Blog 4: Chapters 1 and 8

     Usually, I cringe whenever the thought of having to read a textbook crosses my mind.  This textbook, however was a little easier to digest.  I found myself enjoying the readings in this book!  Chapters one and eight proved to be enlightening.  The first chapter seemed to hit the highlights of Dr. Stacy Reeves class (the one that connected to Dr. Hanna's about literacy strategies to use in the classroom.) When I say it hit the hightlghts, it didn't just skim the surface.  It went into depth.  A few startegies it mentioned were think-pair-share, jigsaw, and litature circles. In high-school, the extent we went to was think-pair-share. This is a good strategy. Don't get me wrong, but we only used this one strategy (if we were "good") that particular day. It became sort of monotonous. After an amount of time, the teacher could say "Ok, if y'all don't be good, y'all will have to work quietly at your desks." Of course the said students were like, "yeah, whatever." and continued not paying attention.  Can you see where new and exciting literacy strategies (or mixing up the many there are) and some classroom management could have been employed here? Anyways.. I digress.  In Dr. Hanna's class we tried the jigsaw strategy.  It wasn't too shabby.  We were put into groups, had to learn a concept and teach it to the group connecting to the other persons concept. We used powerpoint presentations to do this. Fun!. In Dr. Stacy's class we did Literature Circles, which is my all time favorite strategy so far. We read a book in our groups then created a portfolio, brought food to go with our story, presented our portfolio, and told how we would use this in our future elementary classrooms.
      Chapter eight was enjoyable as well.  It went into depth about writing.  Most children are writing constanly but either a) don't pay attention to the content, notes, etc. or b) don't care. They're just doing it so they don't get in trouble.  In this chapter I found multiple ways to incorporate writing in classrooms every day, in every subject in ways that students could even enjoy.. Sneaky!  I noticed in Math a certain teacher was making students write out how to solve a problem they were given.  This is a great idea because this can help them understand the problem they are solving and how it is solved.  When I was in elementary and high school, I never had to do this, yet when I started college, I had to do this for quite a few elementary math classes.  It was a learning experience and opened my eyes as to why some problems are worked the way they are.. We actually are still having to write down how we solved problems in Dr. Larmon's class. It not only incorporates writing into a subject that normally doesn't require any but also stimulates higher order thinking.
       After reading these chapters, I know I learned something.  That said, these chapters also raised a few questions.  If a student can't write down they way they worked something in a Math problem (say... that's just not how they think) couldnt' they just as well show you step by step or with manipulatives and tell you orally what they did? I guess what I'm asking is: Does writing have to be incorporated into everything?