This is a forum for our SCRI Study Group members to comment on readings, class engagements, and/or other important issues related to our graduate class. Members enrolled in ECUC R 635W-Understanding and Supporting Secondary Students' Literacy Growth are required to post 14 times througout the year.
Do you think we should share our book trailers with BCHS students?
Reflections on the Jim Trelease Seminar: I sincerely enjoyed the comments and points made by Jim Trelease Tuesday night. He was very clear in his point that literacy and the probability of success a student might have in literacy is directly linked to their home environment. He gave example after example of parents making a difference (positively or negatively) through the habits and expectations they held their children to. Reading aloud to children of all ages was certainly his main emphasis. His point about reading to children above their own reading level was well taken and upon reflection of how my wife and I have read to our son, I certainly could have benefited from this study a few years ago. I was sitting with Greg during the seminar and I agreed with his point that more of our elementary parents should have been at this event, so they could have benefited from Mr. Trelease and his findings. I was particularly interested in his study of the number of words taken in by a youngster with relationship to the economic social level of the family. The discrepancy of words heard and exposed to was very revealing. I was encouraged by the antidotes of families that have successfully bucked the trends by making a difference in their children’s’ lives.
Chapters 4 and 5 Plus Jim Trelease October 22, 2007
Jim Trelease is such a delight! He has such a common sense approach to helping students to learn. I mean who even thought that closed captioning did anything but annoy people like subtitles do in the movies! He thinks of simple, inexpensive ways to improve learning when most of us (educators that is) are looking for software programs to close the achievement gap! Even our televisions that we use as babysitters and of course entertainment can be turned into learning tools. My daughter will now be watching the Spanish channel with closed captioning on to help her in Spanish II. All Spanish teachers claim that the real learning takes place when a student can be immersed in the language. Well, the television is as close as we can get to Spain or Mexico right now!
In Chapter 4 Gallagher states that real-world models are best for helping students to learn how to write better. After seeing the examples, I would have to agree that there is noticeable improvement in the students’ writing. This does bring to mind, one of my daughter’s teachers. She insists that each paragraph have seven sentences. I always try to take the side of the teachers when any child questions a teacher’s practices. But truly I haven’t a clue why the number seven was chosen. I don’t think this is my daughter’s ELA teacher either. I advised my daughter to try to do as she was instructed and maybe the teacher would explain further later. Was I diplomatic enough? In my recent readings, I have not found any seven sentence paragraphs. I wonder if she has tried writing alongside her students to see the difficulty in writing seven sentence paragraphs.
The seven sentence paragraph leads me to chapter 5 and the “fake writing.” That is exactly what my daughter said about her writing in this particular teacher’s class. “Mom, it sounds like I am just making up things to put in the paragraphs.” I am afraid that she is going to start thinking that she can’t write well. I really don’t need this aggravation when she has already decided that she stinks at math because of geometry. How do I help her past this fake writing that the teacher insists that she complete? I don’t want her to hate writing because a teacher has convinced her that good writing has long paragraphs.
Maybe if the teacher gave her class the “find the fib” assignment those long paragraphs would flow. The funny thing is, Gallagher finds that narrowing the topic is most important so that the writing can be more focused. Most of the strategies are all about focusing on smaller writing. The topic blast, funneling, writing territories, and what bugs me are all about smaller writing.
After looking at my blog, I noticed that I have two paragraphs with seven sentences or more. I will suggest to Adrienne that she add questions and have a child, (later, much later) then she will be able to write seven sentence prargraphs.
Jim Trelease is my new hero. As Lendy said, he just has so much common sense. He verifies what we "old timers" have been saying for so long about parents' influence, and the closed-captioning information was so useful. I'll be passing that information along to my niece for her to use with her children! In the text, Gallagher's chapter four also employs common sense strategies, including the real world models of movie reviews, restaurant reviews, etc. I loved Stephen King's line, " If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all else: read a lot and write a lot.There's no way around these two things that I'm aware, no shortcut." In chapter five, Kelly's emphasis on student choice, autobiographical sketches, words of wisdom, etc. have all been proven true in my experience. Last year, I had a student ( I swear this is true!) take up an entire class period presenting his portfolio to the class. It was very good ,and not one student complained! True, that was costly time-wise, but the enthusiasm in presenting about himself and his choices in the portfolio was contageous!In summary,we had,as usual, more very good, practical information from the text and from the speaker.
Mr. Trelease reminded us again of the power of words, lots of words. I was particularly intrigued by the idea of using close-captioning when viewing TV. If my ESOL students view a film, we use the close-captioning if it is available. I’d also like to suggest it for my neighbor who is reading at a 2nd grade level in the 5th grade. I want to try to read with her several times a week, if possible, because no one is reading to her at home.
