Skip to main content

Larson Discussion Question Responses

○ According to Larson, what should be the unit of processing? Letter or word? LETTER


○ What is at stake with a word shape model of word recognition? UMM--it's crazy--the actual process of reading is not understood and would lead people to focus on unrelated features of the word.  Our instructional time is limited.  Struggling readers need the MOST time to spend reading and they need the highest quality of instruction--teaching word shape is ineffective and muddies the waters.  You will have students who can't read because they didn't learn to decode.

○ Should we teach typical eye-movements (of a reader) to struggling readers? I don't know where I stand on this issue.  My instincts say---maybe with the most disabled readers.  But this seems so instinctual, so tacit.  How do you teach it?  It's a slippery slope issue.  Teaching stuff like eye movement reminds me of having dyslexics focus on strengthening their eyes and their fine and gross motor skills.  We DO teach students the conventions of how our print works--to read left to right and so forth.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Book Review of Sark's (2008) Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper: Gifting the World with Your Words and Stories and Creating the Time and Energy to Actually Do It

A Book Review of Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper: Gifting the World with Your Words and Stories and Creating the Time and Energy to Actually Do It by Sark.  Three Rivers press, 2008. 185 pages. $18.95.             When I first discovered Sark, I was at once inspired, envious, and critical. I remember sitting on my best friend’s bed, covered in its usual tangle of sarongs and tapestries rather than real bed clothes, growing more incredulous as I flipped each page of Succulent Wild Woman (1997).   What kind of new-age hippie crap was this?   Someone had gotten paid to write this ?   These doodles and handwritten pages were worthy of my ultimate goal, that pinnacle of success, PUBLICATION?   But each spunky drawing and passage motivated me to continue my own writing.   Sark wrote the way I wrote, turning letters to friends into artwork, and if she could get paid for it then I could.     ...

Making the Standards Explicit: North Carolina Standard Course of Study English II Guided Notes, Graphic Organizers

  When students are able to clearly articulate what they are learning and what they are expected to do, they will be more successful.  I have been teaching for 22 years, and I have found that it is helpful to begin each new unit of learning by emphasizing a focus standard.  We know that the ELA standards are artfully intertwined, but picking a standard or two to really emphasize helps me to be intentional about instruction and for students to know the purpose of their learning. I am currently teaching English II in North Carolina, and I am helping students prepare for the North Carolina Final Exam.  I have been developing slideshows, guided notes, and graphic organizers to help students understand the academic vocabulary of the tested standards as well as to help them analyze informational and literary texts in the 9-10 grade band. These resources are available individually or bundled on Teachers Pay Teachers .   Add a free copy of   RL.9.10.1 Lit...

Crafting Your Writing for Specific Audiences: A Mini Lesson Rhetorical Analysis Author's Choice

Crafting Your Writing for Specific Audiences: A Mini Lesson Essential Questions 1. How does considering the rhetorical triangle shape what we write? 2. How do we write differently for different audiences? Audience:  A Key Component of the Rhetorical Triangle When a good writer writes, she keeps her audience forefront in her mind as she chooses her topic, her words, and even the details to include.  Consideration of audience is so important that it is only one of three elements in Aristotle's Rhetorical Triangle. In order to write effectively, one must first know who (s)he is potentially writing for, considering their values, core beliefs, level of knowledge on the topic, and so forth, or, in other words, considering the demographics  of their audience.  This mini-lesson will help you (or your students) understand just how important it is to write for specific audiences. Following the instructions below to explore how we naturally code switch , shi...