Category: picklerickPortfolio

Bibliography – picklerick

  1. Amanda Christy Brown and Katherine Schulten. (2012, December 13). Fiction or Nonfiction? Considering the Common Core’s Emphasis on Informational Text. Retrieved March 02, 2018.

Background: This article debates whether or not the new version of the Common Core Standards is beneficial in its emphasis on informational text. It relays the opinions of teachers and journalists about what students should be reading.

How I used it: This article helped me realize that both fiction and nonfiction literature are important in the classroom. It also taught me how the Common Core Standards are always changing.

  1. Bartlett, B. (2014, June 20). 4 Bad Side Effects of Reading Fiction According to the 19th Century. Retrieved March 02, 2018.

Background: This article discusses how reading for fun isn’t quite as beneficial as reading to gain knowledge. It goes over four “bad side effects” of reading fiction.

How I used it: Although I do not agree that these side effects will happen to anyone who reads fiction, the article did give me some good points toward what happens when you skim text and don’t get the full benefits out of it. It helped me in my paragraph where I compare books to film.

  1. Dakin, C. (2013). The Effects of Comprehension Through Close Reading (Unpublished masters thesis). St. John Fisher College.

Background: This dissertation discusses, in depth, the effect close reading has on students’ levels of comprehension. It provides studies and interviews that compare how teaching close reading differs from general reading education.

How I used it: This paper helped me realize how important close reading is in the classroom. I used the quote from Caitlin Dakin, “It is essential in today’s educational world that teachers begin to transform their classroom instruction of fiction literature into short informational complex texts to give the students the opportunity to meet the demands of the common core learning standards.”

  1. Goodwin, B., & Miller, K. (n.d.). Research Says / Nonfiction Reading Promotes Student Success. Retrieved April 17, 2018.

Background: This article gives statistics that show how children, on average, spend less that four minutes a day reading nonfiction. It discusses the new emphasis on nonfiction in the Common Core Standards. It also gives advice on how teaching should change to meet these standards.

How I used it: This article gave me solid examples to how the change in the  Common Core Standards will affect teaching in the future. It also helped show me that informational texts are as important for student success as narrative texts.

  1. Is fiction good for you? How researchers are trying to find out. (2016, July 19). Retrieved April 17, 2018.

Background: This article challenges the idea that reading fiction encourages empathy. It ultimately proves that fiction does, indeed, improve empathy.

How I used it: I used this article to help strengthen my argument that books are just another form of media. It says books are merely “a piece of consciousness being passed from mind to mind” which made sense to me.

  1. Matthews, C. E., Chen, K. Y., Freedson, P. S., Buchowski, M. S., Beech, B. M., Pate, R. R., & Troiano, R. P. (2008). Amount of Time Spent in Sedentary Behaviors in the United States, 2003-2004. American Journal of Epidemiology, 167(7), 875-881.

Background: This study reveals how much time people really spend doing sedentary behaviors on a day to day basis. It gives statistics from the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey which show that people spend an average of 7.7 hours each day doing sedentary behaviors.

How I used it: I used statistics from this article to prove my argument that there is a growing problem of adults staying sedentary for too long.

  1. Owen, N., Healy, G. N., Matthews, C. E., & Dunstan, D. W. (2010). Too Much Sitting. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews,38(3), 105-113.

Background: This article discusses how being sedentary for to long is bad for metabolic heath. It points out the difference between too much sitting and too little exercise.How I used it: I used this information to explain why activities like watching TV or readig books should be done in moderation in order to maximize metabolic health.

  1. Pennington Publishing Blog. (n.d.). Why Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) Doesn’t Work. Retrieved March 17, 2018.

Background: This article points to why SSR is not a good use of class time and how there are better, and more effective ways to get kids to benefit from reading.

How I used it: I used the quote from Mark Pennington, “Students often choose books with reading levels far below or far above own their reading levels and so do not experience optimal reading growth.” to prove that when you give kids SSR they won’t make the most out of their class time.