Another point Jim Trelease made was to emphasize the importance of reading to students beyond their own reading level, since our listening vocabularies are greater than our reading vocabularies. Personally, I’m intrigued by news reports from NPR – I’m literally starved for news and different perspectives. I can’t wait to get in my car at the end of the school day and listen to the news. It also helps me with my vocabulary! If I’m on a long trip I like to listen to books on tape or find talk shows with interesting guests.
I've had a Jim Trelease book for years and years--and never realized how much I like him. He reminds me a little of Jonathan Kozol--but with more humor with his political jibes. Maybe it's the common sense approach to success and failure--? Sometimes when I talk to a friend of mine who teaches at a school north of Seattle, WA, I feel like I'm not a hard enough or not a good enough teacher or that I dumb it down too much with certain things. But, then I see how some of the things that I do--things that I've gotten from the professional books in the last few years--and from this program,...then I feel better because I do see how so much of it works--if I take the time to do it well and do it right. Which leads me away from Jim to the chapter in the book. While going through the chapter, I was reminded of a book--another one that I've had for years and have forgotten about: the title is something along the lines of _If you are going to teach kids to read, you've got to have this book_. It's just a packed in book of lots of ideas--many that are mentioned in Gallagher's book. I need to find that book again...
As I was reading chapter four I all I could think about was my Reading/Writing Workshop students. Trying to get them to write anything is like pulling teeth. The class reads and writes on a daily basis but the quality of reading is horrible. I have tried the “intensive hands-on writing instruction” but when they see me writing along with them they think it is time to stray from the task. I don’t know if I missed it in the reading but I was looking for a section on the students who just refuse to write. In chapter five it talked about going beyond fake writing. I don’t know what side I am on when it come to this issue because I personally have a hard time deciding on what to write about if I am not given a specific topic. When I was given this option I would always waste days just trying to figure out what I should write about. I think for some students this would be more beneficial but for others I think this would just add a more pressure. Allowing students to choose their writing topics to me can be a benefit and a curse. I have asked my classes if there is a topic that they would like to write about and taken their opinions into account but as to giving them complete control of a topic I just don’t know.
I enjoyed Jim Trelease's seminar concerning the importance of reading to children. Along with Mrs. Rollison, I liked his comments about reading levels. He emphasized the importance of reading to them on levels that are slightly higher. I also enjoyed reading the text selections regarding writing. There were several suggestions that I found helpful: Funnel graphic organizer and writing territory. I could use these activities with my classes. Also, the author mentioned the importance of giving students a choice in writing. My students seem to approach writing assignments much more quickly when they have choice on topics.
From his presentation, I would first like to say that he presented heavy material in a very light, entertaining method. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing him speak. The story that stands out most in my mind was his story of the 7 year old that did not attend school, but read all the books in his county library. From his reading, he was able to get accepted into college (demonstrating more knowledge than most college professors). This truly demonstrates the power reading has over one's education.
When I first started reading the assigned reading, I got very excited about the restaurant reviews. I thought, this would be great, especially in my hospitality management class. We could extend the exercise to theme park reviews, hotel reviews, etc. I like the use of model reviews to share with the students.
However, upon continuing to read the chapter, I discovered the RAGs approach. What a great way to get students reading and writing, critiquing and improving. I plan to use this often. For example, in marketing class, the students write a press release. There is an example in the book for the students to review first. From there, they could write their first drafts. We could share in small groups, eventually deciding on the best at that time. Students could then have the chance to edit their papers and do the activity again. The best would be used to share with various media outlets.
I went to Jim Trelease’s talk fully expecting to hear many things I had heard before. For this reason, I carried along my writer’s notebook and a printed draft of a story I’ve been working on—but I did little with the piece, other than shifting the tenses of some verbs as an experiment, because I found Trelease incredibly engaging. In addition to being entertaining, he was informative. A few cool ideas I had not heard before: book-baskets, reading to kids while they are doing something else, and using close-captioning (or is it closed-captioning?). In fact, this weekend when we played Elmo in Grouchland for Connor, who did more playing than watching, I used the subtitles. Interestingly, he seemed to notice the words. He stood close to the television, which we normally discourage, and I read aloud the words so that he might connect them to what the characters were saying. This held his interest for about five minutes—longer than usual—then he commenced to running around like a madman, pinballing off furniture and tripping over toys, and engaging in various other toddler-ish behaviors. But, I figure, if he starts to recognize words and how they connect to images—the same idea with books and illustrations—then he’s learning something already. Thank you, Jim Trelease.
