Ch. 7/Carlisle Response

When I am reading a good book, I rarely ever stop to make predictions. As one of the first comprehension strategies discussed in Ch. 7, I found this thought provoking. Should I take a step back in my readings and make predictions? I have often times loved books so much that I simply could not afford the time it took to lay a book down and think. For example, I loved the Harry Potter series so much that when I read the first two books on vacation, I begged my parents to buy me the third book so I could continue the story. However, I did find it somewhat interesting how before the last of those books came out last summer that I found myself wondering how it all would end. I discussed it with several people and discovered all people had ideas different than my own. With the second comprehension strategy, I found myself nodding and agreeing with what was written. I definitely can connect and respond more to texts that I myself can relate to. For example, it is difficult for me to get into war books and books about the wars of the past because they simply don't relate well to me. I have nothing to compare it to. As for visualizing, I can definitely say that I do create visuals in my mind. Sometimes though I am more concerned with the story and what is happening than the scene around it or what a character looks like. I don't consider myself to have a lot of visualization in books, but it is evident that I do SOME because I can see it when I watch a movie I have previously read the book of. I am almost always disappointed. I also think summarizing is critical to comprehension because in order to comprehend something and regurgitate it I need to internalize it first, before I can do anything else with it.
Concerning the Carlisle article about helping students in the classroom with LDs, I found to be most interesting, because I have not received much direction in teaching and accomodating students with LDs in the classroom while maintaining the regular pace of most of the classroom. I found myself wondering what these students will be like in middle school, high school, and after. I tried to think of people I knew in elementary school or middle and high school with learning disabilities in the classroom. I could not think of any. Obviously, I remembered students with severe disabilities who were in a special classroom, but none that I remembered sharing a classroom with. Perhaps it was because I was always in an honors, accelerated, or AP classroom, but this makes me wonder even more about how these students will grow up to function. It is clear that these students need to be recognized, and one of the most important things Carlisle points out is to catch learning disabilities early. It is no help to the student for them to continue to struggle and fail. Carlisle also talked about how important assessments are in monitoring progress of students. This will help the teacher to identify those students who are still not responding to monitored or modified changes in curriculum. It is these students we need to recommend for special testing. Most LD students spend a majority of their time in a regular classroom so it is important that we as teachers know how to handle these students and keep them on the road to success.

Entiende usted?

My own reading comprehension appears to be most frequently used by connecting to the background knowledge I already have. It is always easiest for me to read about the elementary situations when I can connect something that the students are doing to things that I have seen students do. Additionally, I love making the self connections, because as egocentric as this sounds, when the information is directly applicable to me and my life, it is easier to remember. One example is that when reading about students using predicting as a comprehension strategy, it was easy for me to relate to because I had a student who engaged in reading almost exclusively through making predictions. I, on the other hand, do not like making predictions because I like to simply find out what happens, which is indicative of my impatience while reading stories!
I also noticed that while reading I do a good job of visualizing. This became apparent to me when I finally went to see the first Harry Potter movie and was devastated because the film images of things like Hogwarts, Hermione, and Hogsmeade did not at all match the visuals I had created from the text. Additionally, I am always the person who likes the book version more than the movie, and I think much of that has to do with my visualization. My list of bad movies/great books is endless and includes The Nanny Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada, The Chronicles of Narnia, and certainly the Harry Potter series. I was actually enraged when the powers that be made Beowulf into a movie. Overall, visualizing has proven effective for me, and I think that as my imagination is more able to connect to the story, I am drawn in more and more.
My final and most successful reading comprehension strategy, is to identify big ideas/summarize. Because the two sort of go hand-in-hand, I frequently find myself doing both. In summarizing, I should cover the main ideas and often I will take a small note on what they are as I come across them, or check the text before or after I read, as a comprehension technique and reminder. Also, when reading text I use the subheadings and review questions at the end to identify the main ideas and to summarize the text I read. Note taking, review questions, and sub headings direct my reading, and help me to direct my reading. I think that these are techniques that I will want to teach my students, but I found myself wondering if these were taught or if I taught them to myself through reading. How can these strategies be taught? Especially, how should I teach the strategies that I do not find particularly useful? Will these be useful to other students? I am not sure on all of these questions, but I definitely can identify my reading comprehension strategies and know more than I can utilize such as questioning and monitoring.

