Week 1 Reflect

 

Week 1

 

Derika Joseph:

What is Literacy?

According to Alberta Education, literacy is the ability, confidence, and willingness to engage with language to acquire, construct, and communicate meaning in all aspects of daily living. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind the trends in teaching writing. When teaching writing, the scaffolding of writing is necessary. Scaffolding students writing is done through a Writer's workshop. It entails three components which include: focus lessons, writing time, and sharing. This scaffolding acts as a support for students up until they have mastered the skills for any type of writing. One of these types of writing includes information writing. Information writing is done with the purpose of conducting further research and presenting a report in order to further educate others on and about the focused topic. In other words, to expand knowledge about the focus topic. Thus, a proper idea must be considered in order to think carefully to tie said ideas and readers together. So, the information should be gathered, studied, designed, written, and edited well before sharing. Hence, these components can better be effective if integrated and used to support not just one type of writing or reading, but as much as possibly other types.

 

Shaquan Williams:

According to UNESCO, apart from its conventional concept as a set of reading, writing, and counting skills, literacy is now understood as a means of identification, understanding, interpretation and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world. For individuals to reach a stage where they are able to perform in a literacy-based classroom, the teacher needs to guide them through the content that they will be engaged in until they are able to handle themselves. This is known as scaffolding. Scaffolding students is done through a writer's workshop which consists of three components:

Focus lesson

Writing time

Sharing

Teachers can also use six strategies in order to scaffold the student's work. Some of these include: show and tell, use visual aids, and tapping prior knowledge among others. The scaffolding helps to provide support to students until they are able to function independently.

One aspect of writing is informational writing. Informational writing is a form of writing that is factual and conveys information about a particular topic. Informational writing takes many forms and can be achieved through an eight steps process. This process consists of

• Idea

• Think

• Merging the text and reader

• Gathering information

• Studying

• Designing

• Writing

• Editing

 

Makiba Ward:

According to Lawton and Gordon (1996) literacy refers to the ability to read and write to an appropriate level of fluency. For these aspects of Literacy, it mainly focuses on the trends in teaching writing. When we think about the word scaffolding what comes to mind? Certain words I’m sure will come to our mind such as guide, support, help….. Just to name a few. In education, scaffolding refers to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process. Scaffolding is often used to bridge learning gaps such as the difference between what students have learned and what they are expected to know and be able to do at a certain point. For example, if students are not at the reading level required to understand a text being taught in a course, the teacher might use instructional scaffolding to incrementally improve their reading ability until they can read the required text independently and without assistance. Within a writer’s workshop, it has three components such as focus lesson, writing time, and sharing. Moreover, there are six main scaffolding strategies such as show and tell, prior knowledge, time to talk, teaching certain vocabulary, asking question, pause and review, and using visual aids. Some other scaffolding strategies are frame writing, practical writing, oral writing, and many first draft opportunities.

What is Informational Writing?

Informational writing is a type of nonfiction writing that conveys information about something, which means it is factual. There are five main types of information writing such as: problem solution, description/descriptive, process/sequencing, comparison and contrast, cause and effect. In addition, information writing processes into eight steps such as an idea, think, merge the idea and reader, gather information, study, design, write, and edit.

Using Expository Writing to Support Narrative Reading

Expository writing is written in a structure that includes such things as facts, statistics, and data, that is geared more towards educating the reader whereas, a narrative, is written more in a story type of format. It can have some of the components of an expository. If that were the case, it is then considered a non-fiction narrative. Moreover, narrative writing consists of plot, setting, character, conflict, and theme.

Expository writing helps students in their reading of narrative texts through the ability to identify and analyze text structures which help readers/ students to comprehend the text more easily and retain it longer thus leading to a permanent improvement in reading skills. Additionally, students are able to develop an understanding of how authors typically layout character development, setting, plot, problems, turning points, and resolutions.