Anxiety of testing

As a sophomore in college I understand the anxiety and frustration that happens when it comes to testing. As a nation there is too much pressure put onto students to pass tests. For example in “What the data doesn’t show”, by Susan Lazear, she talks about a girl named Autumn who wants to become a nurse but is struggling with passing the exams she has to take to receive her diploma. She takes the test over and over again but is still unable to pass, one time she was one point, ONE point away from passing her exam. In the process of studying and testing Autumn had to be put on medication for anxiety.

I had a similar issue in High School around the time of the ACT. I get good grades and I know and understand the material that I am taught but, when it comes to testing I just suck. My junior year of high school was insane. I felt so much pressure to do my best and get the best score I could but for me it was a constant struggle of being able to show what I actually know. I had ACT prep classes and books to help me prepare for the ACT but it still didn’t help when it went to take the exam. I was eventually put on medication also for anxiety. I ended up taking the ACT eight times. Even my last score wasn’t where I wanted it to be but I saw no hope in it rising anymore.

I think that it is disgusting how much pressure we put on students with standardized testing. The fact that these exams put so much pressure on students makes me so sad. All the tiny breakdowns and panic attacks just for a test isn’t worth it.

To me I feel like standardized testing also takes the fun out of teaching. Teachers can’t do what they want with topics they bring into their classroom because they have to focus on making sure students are ready for exams. I really hope that this importance of standardized testing is just a trend that will pass and eventually all of us as a nation see the negative effect it is having on young students.

Chapter 5

Reading is seeing

In the fifth chapter of You Gotta BE the Book, Wilhelm focuses on using visual aids to help encourage and engage his students while reading. Throughout the chapter Wilhelm stresses the importance of using visualization to help experience the book as a whole and to see the book coming alive inside of their heads.

It was stated that, “It has been demonstrated that visual imaging encourages students to access and apply their prior knowledge as they read, increases comprehension, and improves the ability to predict, infer, and remember what has been read”, after reading this it is clear that to help students comprehend and understand the readings visualization needs to be integrated into learning.

Also in this chapter Wilhelm urges the use of art education to help the visualization of reading. I think that Wilhelm’s idea to let the students read comic books and graphic novels is a great way to make students who are not interested in the novels still engaged with reading. He had a couple great examples such as illustrating books, picture mapping, and making collages, to help intertwine both visualization and art into reading. As a future teacher I think that these techniques and projects that students can easily do is a great way to help show students are understanding and comprehending the reading. I found this Prezi presentation on how visual aids help readers comprehend what they are reading and thought it was very informational about students with learning disabilities.

I think that using visual aids in the classroom has a huge impact on students and also helps urge students to read more. There are a lot of useful activities out there to help represent visualization which I think is helpful to teacher and lets them try new ways of getting students to understand readings better.

“You Gotta BE the Book”

Part 2

After reading chapter 3 of You Gotta BE the Book by Jeffery Wilhelm, one of the sections that I found interesting was entering the story world and relating to characters. I really enjoyed this part of the section because I could relate to it. Whenever I read I put myself into the story. Most of the time as the main character and then while I read and they are explaining different situations the characters are in I can see it in my head as real people. Or there are even times where I’ll be reading a book and I get so emotionally attached to characters and plot lines that there are times where I break down and cry. I think that most kids now that are forced to read in school tend to not pick up books outside of class and that’s very upsetting. To me reading books and getting so connected with them lets me escape reality for a while and I get to go into a whole new world. And I hate that kids today don’t experience that enough.

I like how Jeffery Wilhelm shares stories about his own students that relate to the topics he brings up. His students share how the stories they read affect them while reading. I think it is important for young readers to have such a connection with a book that while reading it they feel like it is actually coming to life around them.

In chapter 4 we are introduced to drama in the classroom. I personally believe that using drama in the classroom is immensely helpful for students and it gives them a visual representation of what is happening in the book while they read it. And going back to entering into the story world and relating to characters I think that drama is helpful in that sense too. It really makes students feel like they are a part of the book or even the characters themselves.

“You Gotta BE the Book”

Part 1

While reading this section of Jeffery Wilhelm’s book “You Gotta BE the Book” I found myself totally engaged the whole time, not drifting away in thought. It is a really quick and easy read but also very informative.

In high school I wasn’t an active reader, although that has changed a lot since then, the points he has made were very eye opening to me and I could easily relate to some of the situations. In the first chapter he states, “once students have learned how to read, and move through middle and secondary school, reading is still regarded as a passive act of receiving someone else’s meanings”. This statement really stuck out to me because, today in most classrooms students have to read a book and then explain what it is about but, there is no room for interpretation. I think by having students read and then give their meaning of the theme of the book and shutting them down by saying no pushes students towards not reading.

I think that the “new criticism” that teachers use in their classes doesn’t work toward influencing students to read more. I think that it does take away the fun of reading.

Another point that stuck out to me was what makes valid reading. While reading stories I could think one thing means something and the person next to me could think that same thing means something completely different. And for books with authors who has passed away we may never know the actual meaning behind symbols and text. So why do we tell students that their interpretations are wrong? As long as we all agree on the outcome and theme of the book I don’t believe teachers should be able to tell students that their ways of thinking about it are wrong.

