I-Search Proposal

Topic: Boys and Literacy

Questions: When does the trend in boys becoming turned less interested in reading begin? What are some of the reasons why boys become less interested? How can we as teachers help correct this issue?

General Resources: I have found several professional journal articles on my topic

People to Interview:  I plan on interviewing a special education teacher with Portsmouth Public Schools that I have known for while through my mother. She is certified as a reading specialist. I am interviewing her to gain a perspective based on her own experiences with when does the trend begin? What are some of the reasons why boys become less interested? How can we as teachers help correct this issue?

Titles of Articles planned to be used:

Boys and Literacy: Exploring the Issues

Why Boys Fail: Unlearned Literacy

The Problem of Boys’ Literacy Underachievement: Raising Some Questions

How to Maintain School Reading Success: Five Recommendations from a Struggling Male Reader

Notes

I became interested in the topic while reading through our textbook and I was surprised that it was an epidemic. I’m interested to see when this trend starts, why it’s a problem and what can be done to correct this issue. I want model for my students that reading is important and anyone can enjoy reading. I was surprised to find out that boys are becoming less engaged in reading, when I was in school I enjoyed reading and still do today.

Learning Blog 4

I really enjoyed Chapter 5 of our book, Reading to Learn in the Content Areas, about the Reflection Phase of the PAR Lesson Framework. The Reflection Phase “helps clarify thinking and focus on understanding. In this phase, students learn better how to retain information. Full understanding cannot be achieved until the students reflect in a meaningful way about their learning” (pg.109). At this stage, as teachers we can offer our students support in terms of the material but their role at this stage is the most critical for their success. It's where students get to connect what they read to what they already know and with the world around them.  They get to fill in any gaps and clarify what they have learned by asking questions. This is something that takes time for the students’ and may take the students’ reading the text several times to fully reflect on it.

As classroom teachers, teaching our students to be avid critical thinkers is very important for them to able to reflect on what they read and applying it to their daily lives or the world around them. It can be very tough because of SOL’s and other time constraints to consistently teach critical thinking skills because they require a lot of knowledge, effort on both the part of the student as well as the teacher, and a willingness of the student to re-evaluate any of their misconceptions about any part of the material . But if we are not constantly challenging our students and make them think critically in all content areas then they will lose the ability to derive more meaningful learning from what they are reading no matter what content area.

This chapter does a great job of presenting many different reflection strategies that I can use in my future classroom and shows how they can be used to improve communication, critical thinking, and critical literacy skills. The challenge for teachers is modeling these skills for their students in a way that keeps their students engaged and excited to learn. It will take some time and practice for the students to perfect these skills to where they reach a point where these skills become second nature to them.

As a future elementary school teacher I really liked Cooperative Learning Strategy. It can be a great strategy for students in elementary school that while they are learning they are also building and learning necessary social skills they will need as they move on through school. This strategy requires teachers to first model exactly what they expect from each student in the group and how groups are supposed to function. When I was in elementary school my teachers had us do “group work” but in every group one of us was either not interested in the material or was not doing are fair share. It is easy for cooperative learning to turn into “group work” if not modeled correctly by the teacher.

Another strategy I liked was Think-Pair-Share that I will definitely use in my future classroom.  It gives the students who are shy and feel uncomfortable giving answer to a question in front of the whole class a way to think through their answer independently then collaborate with only one other person. This helps them feel more confident to then share what they learned with the whole class.

Other concepts I liked were Three-Step Interviews, Paired Reading, Reflection Guides,  Brainstorming, Making Connections and About/Point.


The main question I have is about teaching critical thinking skills.  How do you go about it?

Learning Blog 3

I definitely enjoyed Chapter 4 of our book, Reading to Learn in the Content Areas, about the Assistance Phase of the PAR Lesson Framework. It made me see that having learned how to activate our students' prior knowledge to prepare them to learn during any lesson in our classroom and add more complex “files” to their schema, we must guide them reading in the beginning and assisting them as they move on.  Reading may look easy on the surface to a proficient reader, even second nature to them, but to a struggling reader it can seem complex and quickly frustrates them. As mentioned in the text that proficient readers “sample text, predict, confirm hypotheses, and self-correct quickly” (p. 81). We proficient readers do this with such ease that it seems second nature for us, but our students are not yet that point, so we as teachers need to make sure that we model many different effective reading strategies so they can from their mistakes and become better readers.  It is our job as teachers to give them the tools they need to succeed in reading and in any other subject or area of school for them to be successful overall.

One of the main theories the book talks about constructivism, I have heard about it in other education classes but am still not quite understanding it. It seems to me constructivism entails having students derive their own meaning from the text and therefore there are not any wrong interpretations of the students read and got out of the text. A teacher is merely a guide and not the giver of knowledge.  I liked how its seven goals were stated but did not feel that enough light was shed on them in terms of how you go about clearly implementing the goals. They are give students knowledge of the learning process, provide students with experience appreciating multiple perspectives, make learning realistic and relevant encourage ownership and voice in the learning process, provide a social context for learning, encourage use of multiple modes of representation, and encourage learners' self-awareness

All the different strategies in the chapter were ways to make students understand their learning process, acknowledge many different perspectives, and give them the tools for learning.  Our job as teachers is to assist students in reading and make them successful, but we may not always be there to make sure they notice important details in the text or look up new vocabulary that they are unsure of as they read.

Even though this chapter was at times challenging for me, I still was exposed to many different strategies that I would definitely use in my classroom and include in my PAR lesson plan assignment. My favorite strategy in this chapter was Question Answer Relationship or QAR because it’s a very straight-forward strategy that is easily implemented and beneficial to all students at any grade level.  I feel like the QAR strategy is very helpful for the students as they become their own thinkers and it allows them to be in control of what they learn and able to justify their reasoning in anything that they learn.

Lesson Plan

Topic: The Solar System

Grade: 4th

Detailed Objectives

4.7 The student will investigate and understand the organization of the solar system. Key concepts include:

a)   the planets in the solar system; 

b)   The order of the planets in the solar system; and 

c)   The relative sizes of the planets.

Objective: Demonstrate an understanding of the names of the planets, their relative size, and their order in the Solar System.

Reading:

Written Purpose: The purpose of this exercise is for students to observe the organization of the solar system and be familiar with the names of the planets to understand their order relative size and characteristics of each.

Strategies/Activities:

Pre-Concept Check

K-W-L Chart

Anticipation Guide

Preparation:

Pre-Concept Check

K-W-L Chart

Assistance:

 K-W-L Chart
Student Generated Questions

Reflection:
K-W-L Chart
Group-and Label Technique

Evaluation: 
Make a model of the the planets in the correct order
Make of one of the planets
A report on a particular planet