Name: Stephanie N.

Sparks

TCH_LRN 339 Text Analysis

Assignment Description & Directions: For your selected textbook chapter, (1) identify the text’s key
ideas, concepts or events, (2) reflect on experiences or knowledge that would help students connect
these to their lives, (3) identify potential barriers to student understanding (particularly language use
and culture); (4) determine which aspects of text content and structure are most likely to interfere with
comprehension. USE COURSE RESOURCES whenever possible to answer the questions, and cite or quote
those resources in APA when possible.

Reference Citation in APA format (visit the Purdue OWL website or the Resources module on Canvas for
help):

Sloan. S. M. (n.d) How Do I Teach Writing During Reading. In Sloan. S. M & Spandel. V (Eds.). Into
Writing: The Primary Teacher’s Guide to Writing Workshop. (pp. 153-174)

Andrews. L. (n.d) English use and usage. In Andrews. L. (2001) Linguistics for L2 Teachers. (p. 39)

Egbert, J. (n.d.). Culture, language, and schooling in the U.S. In J. Egbert & G. Ernst- Slavit (Eds.). Views
from inside: Languages, cultures, and schooling for K-12 educators. (pp. 327-335).

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Task 1: Key concept identification

List major concepts, ideas, and/or events from the text. Briefly explain each bullet point.

· Modeling for Students – Exhibiting and practicing the behaviors you would like students to imitate or
emulate.

· Inviting Students to Respond – Letting students give prompts or parts of the lesson a try.

· Writing practices- The different types of writing you want students to be practicing and using in the
classroom.

· Extending Writing Instructions – This is where students will actually begin to write about what they are
reading.

· Inviting Students to a Shared Response – Ask for student input as you write out an example of the
prompt, or have the classroom write a response together.

· Inviting Individual Response – Let students have a chance to write their own response to things they
noticed in the reading.

· Reading with Writers’ Eyes – Students will focus on the writing style and craft of the writers works they
are reading, how they draw students in, similes, alliteration, elaboration, examples, anecdotes, statistics,
word choice, metaphor, and ellipses will be things they look at and consider.

List supporting concepts, ideas, and/or events. Briefly explain each bullet point.
· Response to a read-aloud – Let students write something inspired by the story being read aloud to
them.

· Response to individual reading – Let students write about something they have read about or
researched.

· Writing and Literature Circles – Students discuss the reading given to them and write something
inspired by what they wrote.

· Word Lists – Students can write down interesting words they found in their books to keep track of and
use later in their own writing.

· Journals – Students may have a reading or writing journal where they can pose questions, or
observations as they read.

· Using Literature Models – Reading to students and pointing out important things they might want to
notice when they read on their own and how it can transfer to writing.

· Recognize Elements of Good Writing – Let students make connections and observations about things
they have noticed in reading that are also important when writing.

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Task 2: Experience and knowledge

List 3 experiences that would help your students connect key concepts to their lives. Explain.

+ Students should have had practice writing to prompts like journal entry tasks and be able to link
content to ideas to inspire writing. This will help them with writing to the topic which will be the book
and keep focus on their writing.

+ Students also should have practice writing reflections on different topics, including self-reflections, this
will help them connect to the text. If they know how to write a reflection they will be able to reflect on
the writing and reasoning for the text and possibly draw out their own feelings about it, which can help
them connect the book to their own lives.

+ Students should have practice adding details to their writing and adding reasoning for their thoughts,
feelings, and beliefs. Without this there will be a lot of just restating of facts but in writing you want to
hear the voice of the person who wrote the piece. In order for them to communicate why and how they
feel they will need to know how to add detail in ways of, word choice, descriptions, and personal
anecdotes.

List 3 pieces of knowledge that would help your students connect key concepts to their lives. Explain.

\ Sentence structure – it is very important in writing to understand how a sentence is structured.

Without it sentences can be hard to read or understand. Their sentences may lose meaning or come off
a way they did not intend. It may also help them to give

emphasis or more meaning to their sentences than if they aren’t able to form sentences correctly.
\ Organization – when writing organization can help dictate the flow of the piece of writing. For
instance, if they didn’t have organization students might not have an order of events or be able to tell a
story with their writing. It also might not make sense to put what happened at the end of a book
without the background of the story so their writing might be hard to follow. Without organization the
point is also a lot easier to miss because the support and main ideas will be scattered instead of in order
of importance.

\ Students will need to be able to identify the main points of a story and the moral. Without these skills
it’s hard to write about the importance in a piece of literature, and even more so hard to understand
literature. It helps to read others writing to develop personal writing skills and understand why we do
certain things in writing so if they aren’t getting this while reading it might be hard to write on.

