The Template given in this article is designed to help students
be able to better understand what they read and is designed for students in
grades 11 and 12. I am most interested in teaching those grades, so this
article was helpful for me to see how I can help my own students become
stronger readers and writers. The author of the article breaks down the
component of the rhetorical process into three parts: Reading rhetorically, connection
reading to writing and writing rhetorically. From there, rhetorical reading is
further broken down into pre-reading, reading, and post-reading. The connecting
process is broken into methods to help discover what the students think. The
rhetorical writing portion is broken down into entering the conversation and
revising and editing. From there, each sub-component is broken down to explain
how the tasks can be accomplished and the purpose of doing so. As someone who
is just now being introduced to education courses, this template is not only
helpful for giving an example of how to teach rhetorical reading and writing,
but also to see how much work goes into helping students build these skills.
I am
glad that this template gave an example of how to incorporate a writing
exercise into a literature lesson so that students can work toward multiple
standards in a given unit. Teaching students how to rhetorically read is
important, and the process outlined here is very helpful to prepare for a
writing assignment. By having students do pre-reading work such as surveying
the text, making predictions and familiarizing themselves with new vocabulary,
they can then use their reading time more efficiently and practice rhetorical
reading. The notes and responses students will write during the reading process
simplify the writing process and help the students begin to form clear ideas
before the writing process begins.
As part
of the reading portion the author discusses how to implement annotations into a
student’s reading process. My own experiences with forced annotations in high
school have left me skeptical of rigidly assigning annotations. As a secondary
student, there were too many regulations about what we had to label or respond
to and as a result it felt too scripted. Comparing the texts I annotated in
high school and the annotations that I have done independently, there is a very
noticeable difference. A former professor of mine would assign study questions
for the reading, but there was no requirement to actually submit answers for
them. The study questions provided helpful guidelines of what to annotate in
the book without forcing students to annotate their book in a set way. Each
student could highlight and write whatever helped them best as an individual
instead of spending their time writing in their book for a grade. It was
heavily encouraged to have a marked up book, but not required. What I disagreed
with in this template is that it assigns the student different aspects of the novel
that the student must label or respond to. As a student, I dreaded annotating
books because it felt like a chore and many times useless; I did not know what
purpose it would serve me outside of getting a grade for it. I feel conflicted
about grading and/or assigning annotations with strict guidelines for this
reason.
I
mostly enjoyed this article because it did a great job of showing how complex
the learning process is for students building their reading and writing skills.
I learned that I need to work on how I view reading and writing for teaching; simply
stating that you will be working on reading or writing skills is too broad and
can be overwhelming for many students. Breaking each category down and showing
the process shows the complexity of each of those skills and gives students a
clear path of how to build onto their own skills.
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