D&Z ch. 5 &7

          I think these two chapters have certainly been the most useful thus far and helpful. The authors make a great point that we want our students to be great readers and writers, but we often forget to tell them how to be good readers. Or as secondary education teachers we often leave it for elementary school but most of the time our students have forgotten. In chapter 5 there are tools for thinking and reading strategies. It is broken down to before, during, and after activities of things students can do to be actively reading. I remember doing some of this myself when I was in school and it helped, it made me remember until today! By having students doing something before, during, or after they read a text its helping them engage with their text and remember what they just read. Reading a chapter and answering questions its at the lower level of bloom at knowledge and comprehension. They might remember what they read the next day and the questions they read, but a week later they're not going to remember.
            When I was reading the section that went through the 'during' and how a good reader is active, visualizes what's happening in the story/text, makes connections and can distinguish important ideas, I just thought how great would this look on a poster in your classroom. And the other piece of this is what reading skills are important across curriculum. On p. 101 there are tons of before, during and after activities you can do for all different content areas that involve reading strategies. One of my favorites was the exit slips (p.124) and the mapping (p.126) The mapping is great in social studies classes when you're trying to break down main ideas.
              Chapter 7 is especially crucial for new teachers. I couldn't agree more with the authors because I have seen it myself. Being a substitute teacher I have seen classrooms where the students don't respect the teacher or don't feel comfortable and there's no classroom management or willingness to be in the classroom. It's essential to have a community of learners the authors stress and to build community in your classroom. The authors give examples of how a teacher could build community and I think the best time to do so is at the beginning of the school year. In my future classroom I would like to spend the first couple days of school just getting to know my students, no content, just playing ice breakers, getting to know each other. Something I found really important about this section was that if you don't know 10 things about your students you don't know them very well. In these first few days I think the rules and expectations should be laid out for the year. Often we just hand out the year syllabus and run with content but then the whole idea of purpose, having someone to talk and connect with just goes away.