Let me begin with Jim Trelease. I was so excited about seeing him as he was a tremendous part of my graduate studies at USC. Most of the information he shared was a refresher in what I had already studied. However, some of the statistics were quite impressive. I enjoyed listening to Mr. Trelease’s lecture—although that word seems highly inappropriate when referring to the author of the Read-Aloud Handbook.
What a huge waste of money for the district. Bringing a national speaker in for this! Pathetic. What a shame that all those teachers had to sit through his speech last night. He made such an impression on me not so much from an educator standpoint but from a parent’s. It was a waste and shame on the district for not making his presentation mandatory for all K-4/5 parents. The impact that could have been made if more people from the community would have been there to hear him could have been major. I went into this with an attitude that “I’ve heard this all before” and that the fault of education lies with the schools and teachers. But was I mistaken. The message he had for parents in that education starts at the home and there is no replacement for it, does not need to be made to the educators, it needs to be made to the parents. I can’t even begin to imagine how many parents Jim could have affected. If only 2 or 3 at each elementary school were impacted, that would be 25-30 students we would see in the high schools down the line. This could be an entire class of below grade level students performing at or above an average level. Think about having one less no letter class (or CP class on the new watered down scale) and one more honors class? How much better would we function as a whole school?
This is Nancy Meares's Post: As I said in my earlier blog, Jim Trelease is my new hero. As Lendy said, he just makes so much sense. He verifies what we “old timers” have been saying so long about parents’ influence on student performance, and the closed-captioning information was so useful. I’ll be passing that along to my niece for her to use with her children. Scott noted Trelease’s point that literacy and the probability of success a student has is directly linked to the home environment. He also mentioned Trelease’s point about reading to children of all ages. Right now I am reading Lord of the Flies to my English IV students, and I know that I am having more success with this method than I would have had in asking them to read it. All novels do not lend themselves to this method, of course, nor do all classes, but it definitely has a place and an effect in the success of some readings. The reading aloud of this novel definitely falls under Trelease’s edict to read to students beyond their own reading level. Mr. Trelease is a very effective speaker, one who is able to bring us some very sobering statistics yet in a hopeful presentation.
14 comments:
Reflections on the Jim Trelease Seminar:
I sincerely enjoyed the comments and points made by Jim Trelease Tuesday night. He was very clear in his point that literacy and the probability of success a student might have in literacy is directly linked to their home environment. He gave example after example of parents making a difference (positively or negatively) through the habits and expectations they held their children to.
Reading aloud to children of all ages was certainly his main emphasis. His point about reading to children above their own reading level was well taken and upon reflection of how my wife and I have read to our son, I certainly could have benefited from this study a few years ago. I was sitting with Greg during the seminar and I agreed with his point that more of our elementary parents should have been at this event, so they could have benefited from Mr. Trelease and his findings.
I was particularly interested in his study of the number of words taken in by a youngster with relationship to the economic social level of the family. The discrepancy of words heard and exposed to was very revealing. I was encouraged by the antidotes of families that have successfully bucked the trends by making a difference in their children’s’ lives.
Chapters 4 and 5
Plus Jim Trelease
October 22, 2007
Jim Trelease is such a delight! He has such a common sense approach to helping students to learn. I mean who even thought that closed captioning did anything but annoy people like subtitles do in the movies! He thinks of simple, inexpensive ways to improve learning when most of us (educators that is) are looking for software programs to close the achievement gap! Even our televisions that we use as babysitters and of course entertainment can be turned into learning tools. My daughter will now be watching the Spanish channel with closed captioning on to help her in Spanish II. All Spanish teachers claim that the real learning takes place when a student can be immersed in the language. Well, the television is as close as we can get to Spain or Mexico right now!
In Chapter 4 Gallagher states that real-world models are best for helping students to learn how to write better. After seeing the examples, I would have to agree that there is noticeable improvement in the students’ writing. This does bring to mind, one of my daughter’s teachers. She insists that each paragraph have seven sentences. I always try to take the side of the teachers when any child questions a teacher’s practices. But truly I haven’t a clue why the number seven was chosen. I don’t think this is my daughter’s ELA teacher either. I advised my daughter to try to do as she was instructed and maybe the teacher would explain further later. Was I diplomatic enough? In my recent readings, I have not found any seven sentence paragraphs. I wonder if she has tried writing alongside her students to see the difficulty in writing seven sentence paragraphs.
