Class Reflection for Week 10

Last night's class was very, very interesting and informative and I found myself writing quite a bit of notes on things that I thought I needed to remember as a teacher.
The most important piece of information that I took away from class is, Give the students a purpose for what they are reading! I think many times students are told to read silently and most times there is no purpose behind this instruction. I think people by nature want to work towards goals and rewards and this fact can be used by teachers to activate his/her students' intrinsic motivation.

Adib and Lillian presented about the readings and I was really glad they presented and reviewed the reading because there was so much information in the 3 assigned books of reading. They both did a very nice job which leads me to believe they will be wonderful teachers! I found myself acting as a sponge to soak up, not only what the presenters were saying but also what my fellow classmates were saying.

We had a lengthy discussion about reading aloud and its disadvantages and advantages. I couldn't help but think of the students that I observe and how much reading aloud they do. I personally sit there and help them sound out words, but are they really "reading" or are they "speaking" the words out loud. I think it is a mixture of both now that I think about it and I think there could be a way to change that. One idea I had was read a page of the story and ask the student to guess what he/she thinks will happen. Also, to re-read portions of the story could be a good reading strategy to teach the students. As I sit there with the students while they are reading, I am going to make more of a conscious effort to engage their background knowledge and attempt to get some sort of hypothesis from the student to make reading have more of a purpose.

We analyzed text books and I was so glad we did that! I did not realize that a text book could be lacking so much as far as activating motivation and the use of reading strategies. I will no longer take a textbook for what it is and as a teacher I hope to investigate my future textbooks with a critical eye. I think that goes along with teacher development that we read about in H.D.B. a few weeks ago. It seems some teachers can simply teach what they are suppose to and other teachers (the better ones) can take an active role to ensure they are teaching material that is appropriate for their classroom. That is one of the advantages teachers have because it seems the profession encourages growth and questioning.

We then analyzed a video in which a teacher was leading a post-reading activity of "Esperanza Rising". I know it is easy to sit in a nice comfortable classroom and pick apart what she did wrong. I think the teacher had the right idea but it was not well prepared or executed. It seems that some people thought the book of Esperanza Rising would not be appropriate but I think it was a wise choice. It just seems the motivation was not present in students. The teacher could pick a book from each culture represented in the classroom and therefore activate motivation. Another idea is the students could pick from a list of books and read them. They could then be put into groups to discuss the books.

Overall, I was very excited to learn more about teaching reading because it seems the skill of reading is a good foundation to grasping a second language.