Saturday, March 14, 2015

Daniels & Zemelman Chapter 4 & 5

 After reading these chapters I could connect a lot of the main points to my actual life.  Around page 65 Daniels & Zemelman talk about how many non-fiction books use a solid organizational pattern.  Non-fiction books in sense ease in the reader to what is to be learned or what the main point of the
book is.
  A connection I immediately made is how books actually teach the reader.  Which I thought was interesting because I have always heard people talk about Malcolm X’s biography but I have never once heard anybody remark on something they have read in a textbook about Malcolm X.  This shows me that giving students non-fiction books can inform them sometimes better than a textbook.

Another point that I connected to my life was: “26 states are officially moving towards as they develop the Next Generation State Standards – depth versus coverage.”  This made me so excited because I will be starting to implement the Next Generation State Standards in my summer position.  On Friday I attended a meeting where we talked about how we will be implementing more hands on activities into our summer curriculum.  Totally excited!

After reading that some schools had a standard that their students had to read forty books a year, I was impressed.  I remember in middle school I had teachers who would set aside reading time for their students in class.  In those ten minutes I remember I would read and that is where I would find books that I actually liked.  That is where my lifelong love of reading grew.  A quote, which I enjoyed, was: “But real readers, lifelong readers, assign themselves (69).”  I think a lot of English majors can relate to this because English majors typically love reading, analyzing and talking about all areas of literature.


Chapter 5 was a compilation of tools for thinking for literature.  I read the tools and totally overlooked the chart that Daniels and Zemelman included.  Wow, so awesome that they included an actual tool for the tools, such a foolproof tool.  It shows to me that they really took time to think over what they wrote and are credible. 

2 comments:

  1. Hi Karen! I agree that nonfiction texts to engage the reader is an effective approach to help the student understand a period of time, such as the example you gave the Malcolm X biography. Although I was upset to find out the CCSS doesn't really "care for" the importance of fiction and poetry, there are some moments when the chapter points out the benefits of the CCSS which include independent reading and using reading as a way to understand as opposed to quickly get through an endless amount of information. Chapter Five I appreciated just as much as you, especially since we're both going for ELA, I think I'll definitely hold on to this book for future reference in case I ever run out of ideas in my own classroom! :)

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  2. Hey Karen, I am glad to see that you are making connections with what you read to your life. I like how you mentioned the Malcolm X biography to illuminate how implementing nonfiction pieces is beneficial in an ELA classroom. However, I wonder if the CCSS under appreciate fiction and poetry pieces? I, too, resonated with the quote about readers being able to assign themselves because I think it is important to instill an independence in readers because lifelong readers should be able to pick their own readings.

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