Chapter 11 and 2

What are trade books and how can I use them in my classroom?

Chapter 11 describes trade books as being a supplement to textbooks that help students think critically about the content and think about larger questions relating to the topic. One thing I found interesting about trade books was that you can differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all different learners. They can all get the same idea by reading things at their appropriate reading level, and I really liked that concept. Textbooks are not as accommodating to all students reading levels and having trade books along with the textbooks could help immensley. I think it is also a great way to grab students attention to be interested in the subject matter by reading stories that help enhance ideas. It was also intersting to read about all of the nonfiction choices that trade books had and how I even wanted to read some of them. The one thing I didn't find in this chapter about trade books though was any books related to math. It talked about a lot of ways that science teachers and history teachers could use trade books, but I didn't see anything about math teachers. When I was reading on about how I could use trade books and how I could get the best response out of students, I didn't have any creative thoughts because I didn't even know what kind of trade books would be used in a math classroom.

What is writing to learn?

I really like the writing to learn concept that they bring up in Chapter 2; I think that if students are given the oppostunity to do writing to learn, then they will have more positive views towards writing. For my content area of math, I was thinking about ways that I would be able to implement this WTL strategy. I thought that instead of students doing a problem for a test, I could have them do the problem and explain in their own words how they went about doing it. I think that if they are able to explain what they did in writing that they will understand the concept better too. When thinking about my two math classes that I am in right now, they are both "proof" classes where you have to prove theorems and ideas to show that they are in fact true. I have to provide reasoning for everything I do and be able to explain why I am proving something in this way. I know right now it is sometimes a lot of work to prove and explain things but I know that I am learning a lot more in the process rather than just doing problems without an explanation. Since I know it is helpful for myself and many other students, I think it will be very effective for my future students as well.