Chapter 8

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As an English teacher, one of the main objectives of my class will be writing papers. I know from person experience as a high school student, this is not a favorite among students, and is often perceived to be more difficult than what it needs to be. By the time students sit down at a computer to write an assignment, they feel as if they do not know where to start or what to say. In order to help students feel prepared, I would like help to teach effective metacognition skills and learning strategies, to better enhance their work. Before ever writing the paper it is important to address students upfront and let them know the information they are looking at will be used for an assignment. From that point, I will require the use of multiple overt and covert strategies, so that students are learning the information before they sit down to a new assignment. I believe it is important to address the importance of note taking, and providing examples of good notes. By showing good examples and identifying key information, students will learn the best way to jot down information and will be able to go back and apply to the work they are working on later. I would also work with students on identifying key information from a large work of material such as textbook or lesson. Reading a chapter in a textbook, or even a literature book can be overwhelming, therefore, by highlighting and noting key events or words students can identify what they need to take away. We would work together multiple times on both of these strategies as a class before any student would be required to do so on their own, because students must learn the right way to perform the strategies before they can identify and think about what information needs to be retained.

I also really enjoyed the parts on transfer of this chapter. Because I am interested in teaching at an inner city or urban school, transfer is a key component to learning. Students from these areas often have preconceived notions about many ideas, or a lack of support and enthusiasm from other schooling in the past. As their teacher, it is my job to work on correcting any negative transfer they have encountered in the past, while encouraging the positive transfer they have already experienced. Students in these types of schools often do not see the point in much of the information they are learning, so positive transfer to real-world contexts would greatly increase the value of a lesson to students, while allowing them to understand the material with greater ease.