  1. Shanahan. (2012, June 18). What is Close

Background: This blog explains what close reading is and what it is meant to help with. It points out how to close read in three main steps. It also discusses why the Common Core Standards have such an emphasis on close reading.

How I used it: I used this post to gain a wider knowledge on the subject of close reading. It informed me on how to practice close reading, as well as how teachers should teach it. This mainly improved my paragraph where I offer advice on how teachers should teach close reading to their students.

  1. Strauss, V. (2014, September 08). Why kids should choose their own books to read in school. Retrieved March 17, 2018.

Background: This article gives reasons why letting students choose their own books helps them start reading more often. It also gives reasons why SSR is not an effective method for getting students to read. SThese reasons include how SSR takes up too much time and how there’s a lack of appealing books available in the classroom.

How I used it: The information in this article showed me that Students should read what they want, but not in a SSR setting. The arguments against SSR were very useful to me as well as they increased my knowledge on the subject.

 

Research – picklerick

Reading more nonfiction literature is a fantastic way to sharpen your brain. This sounds obvious, but so many people have the wrong idea when it comes to fiction vs. nonfiction. When one reads informational text, it requires careful attention and effort to be fully comprehended. Whereas when fiction or science fiction is being read, it’s likely being read purely for pleasure.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. Plenty of people may read fiction with excellent focus and attention to detail. The thing is, these people are missing out on the immense amount of knowledge and understanding of the world that nonfiction junkies get to experience. Those who just read books for fun can stick to whatever they want to read, but those who are trying to get real, practical benefits from their reading should always lean toward nonfiction.

Public schooling often fails to teach the proper way to close read text. According to Ness (2011), students are struggling with close reading at an increasing rate. A few factors play into this. Kids in elementary school through high school are often given assignments where they’re asked to independently read and log a brief description of what they read in a reading journal. This sounds like a simple and reliable way to get kids into reading. In reality, though, this form of reading assignment gives adolescents major apprehension towards reading and is often the reason why they are so turned off to reading by the time they get to highschool. When kids feel forced to read, they won’t want to. This is why many schools need to rethink the way they’re teaching kids to read by focusing heavily the basics of close reading.

Caitlin Dakin states, in her thesis paper, “It is essential in today’s educational world that teachers begin to transform their classroom instruction of fiction literature into short informational complex texts to give the students the opportunity to meet the demands of the common core learning standards.” Read what you will, but be aware of how much benefit you are really getting from your reading.

Books are really just another form of media. There may be obvious physical differences between these medias, but at their baselines they are both delivery methods for a story. People often feel as if a hobby of reading is something that has higher acclaim than a hobby of watching TV or movies. Film has its perks though. For example, a screen can deliver language as well as picture, whereas a book will only give you the language. This may make it more difficult to get an idea of the mood of a piece of writing. Whereas, in a movie, you can see the the emotion on the face of each actor and often hear it in the music.

This is not to say reading is worse than film, as there are many benefits to reading as well. Books will often present an internal dialogue of its characters. Whereas, in television, only the exterior motives are shown. Also, reading will improve one’s vocabulary. Anyone who reads often will probably come across words that they do not know very well. This causes them to make inferences about the meanings, thus improving their ability to interpret words.

Both reading and film have wonderful benefits, including improvement of knowledge, empathy, and vocabulary. But too much of anything is bad. There is a growing problem of adults staying sedentary for too long. A study by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) concluded that an average of 60% of adults’ waking hours are spent sedentary (Matthews). This is detrimental to our health because without an active lifestyle, your whole body slows down. In his manuscript, “Too Much sitting: The Population-Health Science of Sedentary Behavior,” Neville Owens suggests, “Canadians who reported spending the majority of their day sitting had significantly poorer long-term mortality outcomes than did those who reported that they spent less time sitting.” It may sound appealing to sit down these medias all day. But it’s always important to watch how much time is spend on these activities.