Monitoring, and Visualizing, and Connecting, Oh My!

Reading comprehension is not a single action; rather, it is comprised of multiple behaviors that we use together while we read. Through today’s readings, I learned a lot more about the different behaviors that we as fluent readers frequently use. Before this, I did not realize how many strategies we rely on both consciously and unconsciously. However, while reading about the different processes, I actually found myself using some of them without even realizing it until their descriptions came up. I really noticed how much monitoring I do, because I tend to get distracted by other things and read paragraphs without comprehending them, so I often have to go back and re-read parts again when I realize I’m doing this. Because of this tendency that I have, I think that monitoring is probably one of my strongest and most-used strategies.

I also really connected (another strategy I realized I use a lot!) to the explanation of visualizing. Tompkins said that how well students use visualization becomes clear when they see movie versions of books they read: good visualizers are often disappointed with the film representation and the actors chosen, while students who don’t visualize tend to like the movie version better. Throughout my experiences, I’ve generally associated with the former – whenever I read a book before seeing the film version, I’m usually let down by the movie. I also don’t like seeing the movie before reading the book because then I don’t create my own visualizations and am always thinking about what I saw instead of what I’m reading.

Overall, these readings helped clarify the main strategies used by fluent readers and gave me a chance to metacognitively reflect on my own reading comprehension processes. As I looked through the overviews of each strategy, I realized just how ingrained these processes are in me after so many years in school. However, even though I use them without identifying them, I have to make sure that I monitor my processes so I can help my students learn to rely on them in the future. It’s easy to use them, but much harder to model them. I also really enjoyed this chapter because it showed me some great examples of how to help students develop these comprehension strategies as well. Overall, this week’s readings were very beneficial to me both as a learner and as a future teacher!

Let's Get DIGITAL! DIGITAL!

I loved this article and its quiz along with it. I am really interested in understanding the blockage of knowledge due to generation differences when applied to technology. I grew up in an enviornment where technology was available. Available, not welcomed or fostered. As my father's office was connected to our house, I can remember being in middle school and how I would run down to the office after dinner to wait 20 minutes for AOL to log me on to the internet so I could talk to my friends. I would spend hours down there checking email, surfing the web, and talking to my friends. All of this was available, and though it was there, I had to learn about computers on my own. As our readings have stated, much of what we know today about technology has largely to do with how our parents have dealt with emerging technology. My father only had a computer because his profession required it, and my mother was completely computer illiterate. Even now with instruction and ample time, my parents still do not recognize the computer as a major tool in today's world. Because of this, I would say that I am a digital native, though I did get two answers wrong, I got most of them correct.

Unfortunately, I am not as computer savvy as I would like. I know how to operate technology, but I get stuck on the trouble-shooting aspect of it. I too thought that "mod" was a form of fashion and I can see that I could stand some improvement in this area. There is the idea out there that kids are exposed to too much TV, video games, movies, computer games, etc. and I agree with that to some extent, but I also can see how they have developed young minds into today's technological leaders. Fore example, my older brother is very knowledgeable with new technology because in large part he was in a nurturing enviornment. His room was hooked up to the internet and mine was not. I believe this is why my brothers are more educated in this area than I am.

I as a teacher fully intend to incorporate and provide a nurturing enviornmnt for technology. I can see that computers are now becoming more readily available for the classroom and I fully believe that in the future, there will be one computer for every child in the classroom. If this does happen, I dream of having interactive lessons as a class on their computers. I think this will greatly help visual learners, as they are limited today due to seating arrangement, types of writing, other students in the classroom etc. I, as a highly visual learner, would like to see this happen for young visual learners.

