Chapter 1 Chapter one is about how reading and writing needs to be promoted and developed in all the content

areas. This reminds me of something that we learned in a previous class that we are all English teachers regardless of the subject that we teach. This chapter talks about how we still have to promote and develop reading and writing as our students enter middle and secondary school not because it inherently changes but the concepts do become harder. As an English teacher I realize that I have to continue to promote and develop reading and writing, but I have to be honest in that I didnt really see how the other subjects would do that. The part of the chapter that changed my viewpoint on that was the part on the compelling reasons that support content area literacy instruction. This part of the chapter talked about how the literacy requirements continually increase through developmental and technical/informational changes. It also showed how multiple content areas need literacy and gave examples. The part that spoke to me the most and gave me an understanding for why I didnt realize all the content areas needed literacy is that each content area is the most adept at give their students the support they need at that time that they are engaged in the material. So math teachers are going to be the best at promoting literacy in math through word problems while in math class. Whereas I would have a hard time teaching math literacy in my English class because Im not an expert in math and the students are not keyed into to learn math in my English class. Chapter 2 What I gathered from this chapter is that there are many practices and strategies that teachers can use to promote literacy in the classroom. As an English teacher it is part of my content area to promote literacy but the practice that I was drawn to the most was that we should provide access to reading and writing that students can and want to accomplish. I understand that it is important for us to meet the state standards each year but sometimes that doesnt include reading that students necessarily want to read or feel connected to. One of the suggestions that the book provides is for students to be able to read something of their own choice or after they have finished their work. I think that this is a great opportunity to promote reading in the classroom and it is also something that they can take out of the classroom and further on into their lives. Another suggestion that they have in book to promote writing is to have students do journal writing. I am a huge advocate of journal writing and this is something that I will have in my classroom. It not only promotes writing for students but it also gives them a creative outlet. When teachers look over the journal they can also see how their students writing is progressing in a non stressful, informal way and it gives them information on what needs to be revisited and retaught much like is covered in the spiraling section. Chapter 3

Being in the subject area of English its hard to get away from literacy since the goal of an English class is to promote reading and writing. This chapter is very important

not just for English classes but also for all subjects. Working on focusing on thematic or instructional units help not only the teacher but the students stay organized in their thought processes and helps them to draw better conclusions. The part of this chapter that I enjoyed the most and something that I always try to implement into my lesson and unit plans is to provide central questions. Central questions not only give students a goal to work towards but as the book states, Central questions position students as problem solvers in authentic situations. (41) Central questions give them a real problem to solve as they work through the information provided. For instance, I did a lesson plan on the Olympic games. The Central question was Do you think the Olympics is a time of world peace? The students came to their own conclusions at the end of lesson after comparing and contrasting how people around the world construe peace, what their own ideas of peace are, and looking into the history of the Olympic games and the present day Olympic games. That central question allowed them to form their own individual conclusions while still fostering their reading and writing through informational texts and short essays. Chapter 4 As an English teacher I sometimes forget that there are multiple ways for students to show what they have learned. Most of the time English teacher will turn to written work but the text shows us that there are so many other exhibits that students can display their work through. The ones that the text gives us are: Visual displays (Illustrations, timelines and murals, storyboards, maps, collages, tables, graphs, and charts), Concrete displays (Representations and realia), Dramatizations (Skits, pantomimes, role play interviews, and readers theatre), Writing (Response journals and reaction guides), and Discussion. I feel like the list is endless and has so many varieties and I want to use every one of them. All of these different examples of exhibits would make the classroom more engaging and would also give all the different learners that we have a chance to show off the skills that they inhabit. They all learn differently so it stands to state that they process the information differently and will probably need to display that thought process differently. Chapter 5 This chapter deals with promoting and supporting comprehension in the content areas. The book gives many strategies for scaffolding and additional support. There are two of the strategies that support comprehension that I think would work best for my teaching style and myself. The first is graphic organizing which gives many ways to organize information. There are compare and contrast, sequencing, topic/subtopic relationships, and causal relationships. They give students a way to make a visual relationship of the information that they are taking in and the variations are many for the many different texts that students will examine. I use these often in my internship to help students understand difficult or convoluted texts but I make sure to use a variety of them in order to keep the learning process fresh and I see myself continuing to use them in the future.