The well-intentioned strategy of allowing students to choose their own reading material most often fails. To pad their grades, unambitious students choose easy-readers below their achieved comprehension level, while go-getters overreach, sacrificing the comprehension they need. As Mark Pennington puts the case in his article on the Pennington Publishing Blog, “Students often choose books with reading levels far below or far above own their reading levels and so do not experience optimal reading growth.” One approach to this issue is for teachers who want students to enjoy reading to let them select their own material from a list of grade-appropriate choices. This gives the students moderate choice without risk of jeopardizing learning. To encourage them to read what they enjoy, teachers can permit students to nominate new material for the list.

A better way to help these kids develop their reading skills is to assign them books that the teachers have already read. This ensures the teacher’s ability to guide their students down the right path. Another way to aid students is to teach them how to close read. Close reading is a form of reading in which the reader carefully analyzes a text in order to gain maximum comprehension from it. It shows kids how to truly read a text, rather than just skimming through it. It is an essential skill for all people, and should be juiced in classrooms of all levels for its benefits.

The best way to teach these students how to properly close read is to assign them short, nonfiction texts that challenge their ability to analyze, comprehend, and make inferences. Both the teacher and the student should analyze a reading passage and examine it for details, some of which include understanding how the text works, the author’s message, providing text evidence to support thoughts and predictions the reader is developing, and making connections between the reader and the text itself (Shanahan, 2012). As long as these methods are carried out properly, students will have the reading skills necessary to make them more successful and intelligent.

References

Amanda Christy Brown and Katherine Schulten. (2012, December 13). Fiction or Nonfiction? Considering the Common Core’s Emphasis on Informational Text. Retrieved March 02, 2018, from https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/fiction-or-nonfiction-considering-the-common-cores-emphasis-on-informational-text/

Bartlett, B. (2014, June 20). 4 Bad Side Effects of Reading Fiction According to the 19th Century. Retrieved March 02, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/beth-bartlett/4-bad-side-effects-of-rea_b_5513451.html

Dakin, C. (2013). The Effects of Comprehension Through Close Reading (Unpublished masters thesis). St. John Fisher College.
https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=education_ETD_masters

Goodwin, B., & Miller, K. (n.d.). Research Says / Nonfiction Reading Promotes Student Success. Retrieved April 17, 2018, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec12/vol70/num04/Nonfiction-Reading-Promotes-Student-Success.aspx

Is fiction good for you? How researchers are trying to find out. (2016, July 19). Retrieved April 17, 2018, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160719131334.htm

Matthews, C. E., Chen, K. Y., Freedson, P. S., Buchowski, M. S., Beech, B. M., Pate, R. R., & Troiano, R. P. (2008). Amount of Time Spent in Sedentary Behaviors in the United States, 2003-2004. American Journal of Epidemiology, 167(7), 875-881. doi:10.1093/aje/kwm390

 

 

Owen, N., Healy, G. N., Matthews, C. E., & Dunstan, D. W. (2010). Too Much Sitting. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews,38(3), 105-113. doi:10.1097/jes.0b013e3181e373a2
Pennington Publishing Blog. (n.d.). Retrieved March 17, 2018, from http://blog.penningtonpublishing.com/reading/why-sustained-silent-reading-ssr-doesnt-work/
Shanahan, T. (2012). What is close reading? Retrieved from
http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2012/06/what-is-close-reading.html

Strauss, V. (2014, September 08). Why kids should choose their own books to read in school. Retrieved March 17, 2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/08/why-kids-should-choose-their-own-books-to-read-in-school/?utm_term=.a1d60b23343c

Reflective – picklerick

Core Value 1. My work demonstrates that I used a variety of social and interactive practices that involve recursive stages of exploration, discovery, conceptualization, and development.

I feel that my work throughout this Comp. II course has definitely been an interactive and social process. With each piece of feedback and each revision, I have acquired an increased sense of improvement for my work. My professor, Dr. Hodges, provided me with thorough feedback on my Causal Argument essay. His feedback included critique on my reference section, which I was then able to fix. It also included advice on how to change my approach to the topic. My approach started out very linear, and with this advice, I realized I needed to take a different path. I feel like my work made some great improvements by the second draft (the Causal Argument Rewrite). I basically changed my approach from “reading fiction is bad for you” to “reading more nonfiction is a great way to sharpen your brain.”  After then showing my revision to a friend, I was able to fix some wording and grammatical issues.