The seven sentence paragraph leads me to chapter 5 and the “fake writing.” That is exactly what my daughter said about her writing in this particular teacher’s class. “Mom, it sounds like I am just making up things to put in the paragraphs.” I am afraid that she is going to start thinking that she can’t write well. I really don’t need this aggravation when she has already decided that she stinks at math because of geometry. How do I help her past this fake writing that the teacher insists that she complete? I don’t want her to hate writing because a teacher has convinced her that good writing has long paragraphs.
Maybe if the teacher gave her class the “find the fib” assignment those long paragraphs would flow. The funny thing is, Gallagher finds that narrowing the topic is most important so that the writing can be more focused. Most of the strategies are all about focusing on smaller writing. The topic blast, funneling, writing territories, and what bugs me are all about smaller writing.
After looking at my blog, I noticed that I have two paragraphs with seven sentences or more. I will suggest to Adrienne that she add questions and have a child, (later, much later) then she will be able to write seven sentence prargraphs.
Jim Trelease is my new hero. As Lendy said, he just has so much common sense. He verifies what we "old timers" have been saying for so long about parents' influence, and the closed-captioning information was so useful. I'll be passing that information along to my niece for her to use with her children!
In the text, Gallagher's chapter four also employs common sense strategies, including the real world models of movie reviews, restaurant reviews, etc. I loved Stephen King's line, " If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all else: read a lot and write a lot.There's no way around these two things that I'm aware, no shortcut."
In chapter five, Kelly's emphasis on student choice, autobiographical sketches, words of wisdom, etc. have all been proven true in my experience. Last year, I had a student ( I swear this is true!) take up an entire class period presenting his portfolio to the class. It was very good ,and not one student complained! True, that was costly time-wise, but the enthusiasm in presenting about himself and his choices in the portfolio was contageous!In summary,we had,as usual, more very good, practical information from the text and from the speaker.
Oops! Make that "contagious"! :)
Mr. Trelease reminded us again of the power of words, lots of words. I was particularly intrigued by the idea of using close-captioning when viewing TV. If my ESOL students view a film, we use the close-captioning if it is available. I’d also like to suggest it for my neighbor who is reading at a 2nd grade level in the 5th grade. I want to try to read with her several times a week, if possible, because no one is reading to her at home.
Another point Jim Trelease made was to emphasize the importance of reading to students beyond their own reading level, since our listening vocabularies are greater than our reading vocabularies. Personally, I’m intrigued by news reports from NPR – I’m literally starved for news and different perspectives. I can’t wait to get in my car at the end of the school day and listen to the news. It also helps me with my vocabulary! If I’m on a long trip I like to listen to books on tape or find talk shows with interesting guests.
Nancy Rollison
I've had a Jim Trelease book for years and years--and never realized how much I like him. He reminds me a little of Jonathan Kozol--but with more humor with his political jibes. Maybe it's the common sense approach to success and failure--?
Sometimes when I talk to a friend of mine who teaches at a school north of Seattle, WA, I feel like I'm not a hard enough or not a good enough teacher or that I dumb it down too much with certain things. But, then I see how some of the things that I do--things that I've gotten from the professional books in the last few years--and from this program,...then I feel better because I do see how so much of it works--if I take the time to do it well and do it right.
Which leads me away from Jim to the chapter in the book. While going through the chapter, I was reminded of a book--another one that I've had for years and have forgotten about: the title is something along the lines of _If you are going to teach kids to read, you've got to have this book_. It's just a packed in book of lots of ideas--many that are mentioned in Gallagher's book. I need to find that book again...
As I was reading chapter four I all I could think about was my Reading/Writing Workshop students. Trying to get them to write anything is like pulling teeth. The class reads and writes on a daily basis but the quality of reading is horrible. I have tried the “intensive hands-on writing instruction” but when they see me writing along with them they think it is time to stray from the task. I don’t know if I missed it in the reading but I was looking for a section on the students who just refuse to write.
In chapter five it talked about going beyond fake writing. I don’t know what side I am on when it come to this issue because I personally have a hard time deciding on what to write about if I am not given a specific topic. When I was given this option I would always waste days just trying to figure out what I should write about. I think for some students this would be more beneficial but for others I think this would just add a more pressure. Allowing students to choose their writing topics to me can be a benefit and a curse. I have asked my classes if there is a topic that they would like to write about and taken their opinions into account but as to giving them complete control of a topic I just don’t know.
I enjoyed Jim Trelease's seminar concerning the importance of reading to children. Along with Mrs. Rollison, I liked his comments about reading levels. He emphasized the importance of reading to them on levels that are slightly higher.
