Re: Disciplinary Text

Synthesis:

Chapter 10 Hinchman Thomas

This chapter focused on reading and writing across multiple text.  In our modern world it is important for students to explore reading different text from multiple view points.  Students can acquire knowledge through newspapers, tv, websites, billboards, books, and magazines.   Students need to be taught how to decipher through the plethora of information they receive and decide if it is reliable.  Another important strategy is to teach students to read across varies text genres and write about the similar topic, yet in different modes.  

One of the strategies mentioned  was a process including: sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration.  This is a process historians use to comb through information.  With this method, students learn to find information, think about what the information is saying, and find similarities and differences.  

There can be issues when using multiple text.  Text complexity can become an issue.  Teachers also struggle with deciding how many text to use.  Lastly, decide what instruction is appropriate based on the content area being taught.  

Students are reading multiple text everywhere.  They know how to do this instinctively,  but as teaches we must instruct them how to do this properly.  They need to understand how to read with a critical eye.  Students must also understand how different text types go together.  With teachers help, students can learn strategies that will help equip them with a successful future.    

Chapter 12 Hinchman-Thomas

This chapter was about reading challenging text in high school.  The beginning of the chapter focused on how students have trouble reading, with interesting, complex text that is picked for them.  Yet outside school, they are reading higher level text for enjoyment.  This is important for teachers to remember.  Students will not always get the choice though.  The chapter then goes on to explain the 6 types of skills needed to make sense of text.

1. Semantic knowledge-  Semantics is making sense of the words.  First and for most students have to have an understand of     

            what they are reading.

2.  Mathematical Knowledge- Math has it’s own special language.  Understanding and mastering those specific terms will help 

             with comprehension.    

3.  Historical knowledge- Having knowledge of past events, data, people, and social and political issues and conflict.

4.  Geographic Knowledge- Know about countries: location and facts.

5.  Discursive Knowledge-Knowledge that the construction of texts is tied to the domain in which they are written and to the 

             purposes doe which they were originally written.  

6.  Pragmatic Knowledge- Recognition that text can be questioned.  

Motivating students comes from using interesting text.  One reason students may find disinterest in text is because of the tone the book is written.  Taking this in to account and implement different text forms can help.  Another way to build engagement, is develop semester units over topics they find amusing.  Take into account the beliefs students come to school having.  This can make a difference in how they interpret readings.  The chapter then goes on to explain 6 teaching practices that engage students in reading content specific readings: (1) problem framing, (2)whole group knowledge, (3) scaffolding, (4) questioning, (5) visualizing text, and (6)summarizing and synthesizing ideas within and across text.  

It is important for teachers to take into account the above ideas.  There are ideas that can used across curriculum to help motivate and keep students engage in higher level text.  Students who develop the skills and excitement to read higher level text will be more successful through their schooling. 

Chapter 5 Jetton-Shanahan

This chapter discuss the 3 approaches to literacy instructions. A functional Literacy approach teaches students to be successful in school and life.  Cultural Literacy focuses on teaching morals and values.  A progressive literacy approach teaches students to read and write based on themes and topics that interest them.  The author argues on to suggest that these approaches need to be questioned.  If literacy is only approached these ways, literacy becomes dull.  More strategies and instructional practices must be incorporated to allow students to use higher-level thinking skills.  The current ideas on literacy suggest it should be a layered approach.  The researcher, Kucer, explains 4 dimensions of literacy: cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural, and developmental.  A challenge that come with teaching reading in literature comes from text selection.  Another challenge comes from teaching writing.  Do teachers stick with teaching to the test or engage students in a rich multimodal world?  Last challenge mentioned is teaching to a class of digital consumers.  With all these challenges and more, teachers are bombarded with a multitude of advice and research to syphon through and decide what works best for their students and them.  

Response:

After reading these chapters, I felt I had a realization of how hard teaching high school must be.  Since I am early childhood teacher and we have our own set of challenges, I never gave much thought to higher level grades.  With our ever changing digital world, teachers are having to decide how to interact with this generation.  At times having to learn a whole new skill set to teach them.  The chapters from Best Practices in Adolescent Literacy Instruction, focused on reading across multi texts.  This chapter was insightful.  I thought it suggested a lot of good ideas and backed it up with research.  I also like how it touched on different content areas and how to teach within those.  I thought ch. 12 had some helpful suggestions on teaching difficult text.  The different types of knowledge would be helpful when teaching high school students.  Those categories seemed to be things that wouldn’t be talked about unless you made an effort to include them in your teaching.  But without them, text would be dense or meaningless.  The last ch., chapter 5, had really good examples on how to include the ideology suggested.  It made the approaches realistic.  

Question: 

1. If a high school teacher chose not to use the canonical text, what are some good adult literature books they could replace the classics with?