Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Entry #10


For this entry I read thought a few of my peers blogs to find something to “Bless, Address, or Press.”  I found an entry in Gretchen G’s Blog that I wanted to bless, address, and press.  Her entry #9 was very interesting and I wanted to start with her opening statements. She said:

“When I was doing research on the expository genre for my genre presentation next week, I found myself questioning if I did enough instruction concerning expository reading and writing in my own classroom. Did my students even know what the word expository meant? Did they know what type of books would be considered expository? Have they ever read an expository text? Have they ever written an expository piece before?”

I wanted to stop and both bless and address this statement.  I love how she took the time to reflect on her own teaching as she prepared for her genre presentation.  It shows that she is really learning and applying the content in this class to her teaching, which is the ultimate goal.  I then wanted to address that the new common core places a much bigger emphasis on the use of expository text in all grade levels.  I have witnessed thought-out my career as an educator that many more expository texts are being used in the classroom now, as apposed to when I first started working in classrooms at the beginning of my undergraduate career. 

Gretchen continued on to reflect on the answers she found to those questions and how she used this genre in her classroom.  I wanted to point out that she said that some students knew what the expository or non-fiction genre was, but did not know the name.  I think that this is a very great observation, as many first graders do not know the word “expository”.  This is a great teaching moment when they can learn a new word for this genre.  I also liked how she went further than discussing the differences between fiction and non-fiction and also discussed the various text features of the genre and their purposes.  This really shows that she holds her students to high standards and values the expository genre in the classroom.

Lastly, I loved her activity of what they learned and what they wondered.  I would like to press her to then use those post its, to have the students create their own expository piece.  They can use their learning as the backbone for the piece and do research to find the answers to their wonderings.  They can then use the information to create their very own expository piece.

1 comment:

  1. Lindsay, since you still have time before moving on to the next entry, I would strongly recommend you take another stab at writing this one. You do a nice job of evaluating the quality of the presentation, but you do not use this "topic" as a means for you to deepen your own understanding of the issues surrounding teaching students to read and write expository texts.

    In your past experiences, do you think you have done an exceptional job at helping students become critical consumers of the wide range of texts in the expository genre? What texts do you use as mentor texts?
    There is more you could easily explore here in order to further refine your understanding of how best to teach students to read this genre through writing expository texts.

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