A different point that was brought up in this section of the reading was about grading reading. I think that students who read for fun and then come to school and have to be quizzed on the reading tend to stray away from reading for fun. First we are forcing the students to read books in class that they might not even be interested in and then we go and we grade them on their understanding and the content that they have read. This goes along with what I was saying before, students all have different interpretations of what things mean so why is that our job to tell students that their ideas and thoughts are wrong?

I thought this chapter was very informational. He gave some very good ways of grading reading and what makes reading valid without shutting down the students. I really like this book so far and I’m excited to read the rest of it.

The teaching of grammar

 

In class we were assigned two reading assignments on was a blog post called “Does Bad ‘Grammar’ Instruction Make Writing Worse?” by Patricia Dunn and then the article “Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing” written by Constance Weaver. In both thee blog post and the article the authors talk about what they feel about teaching grammar, and the do’s and don’ts of teaching grammar.

In Patricia Dunn’s post she focuses on how we should encourage students to be engaged and willing to write. To her grammar worksheets and drills that most teacher do now interfere with the willingness of students to write and care about their writing. Her blog was basically saying that grammar drills is a big not to do because it is doing the opposite of what teachers want and it’s causing students to hate writing and grammar.

I thought all the research that has been done relating to this topic is very interesting and educational. Constance Weaver gave so many helpful examples of what not to do in his article. It made me realize what ideas help the students and which ones do not help them. One of them that he said was to let students make mistakes. If we as teachers let students make mistakes but then help them to see the mistake it will make the students less nervous to branch out and try new writing techniques that they might not have thought about trying before. I agree with him when he starts talking about how worksheets that students have to do every day do not work. I remember doing them in High School and I still make some mistakes that the sheets were trying to fix. It just never clicked from a worksheet. But then making the mistake in my own writing and finding a way to fix it myself worked so much more.

I really liked reading things from other teachers who have seen it first-hand about what does and what doesn’t work. I also think that peer review is a good idea. Having another student show them something that doesn’t look write or a mistake that they made might be better than the teacher herself.
 

 

Clearing the Way

Before reading this book by Tom Romano the only grading of papers I had experience with was from high school and very little from pervious college classes. I never agreed with the way that my papers were graded because it never seemed far that they were grading my on my thoughts and opinions and telling me that those were wrong. So going into English education I was scared that I would have students who felt the same way when I grade their papers in the future.

After reading clearing the way all those worries seemed to just disappear. Romano has very good ideas and thoughts about what and how to grade students work that I found very helpful. I think he hit a bullseye when he said that students first look at the grade they received and then the comments, but I really like how he focuses his attention more on the story the students write and not the grammatical side of it. While grading the story he looks more for the creative part of it like the use of wording and vivid imagery. I think this is a very fair way to grade the papers. I think that if students are repeating words and not trying to expand their vocabulary while writing that is something we can mark down for. It shows the student that they are writing well and they have a good story but just try to broaden their words up.

To him the only thing that matters more than the grade is the quality of the writing. He gives his students their own voice which has seemed to have a positive effect on his students and he strives for his students to write the best that they can.

This book was very useful because I feel like I share some of the same views on this topic as does Romano. There was a lot of very helpful tips and tricks to help teacher’s grade papers and I think that I will be using most of them in the future. This was definitely a helpful book to read in class and I will for sure be keeping this book with me throughout my teaching career.

 Here is an article that I found about tips for grading and giving feedback that I thought was helpful.

READING, WRITING, and RISING UP PT. 2

At the end of last class we had the opportunity to try one of the assignments from the book call I am from poems. And then at the beginning of next class we got to go around and share them. I really enjoyed this assignment because it brought back my childhood and all the adventures and crazy things I did at my lake when I was younger. I also thought it was nice to hear everyone else’s stories about their childhoods and where they came from.

 

In the second half of this book it focuses more on the importance of language and the student voice. Diversity is a major topic in the section as well. I think that it is important as teacher to understand the effects of having a diverse classroom. In my opinion having diversity in a school is a great thing to have. By having students or different races and background brings difference aspects and conversation to a classroom, especially in English classrooms. After reading stories from classmates about their background and seeing how different it is from their own can really open students eyes and perspective.

I also think it adds to conversation. After reading books and short stories or even poems about different cultures students compare it to their own and learn things that they might not have known about. You can learn everything in textbooks, so by having different cultures and races in the classroom helps with the understanding of cultural diversity. In this short article it talks about how teaching different cultures in the classroom is important.

Another assignment that stuck out to me in the second half of the book was the remember me poems. I think that this really shows the students own voice and how they think about themselves or even in some of the sample essays how other students think about them. I think this project could be fun for seniors in their last few weeks of school to write about thinks that have happened to them during their four years of high school. i think that they would really like this assignment and I think it could be interesting to hear what the student would want their peers to remember about them as they will soon be separated by college.

This was definitely a good read for future teachers. It gave me a whole bunch of ideas that I wouldn’t have thought about on my own and also a lot of ideas that I would like to try out in my first few years of teaching.