My life as a Digital Immigrant

As I started to navigate the website, a box popped up asking me for a password, and I thought, is that a password for the website, or is that my user password for my computer. So instead, I used my impressive technology reasoning and clicked cancel. Then, I started to take the digital natives quiz and the first question was "modding" and I thought, "Oh my gosh, I actually know that one. It means wearing "Mod" fashion that Twiggy made popular. Good thing I just watched the ANTM Supermodelthon." Little did I know, I was showing my Digital Immigrant status. I continued to take the quiz, I got only two out of the six phrases correct! This is definitely in line with my course goal, which was to learn more about technology. Clearly I need to become more literate if my students know what all of those phrases mean. Also, each of the tools seemed like something that could be used to teach lessons, and be effective in the classroom. Furtermore, if my students are proficient at these things, and they are interactive and provide enough stimulation, as the article later discusses, I think it would be great to utilize these in my lessons!

Due to this poor showing, I definitely think that my literacy level for technology, or at least the technology this website says all kids now are comfortable with, is emergent, if that. I was unable to recognize many of the words, including the multiplayer game, the smart mobs, and I had heard the word wiki, but my guess was that it was short for “Wikipedia.” I had seen and used some of these phrases, and as Tompkins points out, I understood the communicative intent of these media, but could not use them myself. Additionally, I would definitely need a lot of teacher modeling, partner work, and scaffolding. Even in class when the IVAN program had completely laid out what we had to do, and Kate completely explained it, I still could not have completed the activity if I had not been in a group with others who were more proficient than I was. Another important point in Tompkins is that parents are responsible for a lot of the exposure children in the emergent literacy stage have, and in the case of technology, most often it is the other way around. For teachers, I think it is scary to us to incorporate technology because we don’t have the background knowledge and we would have to learn something new, that we had no experience with, from our students. There would be a complete role reversal, which could actually be fun and beneficial to students, but frightens most teachers!

Overall, I loved this site. It is true that the students we teache now are part of the digital generation. In TE301 we had a woman who was getting her PhD in technology integration come show us some of the things that kids as young as ten know how to do, which included create videos out of frozen video game images and add music and words. This type of technological understanding far surpasses anything that I have, and probably will achieve because I do not have someone to teach me. However, because I am still in the emergent stage, I am hoping that I am not a lost cause, and that somewhere along the way a student, teacher, or friend will be able to show me unique and fun ways that I can integrate technology into my curriculum. Especially because students have access to and experience with technology, and for them, this means of learning is more fun because they are used to fast paced, high-energy interactions! Also, the payoff for the attempts seems like something I want to figure out how to do in my classroom!

Digital Natives Quiz

I thought that this article was very interesting and brought up many valid points about the generational differences that lead to different understandings of technology. When I completed the quiz, I knew what 4 of the 6 terms meant, and so I consider myself to be somewhat of a first-generation digital native. While my parents are definitely digital immigrants and I know a lot more about technology than they do, I know there is a greater level of digital understanding among people younger than me. Overall, however, I feel that I am in a place where I’m comfortable enough with technology to try new things I am unfamiliar with because I have a sufficient foundational background.

Like this website’s information discusses, it is very true that students today have grown up in a different environment and are unlikely to be reached through the same methods that worked for previous generations in schools. Because technology is such a big part of their lives, it makes sense that it should be incorporated into their learning to connect their home and school experiences. I think that we (my fellow classmates and I, as well as younger teachers) are at an advantage for doing this because we have also grown up in this technological world and are more “digitally native” than many older teachers. Since we already have a familiarity with what is out there and how to make use of it, we consider technology to be more of a friend than a foe; at least I do personally. Because of this, we are better positioned to address students’ changing needs and therefore have a responsibility to do this.

In terms of my own digital literacy, I would say I am between the beginning and fluent stages, depending on the type of technology. However, I can see how digital immigrants would be in the emergent stage as defined by Tompkins. According to her, people in this stage gain an understanding of the communicative purposes of text and develop an interest in literacy. In the same way, those new to things like blogs and wikis learn about how they can be used to transmit information and communicate, and also begin to learn how to use these resources. In the same way that children go through the stages of development to become fluent readers and writers, digital immigrants must also progress through stages to become fluent with technology.