Final Thoughts

Here’s a movie clip with the final scenes of the movie. I hope that you have enjoyed my blog and podcasts and have found something helpful to take away from my advice. I also hope that due credit has been seen for the writers of 50 Content Area Strategies for Adolescent Literacy (copyright 2007). The book has wonderful strategies, and I hope that my suggestions and examples of how to use the three that I chose within an English classroom has been helpful.

Just a reminder that the three strategies I chose focused on the literacy skills of vocabulary, comprehension, and writing and that they were each appropriate for a different time during a reading of a text (before, during and after). Thanks so much for looking at my blog!

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Using Media to Help Gain Student’s Interest and Understanding

Sometimes teachers are discouraged from using media sources by administration, but sources such as television, movies, music, and internet websites can be extremely helpful for a teacher of any age group. If you are ever questioned about using media in your classroom, explain to the administrator the purpose of the clip in your classroom. Explain that using a video clip or a song can help gain students interest and understanding about a theme within a text. This clip from the movie adaptation of “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” portrays the central themes of rehabilitation and redemption. After watching this clip, or even the whole movie, students might be better able to describe the redemption of both Red and Andy. Teachers could use a movie clip and then ask questions about certain words or ideas within the movie so students can explain if they don’t understand or are interested in something. Movie clips or music can be good for students who are more visual or interactive learners. Teachers can use them to help students with different learning abilities understand something they might not be able to visualize just from reading. Teachers also might use video clips to facilitate a class discussion about central themes or character analysis and can also use them to fuel writing assignments or charts about character traits for the main characters. This clip is one of my favorites from the movie, and portrays Red (played by Morgan Freeman) and his speech about feeling rehabilitated. Enjoy!

This website might be helpful for a few questions to ask students to think about during the movie. Don’t have them answer in full sentences, because that might distract their attention from the movie’s main points and themes. Instead, ask them to jot down ideas and thoughts as they pertain to the questions or just the movie’s content. Don’t use this as a formally graded piece. Ask them at the end of the movie to discuss the questions or ask their own questions and see what their fellow students think.

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Reading Aloud to Students: Not Just for Little Kids

Teaching Strategy One: Reading Aloud

The purpose of this podcast is to portray the teaching strategy of reading aloud and how it improves students’ vocabulary and comprehension skills. This strategy can be very helpful to English teachers. The purpose is also to explain the proper way to use the strategy so that students get the full benefit from the activity. The following helpful information can be found within the above podcast:

Reading aloud is sometimes considered to be an elementary level language arts activity, but there are many good reasons to read aloud to middle and high school students. Reading aloud can allow teachers to show students all the ways people have written about the subjects we teach and can include a wide range of genres, formats and topics. Reading aloud can also create a way for us to make difficult texts accessible to more students. Finally, reading aloud provides opportunities for teachers to demonstrate the processes they use to comprehend texts so that students can become more engaged in the text and can also see how some techniques that work for you as the teacher might work for them as well.

Many different types of materials are appropriate for reading aloud. Some materials can be used to teach important content information, while others can just be used to gain student’s interest in a topic enough so that they want to read on their own. Secondary students enjoy and learn from a variety of texts read by teachers including informational books and picture books, as well as poetry, popular magazine articles, newspaper articles and internet sources.

In order to plan and carry out a good read along, the following components are essential:

1.) Teachers should make good text selections.

2.) Teachers should preview and practice the text.

3.) Teachers should establish a clear purpose for listening.

4.) Teachers should model fluent reading

5.) Teachers should read with animation and expression

6.) Teachers should facilitate a discussion of the text

7.) Teachers should follow up the read-aloud with student independent reading and writing.

 

This activity targets students’ comprehension and vocabulary skills. In order to successfully target these skills, teachers must encourage acive participation in the reading. Simply reading directly to the class is not helpful for students comprehension or vocabulary. Here are some sample questions to ask students to ensure direct engagement:

Engage students’ interest with questions like: Judging from the title and cover, what do you think this will be about?, Has anybody ever heard of…?, What do you already know about…?

Share reactions to the text: I’m confused by that…, This is going to (surprise, shock, frighten) you… (etc), This is news to me…, I knew that was going to happen.., Did anyone think that was going to happen?, I think I would do this instead…

Ask students what they might anticipate: Now what do you think?, This makes me think about…, Do you remember reading something similar in…?,

Ask questions to get students to think critically: How does this text compare to…, What confused you?, What information was left out?, Did you change your mind about that?, What would you have done in that situation?

Using a mixture of these types of questions leads to a successful class discussion and hopefully to a better understanding of key concepts within the piece. Reading aloud to students establishes a strong beginning for reading. Students hopefully will become interested and will not only learn important critical and literary techniques, but will become more involved in their reading and will have a greater desire to do class reading homework.

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Introduction to My Blog

As an aspiring English teacher, I thought that I would take a short story and give a few examples of how to teach it through the use of three different strategies for literacy. I have decided to use a technique for before, during, and after the reading to provide teachers with a few examples of how to engage students in their reading and how to help them to know and undertsand important concepts within the short story. I chose Stephen King’s “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” as my focus and the strategies I chose focus on comprehension, vocabulary and writing. The next three entries, including podcasts, will portray the strategies of reading aloud, reciprocal teaching, and SPAWN writing. I hope that my blog is informational and helpful to any English teachers who might have struggling students and who might need a few interesting ways of teaching information to students so that they comprehend and enjoy what they are learning. This blog could be useful not only to English students, but also as a basic idea for teaching of literacy within any content area classroom.

My content area ideas stem directly from Merrill/Prentice Hall Teaching Strategies Series’ 50 Content Area Strateggies for Adolescent Learning, which is written by Douglas Fisher, William G. Brozo, Nancy Frey, and Gay Ivey. They are specifically arranged in a fashion where I summarize or paraphrase the book, add some information of my own or something I think that is important that isn’t in the book, and then apply it to “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.”

This blog might be considered to have some adult material on it because of the story I chose to use as a focus. I do not recommend using this story or the adapted movie in a high school classroom unless permission is granted by parents. I have seen it taught in an English 12 classroom, so the content (with permission of parents) should only be shown to students who are older and able to handle mature content.

 

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