Final Synthesis Blog

                   This course is about how important literacy is in education and life. The course also connected me to a variety of resources for texts in my future classroom. Along with diverse text resources, this course helps differentiate which text to use with students. There were many memorable components of this class that I will carry with me as a future teacher. Activities like Book Club, Think Alouds, Blog-spot posts, and reading Subjects Matter all influenced my perception of literature and how to utilize when teaching course material in my future classroom.

                      Subjects Matter introduces an array of reading and instruction strategies for teacher. Before reading Subjects Matter, I did know about techniques how and when they are used can be extremely beneficial for the reader. Post-it Notes is a during reading activity that I recognized as really useful. I used the Post-it Notes Activity in a lesson plan for science today. I also used the Word Wall Activity from Subjects Matter for an After Reading activity. I connected the two activities, because they are beneficial when trying to grasp the concept of phenomenons in Physical Science. The Post-it notes are a way of annotating the text and the word wall provides conclusion, clarity, and repetition.
                            Synthesis and resource blogs are fun, helpful and informative. I had never started a blog, so this aspect of the course was new and exciting for me. The Blog-spots are a fun and alternative format as opposed to regular homework or traditional formats of course material work. The resource blogs create a collection of resources for content-areas courses that I may teach in the future.       
                   The synthesis blogs improved my literacy and synthesizing skills by
writing/commenting/posting every week. I am going to try to incorporate a blog into my curriculum for my future classroom. The Blog-spot responses provides an opportunity that could inspire students and open doors to new ideas and concepts that they have not been exposed to before. Utilizing digital media for the classroom could intrigue or motivate students by assigning Blogspot responses. The Blog-spot also gives an opportunity for students to be creative by designing their blogs to their own liking through themes or pictures on their blog. I think creating a blog also gives a sense of achievement, because you see the work you created as the result.

                                           

                    Think Alouds were eye opening for me, because it was the first time I analyzed how I spoke when I read a text out loud or how I process words in my mind when I read aloud. Think Alouds show that teaching to annotate texts before reading is really important when you are trying to emphasize specific words or phrases while you are reading the text. Speaking clearly and thoughtfully projects confidence and assertiveness to the readers that are listening to you speak. This snags the reader's attention to certain key words/phrases/concepts and allows the reader to cognitively retain information through the sounds of words and understand the information with clarity. I can use the Think Aloud strategy in my content-areas, social studies or science, while reading about historical facts or significant factors involved in electric currents. Think Alouds can also help me process the course material, so that I can confidently deliver the lessons without hesitation or doubt. Lastly, Think Alouds will become a habit when I read and when students read texts in the future. This website, http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/think_alouds , has a detailed analysis of Think-Alouds to better help the understanding of how to conduct a Think Aloud.
         
    I came across an article in The Guardian by Joe Moran called, Opinion: Why you should read this article slowly. Moran interviews cognitive neuroscientist, Maryanne Wolf, about the effects of digital media on people’s thought and reading process. Wolf intervenes that “skim read” is habitual and that the quantity rather than the quality of the text is more desirable now. This is the problem that readers face today. The brain can only retain a certain amount of information in a given passage or text. The more your expand the text, the less your mind is able to attain key details, events, or vocabulary words.
 This article brings attention to the infinite amount of literacy that students are exposed to through digital and social media. The way readers of floating through words on digital media, is how students are starting read now. Literacy has seen its share of many, many changes throughout the entire course of history. It seems as though the format of literacy is ever changing. As a future teacher, I should want to adapt to this change to promote literacy in my content-area classes. These means to choose and use resources that are meaningful and consists of learning goals that are attainable for students.

Article referenced: https://newsela.com/read/benefits-of-reading-slowly/id/46345/


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