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Task 3: Barrier identification

Answer these questions as specific as possible:

· Is the material presented in a register that students are familiar with, or is it more or less formal than
they are used to? Give examples.

I think it’s written more as a guide, the book involves a lot of examples for the text and shows figures
with pictures of student work to go with them so it’s definitely less formal. It’s written for students as a
guide to teach writing in the classroom so it’s pretty simple to read. The semantics (Andrews, p.39)
might be something that might trip up students like ELL might have trouble with or not be used to. But,
overall it’s a pretty easy to follow along.

· With what specific language structures or grammar might students have difficulty? Use the Andrews’
book to explain.

Students might have trouble the pedagogical language (Andrews, p. 39) used in the book. Since it is a
book focused on writing it talks a lot about students writing and what you might notice about their
writing and how to encourage writing. Which makes sense since it is a book for beginning teachers. But
some students might be rusty, or some ELL’s might not understand certain word choices since there are
a lot of semantics involved as well. The book itself is not difficult to understand but it does use a lot of
semantics (Andrews, p. 39) which may be a little more formal than students might be used to. It’s a book
about writing therefore it talks a lot about similes, alliterations, metaphor, anecdotes (Sloan, p. 173).

· From whose point of view is the material presented? What difference might this make to
comprehension?

It’s written from the view of a teacher for Elementary students, so it’s more as a guide. Overall other
than semantics it’s easy to follow along. I might say someone not familiar with phonetics might not
understand students writing as easily since they are in the pre phonetic stage and writing how they
understand the words sounds to be. If they do not have much knowledge of this they might have trouble
understanding the examples and what students are trying to say. Like for Figure 7.4 (Sloan, p.159) if
you’re not aware of phonetics the word beautiful or language which are spelled in the example
‘beterifull landuige’ it might be hard to follow.
· What vocabulary in the materials might ELLs have trouble with? Why?

I honestly think the semantics are the main aspect ELLs might find challenging since alliteration, simile,
metaphor, they might have trouble. Since the words have no clues about what the words might mean or
ask, as well as be unaware of American metaphors then they might struggle. Especially when looking at
the children’s examples.

· What cultural aspects of the book might ELLs find challenging? Why?

Some of the books brought up might be unfamiliar to ELLs like it talks about the Pigeon stories in the
examples ELL students might struggle with this. It might seem strange to them all of the antics that the
Pigeon gets into like driving might confuse them.

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Task 4: Comprehension demands

Based on your answers to the previous tasks, describe what kind of student might succeed in
understanding this material. Why?

I think students who truly care about writing, and reading should be able to grasp this material well. It
offers a lot of student examples and insight that are really helpful for students and teachers alike. It also
offers a variety and encourages students to be able to show their understanding in multiple ways which
can be helpful for students and teachers alike.

Based on your answers to the previous tasks, describe what kind of student might fail in understanding
this material. Why?

I think that students who don’t really know much about writing or have struggles with and the rules of
writing might fail to understand the material. Since it is literally a book about writing and this chapter is
about connecting reading to writing I think that could be a factor in failure of understanding this
material. Plus, for ELL students especially it does talk a lot about alliteration, similes, and other sources
of writing so if they already struggle with writing this might be more difficult for them.

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Reflection:

What might you as the teacher do to help students who face challenges with the material you selected?
List at least 3 strategies that might help, who they might be helpful for, and how you could tell (assess)
whether they helped. Be specific.

To help my students and support them while they were still learning or struggling. I would give them
these activities or assignments to help them build their skills.

· Journals – While using journaling to write on what they’ve read is a tactic in the book. If that is not
working, I think using journaling to write on specific topics could work to help them build their writing
skills and writing on a topic. Then it can be expanded to smaller books used for lower reading levels to
help them begin to write based on the book. After that books that students are interested in might help
them find the inspiration. Scaffolding would help a lot with having students write on what they are
reading, that way they can build up their skills starting small before using assigned reading. It can be
difficult to write on a book when writing is not a strong suit or they don’t have much practice.

· Prompts – This ties into journaling, but as well it helps students who have a hard time writing or
thinking of how to start have prompts. It could be suggested or letting them free write, the suggested
ones could be used to promote different writing skills or styles you want them to use. For example, as a
prompt you could have them write a poem based on something they read to have them practice rhyme
schemes, or other aspects of poetry. Or you might have them list important words from the book and
have them explain why they chose them and what they might represent in the story.

· Small groups – By letting students talk in small groups about the assigned books or reading it might
help them generate ideas about what to write and what was important in the story. It will allow them to
brainstorm or get excited about ideas. That way they have an easier time to figure out what to write
when it comes time for them to write on the story. Small groups also allow collaboration and different
students to get together to share perspectives, because not everyone interprets stories completely the
same so they might offer insight that may not have been brought up before.