Chapter 11

We all remember the five paragraph essay that was stressed to us as high school students. However, I can honestly say that when I write a paper I do not use that format. In fact, I have never been good at writing five paragraph essays. When told to formulate a thesis statement, I always had problems. I also had trouble when it came to brainstorming activities. I know that brainstorming is a strategy that needs to be taught, but how do you teach brainstorming? Oh, yes, you can model brainstorming, but is that really teaching it to the students. I agree with Conley when he said that the school curriculum needs to be redone to include the kinds of writing that are needed in college and in workplaces. (310)

I certainly agree with him. Looking back on my writing experiences in high school, I do not recall writing memos or using charts or tables. One important writing topic that I believe Conley left out was resumes. We are all getting ready to graduate. We all have to have a resume when we go interview, but I do not remember anywhere in our course work that has helped us with composing a resume.

Writing is an important communication tool in our society. Students need to set their purpose for writing, their audience, and their position. I also agree with Conley that writing should have authentic purposes. Writing for no important reason makes writing become monotonous and boring. However, students need to see the importance and relevance behind their writing assignment. I remember doing a research paper on the Tea Pot Dome Scandal. You are probably wondering what that is? I was too. It was just a topic assigned to me by the teacher. I believe that students should be given the opportunity to select their own topics when writing. This makes writing more enjoyable for the students because they may acutally be interested in the subject matter which inturn makes writing much better.

SMART BOARD vs. PROMETHEAN BOARD

I have had experience with the Promethean Board last semester in Dr. Fox's class. I can see how teachers that have this technology in the classroom would not know how to teach without it. It is very versitile and easy to manage. I also think students enjoy this much more than just a power point. I think students are more interested in playing with the board, but in turn they are learning what they need to learn.
I am eager to learn about the differences between the Smart Board and the Promethean Board. I have not had experience with a Smart Board. I have not seen smart boards out in the clinicals but I have seen Promethean Boards.

Chapter 7

I fimly agree with Conley's idea that students who fail repeatedly just give up and stop trying. As a teacher I see the importance in motivating and encouraging our students to perform well. Many students find it hard to get motivated because they are not encouraged. Conley believes that teachers can help this by being caring and passionate. The better a teacher knows a student and his or her history the more likely the teacher can motivate and activate the students prior knowledge. I think that these students are often times the ones that fall through the cracks.
As we all already know activating prior knowledge is a key component in student learning. We use strategies such as anticipation guides and K-W-L charts. One new strategy I learned was PreP which stands for Pre Reading Plan. This strategy includes brainstorming, associating, and elaborating. Not only do students have to think about what they know they have to apply it and elaborate. This is also a great assessment of what students know quantitatively and qualitatively. However, some students may just write something irrelevant or not respond the way the teacher wants them too. Conley made a good point when he said that teachers cannot assume that students know how to use any of the these strategies. I completely agree with him. I watch several students struggle today to complete a concept web and they were not getting the big idea of a concept web. They were trying to write sentences in a little bubble instead of key events. Maybe the teacher did not model effectively.
Motivating students seems essential to me. We motivate students by using affective hooks to make the content more interesting and appealing to the students. We also emphasize predictions by using DRTA stategies and games to help engage the students and activate prior knowledge. By activating the students prior knowledge and motivating the student opens to students' minds to learning. We have to connect what they know to form larger webs of information. (Much like relative understandings and conceptual knowledge from math).
Once the foundation is laid then the knowledge and understandings can be built. The height of the building depends on the depth of the understandings.