Entry #11

Reflection upon Blog

Blogs can be great things for reflection and sharing of your own ideas.  They allow for the exploration of ideas and the free brainstorming that can be instrumental to exploratory growth of critical thinking.  This particular blog, I appreciate as it will be a permanent place for me to reference many of my thoughts from during the course.  In 8 weeks, there is so much to process that being able to go back and review once it is completed is a wonderful tool.  This is extremely evident in that the online system World Class does not allow access to prior courses.  So any and all conversations that were on those discussion boards are gone.  Sad, as there are rich discusion and great resources in there.  There simply is not a way to save it all within the system to be able to access it at a later time.  This allows for that opportunity.

At the same time, Blogs instead of forums, also limit the amount of interaction between students.  With having each student create their own, it makes the collaboration between students not so flowed or with structure.  As a result, there is not as much rich discusion as one finds in a forum scenario.  The structure is not great for anything larger than the small classes that we have for online work.

I have used blogs, but created them as a forum.  This is where I have the page developed and then students all come to that page to share ideas and thoughts about specific topics.  For advance placement students, this is great for use with summer assignments.  For my regular/low achieving students, the forum only works when specifically targeting certain elements of content and using it to measure language development in a more relaxed format.  Students like it for that fact.  It allows for the discusion of ideas without the formality of essay.  Teachers like it as it provides a written record of what is discussed for formal assessment purposes which is much harder in the classroom socratic seminar format.  The biggest issue is that students are not always diligent in posting.  They will also want to know how it is "scored" for a grade as many will take the attitude that it is about the number of posts and not about the quality of posts.  This is a subjective thing then to grade if it is not quantitative and hence harder for students to know exactly what is expected.  The benefit is that teachers can differentiate scoring based upon student ability with critical thinking and with language.

Entry #9

Comparison of Fiction and Nonfiction for ELLs

Characteristic	Fictional Text: The Breadwinner by Debra Ellis (Fictional history)	Non-Fiction Text: World History: Making Connections to Today	Similarities and Differences	Impact on ELLs
Title	Story	Broad General Overview	Both have cover pages with Titles and images, Both also have title pages inside the cover with similar images and titles Differ in purpose even though both connected to historical context.	Each title page would help prepare students with prereading (words and images) but only in a very general way.
Visuals/Pictures	Unique illustrations, designed to aid the storyline	Images appear on nearly every page.  Consist of historical artifacts, maps, charts, photographs, timelines	Both have illustrations within chapters.  Nonfiction has more variety of images (ie. graphs, charts, maps, photographs)	Illustrations help ELLs to comprehend. Nonfiction – images could be an issue as they are organizers that students may have to be taught how to read.
Author/Illustrator	Single author/ illustrator	Team of Authors and Editors	Number of authors and sources contributing vastly different	Ells will have a harder time possibly with the variety of authors in nonfiction as the vocabulary, and structure of the writing can have subtle changes from chapter to chapter.  Fiction can be easier as voice and tone is consistent.
Contents	Chapter organization.  Short number of pages within each chapter	Unit organization with chapters for more unified topics and then sections for specific events and details. Text is leveled as 11 grade text.	Table of contents standard. Fiction lists chapters Non-fiction has chapter, sections and content topics along with highlights	Contents of fiction would encourage ELLs. Nonfiction would support due to imagery, but would also be a hindrance due to the content identifications/vocabulary being complex for ELLs as well as many English speakers.
Print	Overall 14pt font-type same except for chapter headings.  No captions for illustrations	Varying fonts, sizes and colors. Different fonts and colors for chapter, section and topic headings.  Also use of bold font for key identification terms.	Both use a standard font for the most part Nonfiction have variety denoting specific elements of the text	Standard font improves ability to comprehend due to consistency. Nonfiction text does provide assistance to ELLs with the use of bold, color and italics hence benefiting ELLs if provided with the understanding of the reason for each font/color usage.
Structure	Storyline structure – Chronological order of events. Narrative story telling and dialogue of characters, 170 pages	Introduction to format of the text and contents (33 pgs), 37 chapters = 980 pages. Language structure is formal academic base containing mass amounts of fact/information	Paragraphs and structure is in chronological event for the most part. Nonfiction length is vast.	Nonfiction can be intimidating due to the size of the book especially if checked out.  Mentality is that students read each text cover to cover.  Simply cannot happen with these types of text. Nonfiction also would be difficult due to the possible lack of prior knowledge to be able to comprehend graphic organizers and visuals included within the text. Fiction is going to be more familiar to students and easier for ELLs
Ending	Story ends after last paragraph.  No so happy ending which surprises students	Reference section containing Atlas, Glossary, Connections to literature and science = 30 pg	Fiction – Completes the story Nonfiction- has resources that students can use at the back.	Non-fiction has resources to aid students and can have an immediate impact on ELLs comprehension of vocabulary and content Fiction provides a place of completion for ELL students; a measure of completion establishes a sense of success and increases motivation.

Entry #8

Sheltered literacy video evaluation.

What does the teacher do?
Explicitly explains the lesson in kid friendly language (verbally and visually)
Creates a comfortable environment. One where risk is valued and accepted.
Reviews all reading strategies
Previews vocabulary
Uses pictures to help cue context
Involves spelling within the lesson
Creates relevant stories to promote relationship to text
Previews the text
Saves time at the end of lesson for reviewing materials
Front loads students with knowledge necessary for reading text
Models reading AND thinking while reading a text

What do students do?
Recall prior learning from earlier lessons
Interact verbally with teacher as well as other students by building upon input
Compare background experiences to main concepts
Predict text
Use images to help clarify comprehension
Contribute to group work
Works independently with the text
Provides input via post-it notes process proposed by Tovani
Students use planned strategies to enhance comprehension of text


Reading Strategies used:
Visualization
"I Wonder ..."
Student development of questions
Inference
Summary of learning (non-fiction and historical biography)
Diary Board
"I'm confused"
Connections to culture

General observations:

Many of the sheltering processes are the same for struggling readers and writers. The major difference between how ELLs use the process is the pace of learning that occurs.  ELLs need time to process lessons and cannot be rushed to go through the 3 phases of sheltering too quickly.  There needs to more conscious effort by the teacher to cycle through the phases throughout each chapter or section of a text.

ELL students require the opportunity to scaffold their comprehension.  Not all reading strategies are appropriate for all student levels at the same time.  Therefore there needs to be a utilization of multiple strategies at each of the 3 phases.

Teacher reinforced contributions of students quite often even if not directly on target.  By doing this, there is a promotion of students wanting to contribute within the lessons.  It is something very subtle, but can make all the difference for struggling students to feel accepted and willing to take risks.