Throughout my entire freshman year, I have learned to communicate better, overcome difficult tasks, to comprehend all types of literature, ways to use and improve my reading skills, and several other things. Each of these items have affected my reading skills and how it has made my freshman year and beyond better.
Communication was one of many things that we learned to do in this class. As a group, we communicated in our literature circle, Empower3000, and projects. During our literature circle, we would discuss study guide questions on the three books that we have read this year. While talking to one another about the study guide questions, we could discuss about what has happened in the book and what are the main ideas and important details in the novels. In my opinion, the literature circle was one of the best ways that helped us improve in our communicating skills. During Empower3000, if we didn’t know what a word ment, we could ask one another for help. Besides not just asking my peers, I could ask Ms. Ramsey for help or understanding of what the article or question was asking. Empower3000 was the best way to help improve our reading skills. At first, it was hard for me to read for awhile and to understand harder literatures, but after Empower3000 and reading the three novels in class, it has helped me understand and comprehend harder literatures. Although summarizing has gotten old and it took forever, it helped me get my answers right because I could refer back to my summarizes and see what stood out in each paragraph. At the beginning of the year, I took a pretest and I discovered that I was reading at a fourth grade reading level. At the end of the year, I took a post test and discovered that I was reading at a Colleg...
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... guide questions. Another thing that I had trouble with was understanding some of the words or phrases in the novels that we read. I then started using SQ3R and looking up what words/phrases were to understand the text.
Although this class may seem like it was hard and there was a lot to, which sometimes it was, we have had a blast in reading class! The friday drawing, the quarterly drawing, weekly challenges, lexile and grade level goals, challenge goals, and sometimes candy was just given to us. I can say that a lot of candy was eaten during the reading course this year, but we worked hard and earned it. By completing challenges and goals, the candy was just a motivation to keep us going to meet our goals and challenges. While this school year is coming to an end, it isn’t a end for my reading skills because it will just keep improving as school progresses on.
My strengths, weaknesses, and preferences as a writer have changed and have been recognized in my eighth grade year. My strengths as a writer are my vivid imagination, my descriptive vocabulary, and my ability to compose factual pieces of writing. I would say that my imagination has changed and upgraded this year because I have experienced, read, seen, and learned so much in such little time of my life. Reading The Outsiders, Out of the Dust, and To Kill a Mockingbird in class have really given me a fresh egg of pure, imaginative power to experience and use. They have also exposed me to more words that I have never seen before, and with the help of my vocabulary book, I have learned a broad spectrum of vocabulary from multiple sources. We have done ten chapters in our vocabulary book and in each chapter there are fifteen words. That means that I have added another 150 words to my vocabulary without embodying the countless number I have learned from reading. I have also absorbed many facts from the...
In English learning, I think, communication is necessary. So after reading, it’s better for teachers to organize us to exchange
The teaching strategy focuses on the student’s engagement to create reading with meaning. This reading strategy allows students to have more freedom to make their own decisions in what they read and how they read, without the teacher forcing materials upon them. As well, more time is allotted during the school day for students to engage in reading activities, instead of using traditional methods of writing paper and answering questions on a worksheet after reading a book. The Daily Five teaching strategy also strongly develops oral communication skills within students and their peers. By doing so, it creates a sense of community in the classroom that traditional teaching methods did not have. This teaching strategy allows the student to question the material they are reading, which includes their interests, ability to comprehend, and understanding vocabulary. Through the Daily Five teaching strategy, students are also able to find books that interests them, without the teacher giving them group of “leveled” books students may not personally
After, reviewing the vast amount of reading inventories that can be utilized to obtain a reading competency level for a student. I decided to utilize the Jennings Informal Reading Assessment, this assessment had all of the essential elements needed to analyze and evaluate the reading styles and comprehension level of a student. The unique qualities that assist me in selecting this strategy were that of the preprimary word list. The word list offers the student a chance to learn and observe terms that he/she may not have known prior to the assessment. This also provided me with a better understanding of the student usage of visual cues and ability to utilize prior knowledge to understand and recognize information. This is a cognitive ability
In the past I did not enjoy reading because I never wanted to ever sit down and take the time to read and think about what the author was actually trying to say. I was never really taught how to evaluate and solve the authors mysteries until this semester. Until now I never knew to pay attention to the figurative language, style, and structure because those can really express hidden things about the author. Now that I know how too, I enjoy reading a lot more. I plan on reading more in the future.