Core Value 2. My work demonstrates that I read critically, and that I placed texts into conversation with one another to create meaning by synthesizing ideas from various discourse communities. 

I have experience with reading text critically to analyze it. This is apparent in my Safer Saws assignment, where I analyzed the claims made by five separate people about a table saw called the SawStop. The saw is special because the blade stops before your hand can touch it.  Each claim I analyzed had a different view of the saw. For example, an article written about a competitor saw (the Whirlwind) saw the SawStop as an inferior product. I was able to analyze the type of claim made by this article and whether or not it is reasonable, logical, and persuasive. I also feel like I learned a lot about close reading through my Research Paper. This is because I happened to write a lot about close reading in my paper, thus informing me more on the topic.

Core Value 3. My work demonstrates that I rhetorically analyzed the purpose, audience, and contexts of my own writing and other texts and visual arguments.

I feel that when I first wrote my Rebuttal Argument essay, I didn’t fully take into account the audience and context. I aimed to make the essay about how I think teachers should rethink the way they teach reading to kids in elementary through high school. With the help of prof. Hodges, though, I was able to state my claims much more effectively in my Rebuttal Rewrite essay. I acknowledged that my target audience was grade school teachers and restated my claims in a manner that would be more well-received by them. My tone in the original essay was more harsh toward this audience, using phrases such as, “teachers have the wrong idea.” After revisions, my tone was lighter and more logical, using phrases like, “Grade school teachers often have a difficult time expressing the joy of reading to their students.”

Core Value 4: My work demonstrates that I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations.

The Visual Rhetoric assignment was great practice for using illustrations in writing. I gave a thorough analysis of a thirty-six second Ad Council video. I did this by pausing the video every few seconds, taking in what I just saw, and putting it into words. This improved my ability to describe a scene in such a way that if someone hadn’t seen the video they could still visualize it with ease. Throughout this semester, I have discovered many sources that I have incorporated in my writing. In my Whitepaper, I provide a master list that contains all the sources I used in my Research Paper. For each source, I give a brief explanation of the content of the article and describe what the article proves. This was a great way to organize my sources and keep my research feeling more clean.

Core Value 5. My work demonstrates that I respect my ethical responsibility to represent complex ideas fairly and to the sources of my information with appropriate citation. 

I always make sure to cite my sources properly when using a quote or paraphrase from them. This can be shown in my Rebuttal Argument essay. I found an article from the Pennington Publishing Blog that describes why students don’t get much out out reading assignments when they chose their own books. I used the quote in my essay and made sure to attribute Mark Pennington in the essay. I also used proper italicization for the title of the blog. It is unfair when people take information from others without proper attribution, and downright wrong to steal someone’s exact wording. This highlights how important it is to credit sources properly. All the sources I used can also be found in my Whitepaper, along with a description of what each source contains and what they prove.

Rebuttal Rewrite – picklerick

The well-intentioned strategy of allowing students to choose their own reading material most often fails. To pad their grades, unambitious students choose easy-readers below their achieved comprehension level, while go-getters overreach, sacrificing the comprehension they need. As Mark Pennington puts the case in his article on the Pennington Publishing Blog, “Students often choose books with reading levels far below or far above own their reading levels and so do not experience optimal reading growth.” One approach to this issue is for teachers who want students to enjoy reading to let them select their own material from a list of grade-appropriate choices. This gives the students moderate choice without risk of jeopardizing learning. To encourage them to read what they enjoy, teachers can permit students to nominate new material for the list.

A better way to help these kids develop their reading skills is to assign them books that the teachers have already read. This ensures the teacher’s ability to guide their students down the right path. Another way to aid students is to teach them how to close read. Close reading is a form of reading in which the reader carefully analyzes a text in order to gain maximum comprehension from it. It shows kids how to truly read a text, rather than just skimming through it. It is an essential skill for all people, and should be juiced in classrooms of all levels for its benefits.

