Notes from A's Class

Midterm review
Talking through each item from midterm in brief
Interaction with Text will be on final
Remove graphophonic cues if a student is too dependent on them. The R are in the WS. The Rays are in the World Series.
Discussion questions: for basic sight words, needed to identify how to teach them, not just how to reinforce them.
Teaching phonograms. Why? Learn one, get 10-12 words. Circumvents teaching the vowel rules. It's fun.

If you're in the 40s, and have good scores for everything else, you are on track for an A.

Final is the same format, without the phonics section. By now, your mind should be comfortable with the teaching and with the test, so the final will seem easy.

New content
Comprehension (major topic, next three weeks)
What? Understanding what you read (internalizing, communicating with the author)

Every teacher would say that they teach comprehension. Most do not. They check comprehension. Checking comprehension doesn't help them comprehend.

Road blocks to comprehension: lack of vocabulary; lack of schema (timeline around the top of your room. Major markers, like the year of their birth, Pearl Harbor, 9/11; works of art; works of literature; lack of fluency; lack of interest; distractions; not interacting with the text; pronoun referent.

"Global Warfare" passage

Shouldn't we be teaching them what these road blocks are? Don't you think that a third grader or a fourth grader could understand that? We need to get more honest with the kids. If they know what the enemies are, they will avoid them.

Thinking
Very important to every part of our lives. Why don't we teach it? How many classes have you had in thinking? How many bulletin boards have you seen about thinking? All we got is "put on your thinking caps". When some teachers invites questions, it's after the fact, and they ask you to ask questions if you don't understand, meaning that you have to declare to the class that you don't understand.
Teaching without requiring the students to think prepares them only to answer low level questions, information recall. Ask questions before and during reading, model asking questions, give them wait time - allow them to think. Don't use questioning as interrogation.

Self-questioning (this will be on the final)
Teach the kids to ask the questions themselves. Picture a mother preparing her son to leave for school - do you have your lunch money, do you have your homework, etc. The son is thinking, "let me get out of here". Instead teach the kid to ask his own questions.
Three floors in a building: to get from first floor to the third floor, we need scaffolding. If you're teaching on the 2nd floor and your students are looking at you with blank faces, go back down to the first floor. Back to the example: first floor, the mother is asking the questions. Second floor, mother and son share the asking. Third floor, son asks.
In reading, first floor teach self-questioning out of the context of reading. (20 questions, with the teacher thinking of something; 20 questions with one student asking the questions of the students; celebrity game, but with animals or foods).
Second floor, involve reading. In "stump the teacher", the students think of the questions to ask the teacher. The teacher reads a text passage, then turns it over. The students ask questions of the teacher. If students can't think of questions, go back to the first floor because they are not thinking. Once the students have asked all of the questions they can think of, the teacher asks questions of the students. The teachers should ask higher level questions. Write them down ahead of time. "What word was used that meant 'not wise'?" "How much would 2 acres be worth?" You are modeling for them questions that they can ask next time. They will want to play because of the reversal of roles, but they are modeling just the kind of self-questioning you want them to be doing.
Third floor, "stump the teacher" after both teacher and students read it. When you go to the 3rd floor depends on the students.

Review examples of the Literacy Notebook, one over the top and one reasonable.
Must have table of contents.
Must be organized.
You can work together. Yours and your friend's could be identical.
It should reflect what we've been learning.
It can include things from other classes.