My development as a writer has flourished throughout this semester. The first week of this fall semester started out with writing responses from our readings in the textbook. Looking back through and analyzing my reading responses at the semester to now; I noticed a substantial improvement in not only my grammar skills, but also my summarizing, and in-depth studying of writing adeptness. Another way I have progressed this semester is the vocabulary of my writing has significantly improved and become more scholarly. Another advancement I noticed was that the content of my work has matured, along with my organizational adeptness.
As the year has progressed, I have grown as a reader in leaps and bounds and hope to grow even more. I need to grow accustomed to using my dictionary everytime I read, and I need to reread every chance I get. I also need to obtain an optomistic attitude about each work I read instead of criticizing it before I even read it. Compared to the beginning of the year, I am a totally different reader.
I have begun to implement the reading and writing strategies we learned in class. It was encouraging to hear that good reading skills do not require and exorbitant amount of time, and these skills can significantly contribute to comprehension, not just memorization.
A literature circle, allows the student to think critically, as well as making independent choices about their learning. Students must decide how much to read, and how much they participate in the discussions. In addition, it is also a fun way to learn, while helping students build social skills. Especially, living in such a technology savvy society, I find that social experience is limited. This play as a very powerful tool for reluctant, struggling readers and students that are shy.
I strongly believe that the class, HD341 Communication for Empowerment fulfill my goals in taking this class because it is giving me many opportunities to make connection with other classmates. I usually check in by sharing my stories at school, at work, and any issues that I am still concerned. Therefore, verbal communication is an area I frequently use in class to communicate with my peers as well as my professor. I also have active listening my classmate’s stories and have critical thinking to giving feedbacks to them.
The teaching of reading has gone through numerous transformations and controversy continues over what is the best reading instruction. However, there is overwhelming evidence that the use of authentic literature and time for children to read, discuss what they have read and hear fluent readers, are critical to success.
In conclusion, I learned many different things this year about my writing abilities, including what kind of writing I like, how to write efficiently and fluently, and the many ways I changed as a writer. When I walked into Mrs. Means language arts class, I was expecting it to be similar to last year, but with different material. I was totally wrong. I was challenged a lot in language arts to keep up with assignments and due dates. Most importantly though, I learned how to write a quality paragraph; something that will travel with me for the rest of my life.
This class has helped me realize my strengths and weaknesses in literature. This has allowed me to grow and realize that I am a work in progress. I am confident that by the end of this class my big issues in writing will be improved. Each assignment in this class is helping grow and is making me into the writer I know I can be.
There have not been many obstacles that have gotten in my way for me to be a successful reader. I am able to confidently read "Hope in the Unseen" because it keeps my interest. I like the story. I feel for Cedric. I imagine and picture the story in my mind. When a large amount of reading is assigned, sometimes my brain gets exhausted and I have to take a break. Literally my brain gets tired. The reason why I have trouble getting all of my assignments in for "Writing and Being" is because the book does not hold my interest. I find it boring at times. I really like "Higher Learning" because the stories are like short stories, and they are adventurous in a weird way.
Critical Reading and Writing in the Discipline (FOUN1019) is a yearlong course designed to improve and develop students’ cognitive, analytical and rhetorical skills. It thereby provides students with the requisite skills to truly join the scholarly arena and become academic writers. I enrolled in the FOUN1019 course with the assumption that I would become more proficient in English Language and a more eloquent communicator. I anticipated that this course would be challenging like many other courses ascribe to a first degree in Marketing; however, nothing could have truly prepared me for the arduous work load that it entails. I had to work assidously throughout the duration of FOUN109 to prepare coursework and conduct research which required