With all of the textbooks available in the market, often written by famous authors with years of experience, choosing a textbook is a very demanding and thought provoking task. What makes a textbook valuable in the classroom? We must decide which points are important to us as teachers. What method or methods does the textbook use to convey its ideas? How is the language presented? Is it attractive to the audience? Are there additional materials that can be used to supplement our book such as additional listening or video material, web search ideas, interactive whiteboard software and other additional resources that could be used to enhance the class? Along with these criterion we must analyze the differences between textbooks to come up with the optimal choice for our needs. There are many different approaches used to teach the four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking, the tactic we take as to which one best suits the intended audience will depend on the necessities of the group to be taught, as well as the teacher’s personal preference as to method of teaching. Let’s look at these two textbook chapters and compare the way they look at the four basic skills.
In this paper we will work with two book chapters from two different sources. The books used are Bachillerato Made Easy, by Richmond Publishingi and the unit ‘Botellón!ii’ from an English textbook published in the Basque Country (2010) for teenagers. Both texts are from books whose intended audience are teenagers studying in the Spanish school system. The audience is one of the only things both texts have in common. The Richmond textbook is older both in publishing date, 2001, and in style and content. It follows a traditional textbook pattern, alternating...
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...uggestions to improve the way teenagers are able to participate productively in their own town. It would need to be balanced with additional material to make it truly 'integrated', but leaves room for creativity in both assessment and implementation.
In conclusion we have seen the different ways these textbooks use learning stratagies and multiple methodologies to meet the requirements of the Spanish school system. Penny Ur's comparison of the a tapestry is a very good metephor for integrated skills. We could say the topic is the warp, and the different skills, the weft. All of them are intertwined to form a tapestry. They all build on each other, producing a pleasing product, whether it be a competent language learner, or a decorative item. Neither of these books is perfect, but they could be complmented with additional material to form our pleasing work of art.
Fountas, I., C., & Pinnel, G. S., (2009). When readers struggle: Teaching that works. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
The teaching strategy focuses on the student’s engagement to create reading with meaning. This reading strategy allows students to have more freedom to make their own decisions in what they read and how they read, without the teacher forcing materials upon them. As well, more time is allotted during the school day for students to engage in reading activities, instead of using traditional methods of writing paper and answering questions on a worksheet after reading a book. The Daily Five teaching strategy also strongly develops oral communication skills within students and their peers. By doing so, it creates a sense of community in the classroom that traditional teaching methods did not have. This teaching strategy allows the student to question the material they are reading, which includes their interests, ability to comprehend, and understanding vocabulary. Through the Daily Five teaching strategy, students are also able to find books that interests them, without the teacher giving them group of “leveled” books students may not personally
Behrens, Laurence, and Leonard J. Rosen, eds. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 7th ed. NewYork: Longman, 2000.
Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Tenth edition. Edited by Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Longman Publishers, pp. 371-377, 2008.
Tchudi, Susan J, and Stephen Tchudi. The English Language Arts Handbook: Classroom Strategies for Teachers. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1999. Print.
Additionally, literacy does not only refer to reading. Literacy also refers to writing, discussing, and becoming fluent in the specific subject area. The original curriculum for my Hebrew reading classes only covered decoding. Yet, as I personalized my classes more, I began incorporating other aspects of literacy, including comprehension, writing, and discussion, and I noticed a vast improvement in my students’ overall learning. With my math students, too, as I incorporated different aspects of literacy related to my students’ personal learning styles, I noticed further
MacPherson, K. (2005). Audio books can be a great learning tool [Electronic version]. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Retrieved February 12, 2008, from http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05318/606016-75.stm
In order for students to see themselves as reader, the students will work with various aspects of reading instruction. These four informative formats, word recognition, directions cards, picture/phrase cards, and story book, students are exposed to a specific set of words in a errorless situation in order to develop the phonemic awareness skills needed to become a successful
...ssion about gangs. These discussions could lead to a real learning experience, not only for the student but, for the educator as well. Parents should become more involved with their children’s school activities. Sometimes parents have to respect their child feelings and attitudes. They have to help their child develop a strong sense of self-esteem. Children’s should be encouraged to study good study habits. The community has to get involve with the gang stoppers. The mayor of the town has to invest in places where kids could go ad hang out at. The school principal could bring in an ex-gang member to talk to the students about how he or she lived. Also, they could talk to them about how they went to jail and what made them change their life. Parents could set a curfew and stick to that curfew. You could check your child room for drug’s, weapons, and excessive money.
We will focus on what we call novel of education - and the purpose of the essay will be that, to...
First and foremost, Jones and McLachlan (2009) argue that the acquisition of a new language within the classroom setting is best achieved when key linguistic competences such as, speaking, listening, writing and reading are interlinked to create a whole language experience (Jones and Coffey 2013; Kirsch 2008). Gardner (1983) researched into cognitive processes and suggested in his seminal theory that there is the existence of seven forms of intelligence, which are regularly targeted within the MFL lessons, such as kinaesthetic, visual, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, logical and verbal-linguistic learning (Goswami and Bryant 2007; Jones and Coffey 2013; White 2005). This suggests that if teachers provide opportunities for the pupils to access and participate in the learning, and make available ample opportunities for pupils to contribute their understanding (McCallum et al. 2000; Pachler et al. 2007) that children can be assessed using different assessment strategies suited to the learning style (LGfL 2011). As a result the scheme of work (Appendix 1) adopts a range of kinaesthetic, visual, audible learning strategies throughout and using a range of resources also allows assessment to consider the l...
... for teachers to choose materials that will hook students and motivate them to engage in their own learning. Teachers should provide multiple learning opportunities in which stu¬dents can experience success and can begin to build confidence in their ability to read, write, and think at higher level. By connecting strategies for learning, such as searching, compre¬hending, interpreting, composing, and teaching content knowledge, students are given the opportunity to succeed in their education. These elements include: fundamental skills such as phonemic awareness, phonemic decoding, and other word analysis skills that support word reading accuracy; text reading fluency; strategies for building vocabulary; strategies for understanding and using the specific textual features that distinguish different genres; and self-regulated use of reading comprehension strategies.
Reading and writing is a key part of everyone’s life. There has been some encouraging levels of reading development in primary school assessments. According to the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy report (2015), 95.5% of students achieve at or above the national minimum standard of reading. It is important to know effective ways to teach reading so children can become active problem solvers to enable them to read for meaning or for fun. Over the years, there has been a big amount of research into the most effective ways to teach reading skills to students. There are some systematically taught key skills and strategies that help achieve these levels of reading. Some of these skills include phonological awareness, phonemic awareness,
Therefore, exposing students to the language of the real world helps them acquire an effective receptive competence in the target language (Guariento & Morley, 2001). As stated in the unit from Bachillerato Made Easy, the reading passage is about friendship, which is a meaningful topic for adolescents, and students of all ages, so this promotes the use of the target language. Likewise, in the unit Botellon, students are required to listen to several points of view on the Botellon issue form different types of
Senge, P., Cambron-McCabe, N., Lucas, T., Smith, B., Dutton, J. & Kleiner, A. (2012). Schools that Learn (pp. 32-69). Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.