The best way to teach these students how to properly close read is to assign them short, nonfiction texts that challenge their ability to analyze, comprehend, and make inferences. Both the teacher and the student should analyze a reading passage and examine it for details, some of which include understanding how the text works, the author’s message, providing text evidence to support thoughts and predictions the reader is developing, and making connections between the reader and the text itself (Shanahan, 2012). As long as these methods are carried out properly, students will have the reading skills necessary to make them more successful and intelligent.

 

References

Strauss, V. (2014, September 08). Why kids should choose their own books to read in school. Retrieved March 17, 2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/08/why-kids-should-choose-their-own-books-to-read-in-school/?utm_term=.a1d60b23343c

Pennington Publishing Blog. (n.d.). Retrieved March 17, 2018, from http://blog.penningtonpublishing.com/reading/why-sustained-silent-reading-ssr-doesnt-work/

Dakin, C. (2013). The Effects of Comprehension Through Close Reading (Unpublished masters thesis). St. John Fisher College.
https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=education_ETD_masters

Shanahan, T. (2012). What is close reading? Retrieved from
http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2012/06/what-is-close-reading.html

Causal Rewrite – picklerick

Reading more nonfiction literature is a fantastic way to sharpen your brain. This sounds obvious, but so many people have the wrong idea when it comes to fiction vs. nonfiction. When one reads informational text, it requires careful attention and effort to be fully comprehended. Whereas when fiction or science fiction is being read, it’s likely being read purely for pleasure.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. Plenty of people may read fiction with excellent focus and attention to detail. The thing is, these people are missing out on the immense amount of knowledge and understanding of the world that nonfiction junkies get to experience. Those who just read books for fun can stick to whatever they want to read, but those who are trying to get real, practical benefits from their reading should always lean toward nonfiction.

Public schooling often fails to teach the proper way to close read text. According to Ness (2011), students are struggling with close reading at an increasing rate. A few factors play into this. Kids in elementary school through high school are often given assignments where they’re asked to independently read and log a brief description of what they read in a reading journal. This sounds like a simple and reliable way to get kids into reading. In reality, though, this form of reading assignment gives adolescents major apprehension towards reading and is often the reason why they are so turned off to reading by the time they get to highschool. When kids feel forced to read, they won’t want to. This is why many schools need to rethink the way they’re teaching kids to read by focusing heavily the basics of close reading.

Caitlin Dakin states, in her thesis paper, “It is essential in today’s educational world that teachers begin to transform their classroom instruction of fiction literature into short informational complex texts to give the students the opportunity to meet the demands of the common core learning standards.” Read what you will, but be aware of how much benefit you are really getting from your reading.

 

References

Dakin, C. (2013). The Effects of Comprehension Through Close Reading (Unpublished masters thesis). St. John Fisher College.
https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=education_ETD_masters

Amanda Christy Brown and Katherine Schulten. (2012, December 13). Fiction or Nonfiction? Considering the Common Core’s Emphasis on Informational Text. Retrieved March 02, 2018, from https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/fiction-or-nonfiction-considering-the-common-cores-emphasis-on-informational-text/

Bartlett, B. (2014, June 20). 4 Bad Side Effects of Reading Fiction According to the 19th Century. Retrieved March 02, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/beth-bartlett/4-bad-side-effects-of-rea_b_5513451.html

Rebuttal – picklerick

Teaching Students to Really Read

When it comes to teaching students to read, many teachers have the wrong idea. It’s a popular belief that in order to show kids the joy of reading, they should be assigned to read whatever they want. Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post claims, “the easiest path is to make independent reading at least half of every day’s homework by putting strict limits on subject matter assignments.” This seems logical; giving students freedom to read what they want will make them more attached to the story, right? As it turns out, there are actually significant downsides to letting students read what they want. As Mark Pennington explains in his article from the Pennington Publishing Blog, “Students often choose books with reading levels far below or far above own their reading levels and so do not experience optimal reading growth.” If you give a student the assignment to read freely, of course they’re going to choose a book that’s simple to read. Also, as a teacher, you have no way of knowing whether or not the student comprehended the text. This is why it the best method to teach kids how to read properly is to insure that they have the close reading skills necessary to read books that are on their reading level. The best way to do this is to assign them short, nonfiction texts which challenge their ability to analyze, comprehend, and make inferences.

