The Visible Knowledge Project encouraged me to look into my development as a reader.

This weeks readings gave me many great ideas to use in my future teaching experiences. So my post may seem a bit scattered this week.

Randy Bass’s comment about using Word’s comment feature to “think-aloud” made me realize how helpful this feature has been for me. In my editing experience working with a group of foreign students who learned English and reading in their own country, I had to frequently use the comment feature in Word to think aloud the reasons I believed their articles and sentence structures lacked clarity. This in turn helped me discover my own reading and writing process.

I believe Arthur Laui’s method of asking students to write an autobiography of themselves to help them understand the biographies of others is very effective. Writing biographies of others were very difficult for me because of the extent of research that needed to be done and the rigid format we had to follow. Students enjoy to write about themselves to discover their strengths, and as a result can interest them into reading the biographies of others.

From this week’s readings I especially enjoyed Dr. Linkon’s article as it helped answer my questions on how to keep students engaged and interested in reading and how to help them look away from their first impressions. Novice readers and writers are constantly looking to find answers. When a student answers a question in class, he/she may gain a sense of accomplishment for that day’s class. Many times students do not ask questions because they are looking for the perfect question to ask in their readings. Open-ended questions frustrate them because they cannot find that perfect answer.

Portfolios are indeed helpful for students to lose fear of the writing process. I always enjoyed writing rough drafts in my English literature classes because I felt I could write about anything I felt about a text without being judged or graded. It gave me a sense of freedom in my thinking and writing, and it made me enjoy reading. Portfolios are in a sense similar because the student can enjoy his/her step by step process without worrying about the final end result. And where once the student felt she must find an answer to feel accomplished, she can instead receive the same feeling of accomplishment by putting all her pieces together to complete a whole.

Key findings annotation three made me think about my “reading process”. I was always told to keep a writing journal, and to write whatever would come to my mind. I wish I had done the same for my writing journal. In my reading process whenever I came upon a word or content that I did not understand, I would skip that section hoping to understand by listening to the class discussion. A reading journal could have really helped in this matter. As students write about their difficulties to understanding a text, they help themselves improve.

The inquiry project annotation helped me realize one thing my teachers did to help me identify good questions to ask about a text were the compare and contrast literary text assignments. Those assignments helped me put both stories in perspective and narrow my scattered thoughts about each story.

Under defining critical reading practices the article mentioned, “good critical reading requires rereading”. Which I completely agree, because it is similar to rewriting. But my question is what about those students who don’t see a point to reading again. They go with the assumption that no matter how many times they read, they will get the same results. How can we encourage those students to reread?

Randy’s key findings annotation 3 helped me understand why many students including me had a difficult time concluding their papers. I was able to write pages on my interpretation to Hills like White Elephants, but when it came to summing the paper up, I would just freeze. My teachers would remind me that the conclusion is just a restatement of the thesis and introduction, except with a slightly different twist. I could not grasp that different twist. So instead I would write a conclusion without feeling it was my own creativity. Randy’s comment on students “not closing down on interpretation” because of a lack of method, can help many students put this matter into perspective.