Blog #4 Fischer and Frey

The main focus of Chapter 1 of the Fischer and Frey textbook is teaching students how to read, write, and think. While I was reading the section on shifting responsibility from teacher to students, I could not help but think of one of my own classrooms in middle school. The text discusses how the teacher shifts from generating and asking the students questions to teaching and encouraging the students to generate and answer their own questions. I vividly remember my 9th grade Mississippi History and Geography class. Each new topic that we would discuss, my teacher would constantly scaffold our learning and eventually by the end of the lesson or unit, we would be generating and finding solutions to our own questions, rather than her generating them herself. I found this really helpful and beneficial and retained more information being in a setting like that. The chapter also discusses modeling through instruction of asking questions before, during, and after reading to improve metacognition and comprehension. I believe this is one very beneficial way for students to stay connect to what they are reading and learning and retain information. Teaching them comprehension skills such as that can make all the difference. Other strategies that the chapter mentions are reciprocal teaching, think-pair-share, learning stations, jigsaw, and DR-TA. Over the course of intermediate block, we learned quite a bit about these strategies and how they are used in developing student comprehension and metacognition, helping them recognize how they learn best. One major thing that I enjoyed about this chapter was the reflective teaching. I believe it is so important for teachers to self-question and self-assess to improve their own teaching. This will not only benefit me as a teacher, but will also benefit my students.


I also really enjoyed reading Chapter 8 about writing and writing to learn. I have never been a big writer, nor has it ever been my strong point so this chapter really caught my attention. The part that stuck out to me the most was reading about the different strategies to use to incorporate reading into the classroom. I have briefly heard of the LEA before, but I found it very interesting. This strategy is a good way to involve all students and create something as a class, and display their own thoughts and creations. The writing models strategy hit home for me a little bit. Since I am not a strong writer, the majority of the time I have to have some sort of model or guide to help me along the way. Without a model, I tend to get overwhelmed and not perform my best. I believe students sometimes experience the same feeling, so providing them with a model can help ease the pressure a little bit. Also, I am a huge fan of using writing prompts in the classroom. I was given a writing prompt almost everyday in my high school literature class, and that really helped me to become more comfortable with writing and increase my confidence by repetition. I really liked how this chapter broke down writing to learn in each subject area. It really provided me with lots of resources and ideas that I will implement in my classroom. A few questions that did arise as I read chapters 1 and 8 are how is it possible to motivate and ease the fear of students who are not comfortable with writing (such as myself.)? Also, is it possible to have too much writing in the classroom? Sometimes it can be overwhelming for students so I'm curious about how to maintain a good balance.