Monster Wrote Me

I Remember that time I had that one page essay assigned back in my 5th grade English class and I thought to myself, “How on earth will I possibly write one page on something I hardly know anything about or share little to no interest on”. Well that 1 page essay is not looking so terrible now that college is here and the minimum amount of pages for most essays is up to 3 pages. Writing has been something that has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was first introduced to it in my preschool days, it wasn’t anything too insane, mostly just single words with a picture of whatever the word was above it. But for the amount of time writing has been in my life the one concept that truly defined literacy for

On February 20, Trevor Muir, a teacher and author of The Epic Classroom, delivered a presentation on how we can revolutionize our future classrooms to make them places where students feel safe and desire to learn. Muir believes that stories are the way to capture students’ attention because they are universal. When we hear stories, our brain goes through a process called neural coupling. As the story is being told, our brain does not realize that we are not actually present and going through the same events as being told in the story. We need to incorporate story into our classroom by developing authentic student work. Have them create a product that is meaningful and builds their excitement. If students are not excited about what they are doing, there will be no motivation.

This unit is designed for first grade as an introduction to inferring and visualizing. Students will learn how to make an inference, how to visualize and how to apply both these skills while reading poetry, non-fiction and narrative non-fiction. Each lesson focuses on a different aspect and applications of these essential literacy skills.

Content area teachers can implement strategies and scaffold learning when planning and designing instruction so that students will actively engage in literacy. According to Dobbs, content area reading instruction includes: the information present in the text, and the instructional plan teachers use to help students understand the content (2003, p.3). Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz explain that in order to plan instruction effectively, teachers must be aware of the explicit and functional dimensions of content literacy. The explicit aspect of content literacy involves the development of skills and strategies that enable students to comprehend what they are reading. Functional instruction focuses more on the application of strategies needed to derive knowledge from a variety of sources of information.” (2014, p. 134). Forget defined literacy as “listening, thinking, reading, and speaking in such a way that information and ideas are processed and communicated to the benefit of self and society” (2003, p. 5). Content area teachers need to plan and design lessons so that students will actively engage in literacy. Forget goes on to discuss that poor performance in schools can be do to a lack of basic literacy skills. Therefore, teachers need to implement the skills and strategies found to be successful in literacy to ensure

This learning activity has the students looking more deeply into their chosen book using a more critical mind rather than just enjoying the book for its basic story line. It has them taking note of what is happening at each stage of the book and why these events are taking place, then taking this information they have gathered and developing a written report to convey their thoughts and ideas in the book along with developing the skills necessary to produce a piece of writing that is easy to read and understand for the reader. This activity also has a lot of hidden features to the task, such as using the correct grammar, development of sentence structure and use of creative thinking to make the piece interesting to the reader.

If you are supporting pupils literacy development you will need to be aware of your schools English or literacy policy. This will outline your schools approach to the teaching of reading, writing, speaking and listening and should follow local or national guidelines. In England and Wales, the National Primary Literacy Framework outlines the structure for the teaching of literacy. It shows 12 strands of learning which a child must be taught throughout

The essential literacy strategy goes along with the standards and learning objectives by using context clues to help the student figure out unknown or unfamiliar words. Students will build reading comprehension skills by using context clues for figuring out unknown or unfamiliar words while they are reading. Then the students will perform the strategies individually. The related skills address the use of prior knowledge of synonyms and antonyms during the hook and transition portion of the lesson. The reading and writing connections go along with the learning objectives, because the students will read their assigned book and picking out words they do not understand. The students will have to write the sentence with the unknown word in it, and use context clues to figure out the definition of the unknown word. The central focus for this unit of study is for the students to use context clues to better their comprehension of what they have read in their assigned books. The students will be able to use context clues within sentences to determine the meaning of unknown or unfamiliar words. These lessons deal with comprehending text by using context clues to help figure out unknown words. The lessons build off each other by adding more detail to learning about context clues. As the lessons progress the students will be more independent when using context clues. The first lesson is learning about what context clues are. The second lesson will focus on using context clues to figure

I have never been the type of student who enjoyed reading or writing. I have always found it difficult to express myself by writing narratives, book reports, and any other required assignment. I am far more skilled at speaking or verbal expression in general as I have found over the years that people tend to misunderstand my point if it is written.

To ensure that the students clearly grasp the theme of the previous day’s story, the students and the teacher went over this. Once the teacher had a clear understanding that the students can use character development to identify the theme of a story, she placed the students into three different groups and gave them

With the text being predictable and the story having a fairly common story, students should be able to pause and make their own predict what may happen

The unit relies heavily on the text to draw students’ attention to areas of importance, but dives into actual aspects of our society (both past and present) to allow them to create connections to their own experiences and explore topics that they are most likely going to face throughout their lives. Students are asked think about information in creative and unfamiliar ways, giving them the opportunity to call upon previously acquired knowledge in new ways while also gaining new information. The lessons are written so students start with material they are familiar with, then goes on to expand their thinking through the use of higher order questions aimed at giving them a platform for building their own understanding and connections. By tethering all the lessons to the book, students are able to become familiar with the text, which, as I mentioned before, allows them to stretch and expand their thinking beyond their current comfort

As a result, children will engage in creating their own character profile and recognise the importance of using language to form a connection with the character. • The second lesson, Modelled Writing focus’ on identifying how ideas, feelings and events are presented in narrative writing (ACELA1463) (ACARA, n.d.). Children will innovate an alternate ending for ‘Pig the Pug’ through positioning themselves as the writer (ACELT1833) (ACARA, n.d.). • The third lesson, focus’ on the importance of reading text with expression (ACELY1671) (ACARA, n.d.).

When readers use this school readers can evaluate tone, point of view, themes, ironies, figures of speech, imagery, ambiguities, paradoxes, word usage and meaning, connotation, allusions, symbols, and the relationship between the title and the text. Analyzing these concepts will allow the reader to understand the author emotionally and physically.

I would have students explore the protagonist, antagonist and supporting characters in depth to examine their traits, motivations, relationships and how they drive the story as a whole.

Young children are like sponges; they absorb information like a sponge absorbs water. It is essential for them to be emerged in an environment in which they can absorb positive information so that one day they can become contributing members of our society and have a better future. For this reason, there is a pronounced importance on providing enriching environments for children to learn and develop appropriately. One of the ways that this can be achieved is through a literacy rich environment specifically with the use of story reading and storytelling.