Purpose of Homework... Entry #10

My past experiences with homework has been bittersweet. Dealing with difficulties of not seeing my students everyday I have found that homework can be a useful tool to help students prepare for an in class assignment or to finish an activity that they were working on in class. However, this is where the bitter comes in, it becomes such a management headache making sure students are turning it in on time and holding them accountable, and then there are the students that just do not do homework and therefore having to adjust instruction to accommodate that factor. And it comes to a point that becomes more of a burden than a blessing. I have experienced this at two different schools with multiple groups of kids and while now it is less of an issue than it has been before, I still have a bad taste in my mouth around homework, which has led me to put a lot of thought into this whole issue.

Putting my feelings aside about the whole circus that turning in homework can be, if it's what's best for kids it will be facilitated. With that being said, I believe that homework needs to have a purpose, I don't think busy work is beneficial for students or myself whether it is independent work or assigned for homework, I think that every moment spent with students should be spent purposefully. Therefore, my objective for homework has been to practice a skill we have already learned in class to achieve mastery or to prepare for a more in-depth activity that will be done in class but always to extend or deepen a students learning. One homework assignment that I have had the most success with this year was around the idea of supply and demand, where the student was able to research any topic as it related to supply and demand and answer comprehension questions about the topic and draw a visual that represents the supply and demand of this topic. Not only did I receive an almost 100% completion rate, it was the best work that I have seen because they were able to be creative and choose what they learned about. This really supported my objective around meaningful work and my intent for homework. This also supported my English Language Learners because they were able to research a topic that was culturally relevant to their own lives and the time given to complete the assignment allowed them to do high quality work. Furthermore, if they didn't feel that they were able to express themselves sufficiently in writing they also were able to express the concepts through a visual representation.

Communication between home and school can always be a challenge, but especially with English Language Learners. The first potential barrier could be the language issue which as English speaker can be difficult, but when calling home or communicating with parents I always try to use the resources available to me in the building. Another potential barrier is technology, it would be naive to assume all students have access to technology at home and be purposeful of having technology available at school or providing opportunities for students to be successful. The last potential barrier I will discuss, is the work schedules of parents especially those of ELLs, it can not be assumed that they work a regular schedule or could be working multiple jobs which can make communication home difficult or in school meetings with transportation, etc. The best method I have found as an educator, is to be patient, be understanding and continue to try no matter the adversity being faced.

Fiction vs Non-Fiction

As a teacher that works primarily with non-fiction within my content area, I found that making a graphic organizer that helps distinguish between the text features and structures within that genre very easy to put together. I used the textbook I use in class and identified different features that would help a student gain comprehension from the text. I broke down the reading into the three parts: before, during and after to help a student practice metacognitive strategies. I also scaffolded the writing portions with sentence stems and questions to think about while reading. A feature that will help a student learning to speak English would be the text features such as titles, pictures, maps, charts, glossaries to help find the meaning of unknown words. A feature that I think will serve challenging to a student learning English would be the structures of a non-fiction text such as cause and effect, compare and contrast, etc. I tried to support that challenge by using images to help explain the text structure. 

Fiction was much more difficult for me, because it is not something that I am familiar with implementing in my classroom on a daily basis. I relied on the expertise of the Language Arts teachers that I worked with and additional research on the subject. I brought up lots of old memories from elementary and middle school recalling all the features and structures of a fictional text. The graphic organizer that I included for fictional text is much more basic and just highlights identifying the beginning, middle and end of a story, the characters, conflict of the story, resolution of the story , point of view and theme. All of this features could be identified during reading, as a comprehension tool I included a story map to help students put all of these features together in a cohesive way. Features of the text that I believe will support students learning English would again be illustrations because it will make the characters, setting, and theme become more concrete for students. Furthermore, I think that they will be able to identify the conflict easily. Features that will serve challenging would be if students do not have illustrations as a support that will prove difficult to students, furthermore, I believe resolution and point of view will be difficult for students to navigate as well because these concepts are much more abstract for students. 

By completing these together or comparing them side by side, I think the students will visually see the differences between the two types of texts. I think it would be a useful activity to do in a classroom for English Language Learners or those in an intervention classroom, or as a reminder for all students of what the different features and structures are of the two texts. 

Sources:

Google Images

This Reading Mama - a developmental approach to literacy. (n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2015, from http://thisreadingmama.com/

(n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2015, from http://www.abss.k12.nc.us/cms/lib02/NC01001905/Centricity/Domain/2723/Common Core Question Stems.docx.

Entry #8

What does the teacher do to promote comprehension?

• Teacher has the CLO is posted at all times and reviews with the class
• Teacher reviews: key vocabulary, content, strategies, objective at the end of the lesson
• Teacher conducts a front loading lesson about inference 
• Teacher explicitly instructs how to write questions and how to phrase questions
• Uses a parking lot strategy where students use post- it notes to record I'm confused/ I'm reminded of... thoughts from the night's homework and then reviews at the beginning of class.
• Models Reading and Strategies
• Promotes metacognition while reading with various strategies
• Has students annotating the text through post it notes with questions they have while they are reading.

What do you see the teacher do?

• Reviews reading strategies and makes connections to students' background knowledge
• Previews key vocabulary pre-selected by the teacher and supports with visuals
• Uses anecdotes to help vocabulary make sense
• Uses key vocabulary in students' native language to establish connections
• Uses pictures, headings, titles to preview what the text is about and make connections to background knowledge
• Speaks clearly and slowly
• Explicit direct instruction around during reading strategies
• Asks questions and provides scaffolding around strategies
• Creates sufficient wait time

What do you see the students do?

• Collaborative learning-- clarifying in native language
• Asks students to make connections and understand their background knowledge of culture
• Interacting with difficult texts
• Generating questions
• Making connections to background knowledge
• Implementing reading strategies
• Asking questions
• Participating in discussion

Coming from a content area classroom, I have experience implementing a reading lesson at a much smaller scale such as an article, but I have never seen or been able to see how it can be implemented with an entire text over a unit so I found this to be very informative and interesting to watch. What I noticed, is that it seemed the students trusted their teacher and that they had built an environment where it was ok to make mistakes and talk about books in a very authentic way. This to me is extremely important for any student but in particular for an English Language Learner at the secondary level. Furthermore, I observed many strategies that I use in my own classroom so it was very validating to know that I am supporting ELL's in an effective manner across various contents.