Daniels and Zemelman Chapters 5 and 6

Chapter five consists of tools teachers can use in their classrooms. These reading strategy activities are impressive. There were a few that were very familiar from my education classes but there were so many that were new and contained activities I never would have thought to do. The authors even included when these activities and strategies would be most useful whether it is before, during, or after reading. I enjoyed the post it response notes activity and I may be able to use that in my classroom. If I can find an article or a passage from an article that is at the right reading level for my class this would be perfect for them. I also liked the “Sketching my way through the text” activity. Many important ideas in biology can be better understood by drawing the concept out. I think a lot of my students would like this opportunity more than simply taking notes. All of the activities seemed like they could be helpful to a wide variety of classes.

Chapter six focuses on ways to make textbooks friendlier to our students.  I have learned from my experience in my school that I can assume my students know nothing. Often I am astonished at how little they know. This does not mean knowledge in my content, but general education skills such as note taking skills. I have to tailor my teaching to include these skills as well so naturally I would have to assume that some students may not know how to effectively read a textbook. Similar to chapter five I found the activities and strategies to interesting, some of them have real merit and could be used in my classroom. The vocabulary word sorts would be useful in my classroom. There is a lot of vocabulary in biology and it really drives the content in a lot of occasions. By getting students to confirm what they believe some vocabulary to mean and guessing at other words they can test their hypothesis later when they learn what the vocabulary actually means, which is a SPI the state likes to emphasize. I do not believe my CP high school students will be as enthusiastic about reading the chapter as Kathleen’s students were, but it could still be effective. Overall, both chapters five and six were good. I found the reading strategies/tools to be valuable and many have possibilities of being incorporated into my classroom.