I also enjoyed reading the text selections regarding writing. There were several suggestions that I found helpful: Funnel graphic organizer and writing territory. I could use these activities with my classes. Also, the author mentioned the importance of giving students a choice in writing. My students seem to approach writing assignments much more quickly when they have choice on topics.
From his presentation, I would first like to say that he presented heavy material in a very light, entertaining method. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing him speak. The story that stands out most in my mind was his story of the 7 year old that did not attend school, but read all the books in his county library. From his reading, he was able to get accepted into college (demonstrating more knowledge than most college professors). This truly demonstrates the power reading has over one's education.
When I first started reading the assigned reading, I got very excited about the restaurant reviews. I thought, this would be great, especially in my hospitality management class. We could extend the exercise to theme park reviews, hotel reviews, etc. I like the use of model reviews to share with the students.
However, upon continuing to read the chapter, I discovered the RAGs approach. What a great way to get students reading and writing, critiquing and improving. I plan to use this often. For example, in marketing class, the students write a press release. There is an example in the book for the students to review first. From there, they could write their first drafts. We could share in small groups, eventually deciding on the best at that time. Students could then have the chance to edit their papers and do the activity again. The best would be used to share with various media outlets.
I went to Jim Trelease’s talk fully expecting to hear many things I had heard before. For this reason, I carried along my writer’s notebook and a printed draft of a story I’ve been working on—but I did little with the piece, other than shifting the tenses of some verbs as an experiment, because I found Trelease incredibly engaging. In addition to being entertaining, he was informative. A few cool ideas I had not heard before: book-baskets, reading to kids while they are doing something else, and using close-captioning (or is it closed-captioning?). In fact, this weekend when we played Elmo in Grouchland for Connor, who did more playing than watching, I used the subtitles. Interestingly, he seemed to notice the words. He stood close to the television, which we normally discourage, and I read aloud the words so that he might connect them to what the characters were saying. This held his interest for about five minutes—longer than usual—then he commenced to running around like a madman, pinballing off furniture and tripping over toys, and engaging in various other toddler-ish behaviors. But, I figure, if he starts to recognize words and how they connect to images—the same idea with books and illustrations—then he’s learning something already. Thank you, Jim Trelease.
Let me begin with Jim Trelease. I was so excited about seeing him as he was a tremendous part of my graduate studies at USC. Most of the information he shared was a refresher in what I had already studied. However, some of the statistics were quite impressive. I enjoyed listening to Mr. Trelease’s lecture—although that word seems highly inappropriate when referring to the author of the Read-Aloud Handbook.
I can listen to Jim Trelease over and over. He helps me remember what is important. Lee, I'm glad you did not want to work on your writing.
I wonder how we could get our high school parents to encourage their kids to read?
Remember: Don't be afraid to read aloud to your high school students!!!!
This is Greg Blashka's Post:
10-31-07
Blog on Jim Trelease
What a huge waste of money for the district. Bringing a national speaker in for this! Pathetic. What a shame that all those teachers had to sit through his speech last night. He made such an impression on me not so much from an educator standpoint but from a parent’s. It was a waste and shame on the district for not making his presentation mandatory for all K-4/5 parents. The impact that could have been made if more people from the community would have been there to hear him could have been major. I went into this with an attitude that “I’ve heard this all before” and that the fault of education lies with the schools and teachers. But was I mistaken. The message he had for parents in that education starts at the home and there is no replacement for it, does not need to be made to the educators, it needs to be made to the parents. I can’t even begin to imagine how many parents Jim could have affected. If only 2 or 3 at each elementary school were impacted, that would be 25-30 students we would see in the high schools down the line. This could be an entire class of below grade level students performing at or above an average level. Think about having one less no letter class (or CP class on the new watered down scale) and one more honors class? How much better would we function as a whole school?
This is Nancy Meares's Post:
As I said in my earlier blog, Jim Trelease is my new hero. As Lendy said, he just makes so much sense. He verifies what we “old timers” have been saying so long about parents’ influence on student performance, and the closed-captioning information was so useful. I’ll be passing that along to my niece for her to use with her children.
Scott noted Trelease’s point that literacy and the probability of success a student has is directly linked to the home environment. He also mentioned Trelease’s point about reading to children of all ages. Right now I am reading Lord of the Flies to my English IV students, and I know that I am having more success with this method than I would have had in asking them to read it. All novels do not lend themselves to this method, of course, nor do all classes, but it definitely has a place and an effect in the success of some readings. The reading aloud of this novel definitely falls under Trelease’s edict to read to students beyond their own reading level.
Mr. Trelease is a very effective speaker, one who is able to bring us some very sobering statistics yet in a hopeful presentation.
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