Focus+Chapter+4

Focus - Chapter 4

Sara T- Being an English teacher, I read chapter 4: English Language Arts Made Simple. There are some things I agreed with and many that I didn't. I agree with Schmoker that there needs to be MUCH more reading and writing. I am working with my students now on writing a research paper (including citations/works cited) and sadly, many of them have never done this before. Talk about not being prepared for college! They aren't even prepared for high school! I agree that after completing a K-12 education here in America, many people aren't ready for the real world. WHY is that?! We, as educators, should be preparing them for the things they need to know. I remember being in my senior year of college and not even knowing how to write a resume! How do kids who go to work right after high school learn to do those things? But above all, what really stuck out to me was Schmoker's suggestion to reduce the number of standars we have to teach. AMEN!! It's nearly impossible to teach them all and like he said, there's no way we could effectively teach even half of them. Sometimes it seems like this guy is right on and other times it seems like he's in right field! :/

debgslp: I picked this chapter as my field deals with how we speak and make the sounds. The author confirmed a point that I had been struggling with for the past several years and that is "Reading comprehension is not a skill that can be taught directly". So many people seem to think that this is an area that we teach. But according to what the author says, "We learn to read well by reading a lot for meaning, to analyze or support arguments, to arrive at our own opinions as we make inferences or attempt to solve problems." Some do not seem to grasp that it takes practice to accomplish tasks and reading is very important in every aspect of our lives, whether we like to read or not. "We learn better by reading and not learning skills". Maybe the curriculum should combine standards instead of separating them into categories. It could focus on things we need to know (the s imple basics) and build foundations from there, significantly reducing the quantity and going for Quality!!!. We need to come up with a different plan to help our students since what we are currently doing does not seem to be working. I really found this chapter enlightening and would like for others to read it as well.

I read Ch 4 because I am teaching ISTEP Remediation in Language. I would have to agree that we need much more emphasis on reading and writing skills. Students need to be encouraged to read and write in every subject. The more they practice these skills the better they will get. We are really stressing both of these skills in Remediation. I feel that the students are picking up nicely. They seem truly interested and willing to participate. They do need to learn how to write research papers. They have many research papers in their futures if they continue on to college. I feel there should be fewer standards also. There are way too many of them to allow for success in all of them.