Reading

8. In Chapter 2, Four Components of Effective Teaching are explained. What are they? Give an example of each.

1. Construction – Manipulating words to change their meaning.

2. Occupation – Have students arrange to shadow someone at work for a day to see not only what his or her job demands but also what life is like for someone engaged in that kind of employment.

3. Negotiation – Students have choices about what and how they study in class.

4. Conversation – a Socratic Seminar about a story or idea.

9. Of all the chapters in the book, which one interests you the most? Why?

I am drawn initially to Chapter 22, “Dear New Teacher,” probably because of my insecurities going into student teaching.

10. Of all the chapters in the book, which one will you probably not read during this course? Why?

Honestly, pretty much all the chapters sound really interesting. If I have to pick one that would be toward the bottom of my priority list it would be chapter 3, “A Modern Profile of Adult Literacy,” because I rather just dive into the things I can really use in the classroom.

11. What is one section in particular that you would like to discuss further with your content advisor?

Measuring Student Progress

**3 Trends/Issues in English Language Arts**

The following are 3 issues we uncovered during our meeting with our content advisor:
 * 1) Young Adult Literature vs. the Classics: when, why, and to what extent?
 * 2) Teaching Grammar: what is the right and/or most effective way?
 * 3) Should “6 Traits” be the steadfast model for student writing?

** Session 5 Journal Reflection ** In the article, “In Defense of the Five-Paragraph Essay,” Kerri Smith elaborates on why it is important that high school students continue to learn and perfect the traditional five-paragraph essay format. As a freshman college English professor, Kerri sees the value of this rigid format. She argues that the five-paragraph essay gets to the heart of writing with its “introduce-develop-conclude” format. In demonstrating the ability to write in this format, students also demonstrate their ability to think, organize, and argue their point in a concise manner.

Kerri Smith does a great job of defending her point; she uses the very format she’s defending to demonstrate the format’s validity and effectiveness. She obviously knows her target audience and goes out of her way to reach them—she’s a college English instructor publishing an article in a journal for secondary English teachers.

To be quite honest, I haven’t really decided exactly what I plan on doing in my own classroom in terms of essay writing. I personally don’t particularly remember learning a five-paragraph essay format, though I did learn to write concisely. And really that is my main concern—that students can develop and defend their own arguments in an organized and concise manner. If that translates into a five-paragraph essay, so be it. But I don’t think it necessarily has to.

One of my concerns is that the five-paragraph essay limits students’ opportunity to play with style, but as Smith points out, “one great mistake of modern education is the assumption that students can jump to the ‘fun’ stuff before they have learned the ‘boring’ stuff, which is like forgetting that Picasso was a marvelous ﬁgurative artist before he invented cubism.” While I whole-heartedly agree with Smith that writing basics must come first, that still does not necessarily mean that it has to come in the form of the rigid five-paragraph essay format. For me, the jury is still out.

Research Paper Outline My apologies that my formatting did not copy into the wiki page well. It will not let me edit the way it needs to be. You can view the real thing here, if you like:

**__Thesis:__**

Within the content area of English, there are three avenues through which teachers can ensure student success in reading: addressing the literary achievement gap for boys, incorporating innovative reading materials like the graphic novel, and renovating vocabulary instruction.


 * 1) Introduction
 * 2) Interesting fact/stat about reading achievement in the U.S.
 * 3) Thesis Statement
 * 4) Boys & Reading
 * 5) The problem—proposals for why boys are often behind girls when it comes to reading.
 * 6) Stats about students’ current reading performance.
 * 7) Boys’ interests and learning styles not readily supported or encouraged.

i. Females dominate the school environment—teachers and librarians.

ii. Instruction favors girls’ learning style.


 * 1) The (Hopeful) Solution—How we can change instruction to close the gap.
 * 2) Awareness and encouragement of male students’ learning and “boy” interests.
 * 3) Provide lots of choice and differentiated instruction.

i. Make more hands-on assessments available.


 * 1) Create stages for male role models who read.
 * 2) The Graphic Novel
 * 3) Why it’s not used
 * 4) Teacher views

i. Viewed as a “sub-literature”

ii. Takes time away from “more important” books


 * 1) Student views
 * 2) Why we should use them
 * 3) Benefits of graphic novels.
 * 4) How to Implement
 * 5) Instructional suggestions
 * 6) Discussion of some award-winning titles
 * 7) How they can be used as a parallel text to a classic
 * 8) Vocabulary
 * 9) How it’s often taught
 * 10) Proposals for solution
 * 11) Proposal #1: Forget it all together! Read instead!
 * 12) Proposal #2: Revise traditional methods; focus on quality, not quantity.
 * 13) Conclusion
 * 14) Summary
 * 15) Restatement of Thesis

Insights from Meeting with Content Advisor on Summative Assessment:

1. Always keep the end goal in mind, making sure to assess what it iss you want the student to take away from the class. To that same effect, how should (or at all) "grading" of behavior come into play--i.e. absences, tardiness, respectfulness, etc.

2. Maybe accepting work late isn't as big a deal as we tend to think it is.

__Late Work Policy__

I’m planning on accepting late work. My current thoughts are that turning work in late will result in the loss of points, most likely 10%. This policy is particularly true of larger assignments. Daily assignments must be handed in by the end of the unit. I’m not opposed to giving extensions on larger assignments, but would require notice ahead of time—not the day before.

While some teachers may decide to accept late work all the way until the end of the semester, I believe this doesn’t teach students to be timely or accountable. If a student is still spending time on the last unit’s work, how are they possibly going to keep up with the current unit’s assignments? Plus, I loathe the idea of piles of late work, especially at the end of the semester when grading is already such an issue.

__Unit Plan__

For my unit plan I am doing a 10 day unit on poetry. We will cover 3 different poetry forms. Assessment will be 2-fold: a short test on poetry terms and a written poem adopting one of the three forms read and discussed in class.

Objectives include:
 * Students will study 3 types of poems and in so doing will explore poetic elements of figurative language, form, and imagery.
 * Students will create one of their own poems in one of the 3 forms studied: list, catalog, and ode.

__Content Advisor Insights__

Having Tracy as our content advisor has been a very enjoyable experience. This last time that we met she brought in several different types of tests and exams for us to practice modifying for a specific special needs student. This simple activity reinforced many of the things we’ve learned about accommodations and modifications in class and helped me to realize that rather simple changes can make a lesson more accessible for a student. I think one of the most valuable things that I have learned from Tracy is to not make things more difficult than they have to be. This applies to many issues, but especially making modifications and accommodations, late work policies, and lesson-planning in general. Get to the heart of the issue: how does this [x] issue affect and/or benefit the student? This is great advice for me personally because I tend to make a mountain out of a molehill.

__Scenarios__

One of the easiest scenarios for me to accommodate for would be the student with the broken arm. I would give this student extra time to complete any written work and try to have a laptop available for this student, as typing would obviously be easier than trying to write with the wrong hand.

One of the scenarios that would be most frustrating and difficult to accommodate for would be not having access to the computer lab or roaming laptops. For this I would try to supply hard copies of articles, etc. that would have originally read or found online. I suppose I could also rearrange the unit if possible. I could also substitute the lab day with a library day instead where they could research using hard copies.

__Grading Issues__

One thing I feel confident about is setting expectations - both for me and for my students. I'm going to try to be very specific in my prompts and rubrics.

I'm still not sure whether I'm going to use a points based system our not. I'm looking forward to student teaching to see how my cooridinating teacher handles this.