Another strategy that I use quite often is discussion-based instruction. When students are exploring a texts it becomes open to many interpretations and its important for students to explore those interpretations amongst themselves in order understand different viewpoints. When students have an open dialogue it allows them to work through their own thought processes and to see how their classmates came to different conclusions. Chapter 6 Vocabulary is so important not just in the classroom but also in life. Without vocabulary we wouldnt be able to explain the thoughts that we have in our heads. Vocabulary is especially important during secondary school as students start examining more and more difficult texts as they prepare for college. Through learning new vocabulary they are expanding their writing, reading, and speaking skills. One of the strategies that I would use in my teaching practice are to let the students choose the vocabulary. This not only helps to increase their autonomy but gets them more involved in their own learning. This process has them choose words that they feel are important to the context and that are relatively unknown. The book states that students involved in the vocabulary self selection process tend to choose consistently challenging words which exactly how we want students to push themselves and become more self-motivated in their learning. Chapter 7 I am a big fan of journal writing in the classroom and I would want to combine the content journal with the quick write. The content journal is a journal that students keep for themselves that can either be a free write or something more structured. I wouldnt want grade it but just check that they are completing the assignment because its something that should further their understanding of the subject. Then every once in a while I would want to do a quick write where students keep their pencil to the paper and write all they know about a specific subject. This can be a great tool for review where students write everything they learned from a previous lesson. The quick write is also a great way to provide scaffolding by accessing prior knowledge. Chapter 8 Since the influx of standardized test it has become extremely important to teach students test taking strategies. This is especially true as we see more students with testing anxiety. Preparing students for taking tests can lessen that anxiety by teaching them to do the easy questions first so that there is more time to work on the harder questions. Or by teaching them that for essay questions write a little outline before you start with the key terms youre going to need to include. This can be achieved through direct explicit instruction where the teacher shows the students how to incorporate the study technique but the teacher fades out and eventually lets the students figure out how to do the technique on their own. But its important to not fade out to quickly or students will get lost. This is something that should be done over an extended period of time.

Chapter 9 I think that digital literacies will work well in my classroom. A lot of the literature that we go over in English is fiction and through that written fiction we are able to make visual representations. While those representations are not always an exact model of the written word it is close enough that students will still get the full picture of what the author was saying. That also opens up the classroom for discussion on what the differences and similarities are and gives an opportunity for students to make their own visual representations weather that be through photos, film, or audio recordings. Something important to remind students on when using digital literacies is to avoid plagiarism. Students are used to citing written sources such as books, magazines, and newspapers but they need to be shown how to properly cite videos, web pages, and pictures much like we had to for our Webquests. Chapter 10 This technique is important to implement into the classroom in order to reach all the students at their varying levels and different ways of learning. The section that I liked the most was providing structured freedom and specifically the same materials/different tasks and different materials/different tasks. With same materials/different tasks the students are given the same topic but they complete different projects. This can give secondary students the autonomy that they want while having all the students meeting the same assessment goals. With different materials/different tasks all the students could be working on something different. This gives them a great deal of freedom in deciding their own learning and is probably not recommended without a lot past scaffolding to support them in making these choices. But with this they can choose the learning and the assessing that works best for their own personal learning style. Chapter 11 To me proficient means that they have the opportunity and the ability to read and write. By opportunity I mean do the students have access to reading materials such as in the classroom, library and at home. If they dont have access to reading materials then how are you going to know if they can read? Then ability is if they have those materials can they read and comprehend them for understanding. If students have opportunity and ability then I would say that they are proficient but if they are lacking in one of those then there is cause for concern that they are not going to be proficient. The lack of opportunity is something that is seen in a lower socioeconomic community where there are other priorities and the lack of abilty can be seen in ELLs where they are still learning the language. Chapter 12 I dont agree with high stakes testing. I understand where they are coming from and it is important to make sure that our students are on track for learning and that teachers are doing their jobs. But I dont think that it should be determined if a school stays open or

not or weather a teacher gets to keep their job based on these results. There are too many variables that determine how people take test and weather they are good at them or not. Since these test are so high stakes teachers feel like they have to teach to the testing order to keep their classrooms open and that pulls away from the much more meaningful learning that students could be doing and the much more interesting topics that they can cover. But there is always the option for the teacher to make their lesson plans enriching while still teaching to the test but how much should we be pushing our teachers.