How To Read As A Future Teacher?

The question that I have chosen for my inquiry project is: How can you improve performance in a first grade classroom with Guided Reading? I am interested in this since I teach first grade. As a first grade teacher I am always looking for ways to improve my class’s performance. Guided reading offers support to the students as they are learning. Rogoff suggested that “adults support children’s learning by structuring the task’s difficulty level, jointly participating in problem solving, focusing the learner’s attention to the task, and motivating the learner.” (Frey & Fisher, 2010, 84).

The motivation for the quest is implicit- the stated reason for going on the journey is

Explain the Simple View of Reading and its applications for teaching in relation to your SE1 context, with particular reference to strategies for teaching and assessing reading.

Ever since he bought his first book he said it changed his life. According to the passage he viewed the books as,”...a chance to see the world without leaving home.” He says that reading a book is not the same as reading a text. He thinks not enough people read books and too many read and use social media. “Books, to me, were powerful and transformational.”is another of his views in the text.

As I was reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I was thinking about how much I have missed in the books I have read due to not knowing how to look for certain literary devices. Something as simple as not knowing how to read between the lines caused me to miss out on points the author was trying to make. Over the course of reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I have learned many ways to analyze literature that I did not know before.

How do memory, symbol, and pattern affect the reading of literature? How does the recognition of patterns make it easier to read complicated literature? Discuss a time when your appreciation of a literary work was enhanced by understanding symbol or pattern.

Foster discusses the idea that when two characters eat together, that moment acts as a bonding experience and causes the characters to come together. I had never noticed the significance of a meal between characters before. After reading this chapter, I can think of so many moments in stories when the characters share a meal together to form friendships or come to a peace. In one of my favorite novels, Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, Picoult writes that “Emma Alexis- who was one of the cool, beautiful girls…she rolled her wheelchair right beside Justin. She’d asked him if she could have half of his donut” (367). Splitting the donut between one of the popular girls and one of the quieter, nerdier boys was a representation of the deformation of the high school social classes. After reading this chapter, I could recall the significance of meals together in so many novels and movies but I never noticed this pattern before.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster is a book that explains there is more to literature than just a few words on a paper or a few pages in a book. Thomas Foster’s book portrays a relatable message to a wide based audience. This book is relatable for two reasons, the way it is written and the examples it uses. The book is written in a conversational manner, as if the reader was in a group discussion about books and writing. As for the examples, they are informative, descriptive, relative, and entertaining.

In the book “How To Read Literature Like A Professor” by Thomas C. Foster, many elements are brought to the reader’s attention. Three of these elements, happen to connect with the novel, “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” written by Mark Haddon.

Intertextuality is the ongoing interaction between poems or stories. Romeo and Juliet, and the Titanic are two examples

-Flight is freedom. When a character has the ability to fly they are free from the burdens of everyday life.

Think of a work of literature that reflects a fairy tale. Discuss the parallels. How does it create irony or deepen appreciation?

The third chapter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster writes of the recognizable pattern where a “nasty old man, attractive but evil, violates young women, leaves his mark on them, steals their innocence … and leaves them helpless followers in his sin” (Foster 16). In the fourth episode of the fourteenth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the detectives discover a girl from an accident with a barcode tattoo who was thought to be part of a sex slavery ring. The detectives tried questioning the girl, but she refused to release any details about the slavery. After questioning, she was picked up by an older girl who also had a barcode tattoo. The detectives promised to help the older girl if she would just stay

In the book ‘How to read literature like a professor’ the author uses symbolism throughout the book. Foster uses this technique so he can use objects, and short stories to help the readers understand what is really going on without being blunt about it. Symbolism is using an object or word to represent an idea. This style of writing challenges the reader to use their imagination to really grasp what is really going on.

For the reasons stated in another post I made, with all the reading and writing that is required as a college student, added to the necessity of remembering everything just to get a passing grade in the classes, the last thing I want to do is read something heavy that requires thinking. For the near future anyway, I don't think I will find myself actually analyzing the stories I choose to read. There is enough other things I will be reading during my college years to have to analyze that I honestly don't see myself consciously changing my method of