About Me!
Hello all! My name is Ashley Benton, High School English/ Language Arts teacher and theatre teacher! I love to sing, dance, perform, and I am a huge Harry Potter fan. Just like you all, I too am obsessed with my bitmoji! She is here to assist you and let you all know that reading is possible and we can do this! The purpose of this website is to supply my students, teachers, and my fellow educators, with a strategic, thought-out process for reading different texts found in English Education. On the tabs above, you will find the text we will be analyzing, vocabulary to know with different activities, and in the more category you will find the strategies we are using for reading that have been put into a Before-During-After Format. This is the strategy we will use.
Did you know?
According to Oatley and Raymond Mar, researchers from New York University, there is data indicating that fiction-reading activates neuronal pathways in the brain that measurably help the reader better understand real human emotion — improving his or her overall social skillfulness.
Why is reading important?
I'm sure many of you have spent time being coached about reading or being told why reading is a necessity. In my content area of English/ Language Arts, reading is crucial. Some of the novels and text we read are older and require a bit of decoding. There are also times when a text has multiple interpretations and meanings. In addition, in my content area, there are just times when we DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT IS GOING ON. That is okay! That is the perfect time to re-read and really delve into decoding and fully conceptualizing what is happening, and that is what I am here to help you do!
Why do students struggle?
Students struggle with reading most of the time because they are intimidated by the text. They see the length and the amount of words on a page, and they quit before they even begin. Another struggle students face is that some of the English is OLD-English and it is hard to convert to Modern-day English. In this same way, the English language can be quite a complicated one with silent E's and many changes over time. I empathize with this. I also have found myself many times retreating rather than wanting to move forward. However, I am here to provide you with some skills that can make reading LESS intimidating and more of something that feel confident and successful doing.
According to Vacca and Vacca, authors of Content Area Reading; Literacy and Learning across the Curriculum, "Students who continually struggle with text in reading and writing situations need to build strategic knowledge, skills, and insights related to literacy and learning." |
All in all...
Reading and the skills provided in this website are not just a necessity for my class but for EVERY class. The skills I provide you with here, should set you up for success in future classes and other endeavors as well. This website is meant to help scaffold-refers to a process in which teachers model or demonstrate how to solve a problem, and then step back, offering support as needed. The goal is that students are given the support they need while learning something new, and that from this they stand a better chance of using that knowledge independently.
Online Sites for English Education
https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/teaching-the-great-gatsby-with-the-new-york-times-2/
http://reading.cornell.edu/reading_project_06/gatsby/great_gatsby_resources.htm
https://www.quill.org/
http://www.readwritethink.org/
http://reading.cornell.edu/reading_project_06/gatsby/great_gatsby_resources.htm
https://www.quill.org/
http://www.readwritethink.org/
Contact Info
[email protected] |