 

References

Strauss, V. (2014, September 08). Why kids should choose their own books to read in school. Retrieved March 17, 2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/08/why-kids-should-choose-their-own-books-to-read-in-school/?utm_term=.a1d60b23343c

Pennington Publishing Blog. (n.d.). Retrieved March 17, 2018, from http://blog.penningtonpublishing.com/reading/why-sustained-silent-reading-ssr-doesnt-work/

Dakin, C. (2013). The Effects of Comprehension Through Close Reading (Unpublished masters thesis). St. John Fisher College.
https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=education_ETD_masters

Causal Argument – picklerick

Reading more nonfiction literature causes your brain to sharpen. When you read informational text, you’re usually making an effort to fully comprehend the text. Whereas when you’re reading a fiction or science fiction novel, you’re likely reading for pleasure. People who just read for fun may not realize that they are not fully comprehending the text. Public schooling often fails to teach the proper way to close read text. According to Ness (2011), students are struggling with close reading at an increasing rate. This could be caused by a few things. When kids receive summer reading, it is almost always a fiction novel. This makes it easy for the students to skim through the text, gaining little to no value or skill. Caitlin Dakin says, in her thesis paper, “It is essential in today’s educational world that teachers begin to transform their classroom instruction of fiction literature into short informational complex texts to give the students the opportunity to meet the demands of the common core learning standards.” Reading informational, nonfiction text will always beat fiction.

 

References

Dakin, C. (2013). The Effects of Comprehension Through Close Reading (Unpublished masters thesis). St. John Fisher College.
https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&context=education_ETD_masters

Amanda Christy Brown and Katherine Schulten. (2012, December 13). Fiction or Nonfiction? Considering the Common Core’s Emphasis on Informational Text. Retrieved March 02, 2018, from https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/fiction-or-nonfiction-considering-the-common-cores-emphasis-on-informational-text/
https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/fiction-or-nonfiction-considering-the-common-cores-emphasis-on-informational-text/

Bartlett, B. (2014, June 20). 4 Bad Side Effects of Reading Fiction According to the 19th Century. Retrieved March 02, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/beth-bartlett/4-bad-side-effects-of-rea_b_5513451.html
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/beth-bartlett/4-bad-side-effects-of-rea_b_5513451.html

Visual Rhetoric – piclerick

0:01 The ad starts with a black screen with text that reads: “Wednesday 8:01am”. This clearly lets the viewer know that the following video takes place on a Wednesday morning. This may have significance because Wednesday is in the middle of the week and 8:01am is early in the morning.

0:02 The video quickly cuts to a video of a man sitting on a bed and holding a vacuum to a little girl’s hair. The video quality is very poor which indicates it is most likely a home video. The setting is inside of a bedroom. The girl is wearing pajamas and seems to be comfortable with the man which indicates that the man is likely her father. It is hard to tell what the father’s intention is with the vacuum, but it could be a creative/fun way of doing his daughter’s hair.

0:13 The father continues to brush his daughter’s hair with his hands and then proceeds to put a hair tie in it, giving her a pony tail. This shows that he is helping his daughter out, probably doing her hair before she goes to school (since it’s a Wednesday morning). His use of the vacuum may have been to dry her hair.

0:17 The daughter then get up off her dad’s lap and walks over to the person holding the camera whilst smiling. This shows that she is happy with how her dad did her hair. It also makes me think that the person holding the camera is probably her mother. Also, another little girl walks into the scene and sits on the dad’s lap. This is probably the first girl’s sister. She likely expects her dad to do her hair too.

0:24 Both girls are smiling and seem to be very happy. The video then fades to another black screen which reads: “Take time to be a dad today”. This shows that the video was attempting to prove how important it is for dads to bond with their children.