Blog 5

I enjoyed reading chapter 9 in Improving Adolescent Literacy. It talks about the power of the pen. Writing requires students to use different kinds of knowledge at different times is what the book says. I have found some ways to use writing in PE and it has been effective to my teaching. I use exit slips all the time when I am finished teaching new skills to my students. It allows me to have instant feedback from every student, even the quiet ones. Obviously kids do not want to come to PE and write so I have to use creative ways to allow the students to write. I like the idea that writing forces a student to think and use prior knowledge with new knowledge. I feel writing is an important skill to develop. It is used all through life and is required to survive in our world. Writing can be used in many ways and can be used by every teacher. We as teachers can utilize writing when used correctly.

post 4

This chapter was rather confusing to me. The previous chapter talked about overteaching and causing readacide becasuse of it. Now this chapter is talking about underteaching a book. I guess what I got out of it is you have to find a place in the middle to satisfy our students, without killing reading. I like the idea in this chapter about second draft and third draft reading. Me personally I have to do this sometimes just to understand what I just read. This type of reading helps the reader have more understanding of what you are reading and what you are looking for in the reading. You do not want you students just reading the material and not putting it to use or not understanding any of it. I don't like the philosophy of "big chunk/little chunk", I feel it confusing becuase it it kinda telling you the opposite of the previous chapter. I did like the diagram that the student created with a little chunk of reading. But it stil reminds me of last chapter when it said not to break books down to the point of dumbing the book down. I also find it hard to relate to this chapter because I do not teach a content course and don't really deal with these issues in my classroom. Bein a PE teacher, I did not find much in this chapter that I could use in my classroom.

blog 2

I found a lot of interesting information in this weeks readings. The first thing that caught my eye was schools are going away from Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) to make room more more test prep. I can say my current school has SSR everyday for atleast 20 minutes during first period literacy.  In Chapter 2 of Readicide, there is proven research that SSR improves reading comprehension. So why are schools eliminating it? I had a problem with this last year. I taught a literacy class last year and offered SSR everyday for a while, but soon found out only 3 to 5 people would bring a book everyday and read. So the other 20 students wouldn't bring something in to read. So my next question is how do you get kids to read willingly? Readicide believes SSR develops prior knowledge and background information students need to survive in our classrooms. It also helps develop ones vocabulary too. The book refers to if students are only given academic reading and are forced to read material that doesn't interest them, than by the time they reach 9th grade they are sick of reading and don't enjoy recreational reading. I believe this is true. I personally didn't enjoy reading, but if I found something of interest I could manage. If you are forced to read something you don't like all the time, eventually you aren't going to want to read anymore. I like the idea of Article of the Week. I feel the reading is relevant, and interesting. This is a great way to bring interest back to reading for students who struggle with academic reading. This is something I want to try in my classroom.

Blog 1

I so far have found this class to be different that the rest of the MAT classes. I find it hard to relate literacy in physical education; however, I am open to learn and implement literacy in my class. I am a firm believer that today's youth has problems reading and comprehending. I personally have never enjoyed reading and have not done well in reading classes in the past. I hope that changes, I do enjoy reading the newspaper and information on sports. I have a hard time reading fiction or novels. I have never been interested or motivated to read. I hope to find a love for literacy and hope to implement it in my classroom.