B.Ed.

SE-D17

READING AND REFLECTING ON TEXTS

Dr. B.R.AMBEDKAR OPEN UNIVERSITY

HYDERABAD
2018
 READING AND REFLECTING ON TEXTS

Editor
Prof.G.Srinivsacharyulu
Faculty of Education,Dr.BRAOU (Retd.)

Writers Programme and Course Coordinator

Dr.P. Shankar Dr.Chandrakala
IASE, Osmania University,Hyd. Dr.BRAOU, Hyd.

Dr.J.Lalitha
IASE, Osmania University,Hyd.

Dr.Sujatha Cover Design

IASE, Osmania University,Hyd. G.V.Swamy (Graphic Unit)
Dr.BRAOU, Hyd

Dr.Sunitha
IASE, Osmania University,Hyd.
 B.Ed.SE-D17 READING AND REFLECTING ON TEXTS

Content

Block I -Reflections on Literacy

Unit -1 Literacy and Current University Graduates: Status and Concerns: Role of
Literacy in Education, Career and Social Life
Unit-2 Literacy, Thinking and Self Esteem: Literacy of Second Language/ English:
Need and Strategies: Basic Braille Literacy

Block II -Reflections on Reading Comprehension

Unit-3 Practicing Responses to Text: Personal, Creative and Critical : Meta Cognitive
Awareness of Reading Processes and Strategies Applied for Meaning Making
Unit-4 Developing Good Reading Skills and Habits in Primary Level Students:
Activities and Strategies: Basic Understanding of Reading Comprehension of
Children with Disabilities

Block III - Skill Development in Responding to Text

Unit-5 Indicators of Text Comprehension: Retelling, Summarizing, Answering,
Predicting, Commenting and Discussing: Practicing Responding to Text
(Using The Indicators) for Recreational Reading Material (Narrations) and
School Textbooks (Description)
Unit-6 Practicing Responding to Text (Using The Indicators) for Reports, Policy
Documents and News (Expositions) and Editorial, Academic Articles,
Advertisement Copy, Resume (Argumentation) : Practicing Web Search, Rapid
Reading and Comprehensive Reading

Block IV- Reflecting Upon Writing as a Process and Product

Unit-7 Understanding writing as a Process: Content (Intent, Audience and
Organization): Understanding writing as a Process: Language (Grammar,
Vocabulary, Spelling): Understanding writing as a Process: Surface Mechanics
(Handwriting, Neatness, Alignment and Spacing)
Unit-8 Practicing Self Editing and Peer Editing of Sample Texts: Practicing
Evaluating Students Writing Using Parameters: Productivity, Correctness,
Complexity, Text Organization and Literary Richness

Block V- Practicing Independent Writing

Unit-9 practicing Writing: Picture Description/ Expansion of Ideas/ Essays/ Stories:
Practicing Daily Leaving Writing: Applications/ Agenda - Minutes/ Note
Taking: Practicing Converting Written Information into Graphical
Representation
Unit-10 Practicing Filling up Surveys, Forms, Feedback Responses, Checklists:
Reflections on the Course: From Theory to Practice to Initiating Process to
Improve Self Course Work/ Practical/ Field Engagement
BLOCK – I REFLECTIONS ON LITERACY

Introduction

"Literacy Unlocks the door to learning throughout life, is essential to the development and
health, and opens the way for democratic paraticipation and active citizenship". - Kofi
Annan, Former united Nationas Secretary - General. When many people hear the world
"Literacy" they tend to think of the general ability to read. They may remember being told
that there are a profound number of people in the world who cannot read, and that those
people are referred to as being "illiterate". Literacy can indeed be defined as "the ability to
read and write", so most people are not wrong to think that literacy is about reading. Literacy
is definitely about reading.

Literacy is definitely about reading, and Lowering the rate of illiteracy around the globe is
incredibly important. "The actual purpose of higher education is to teach people to be lifelong
learners who contribute novel Ideas to their communities that improve society". There is
another definition of literacy is "Knowledge that relates to a specified subject". This
definition is more useful in Understanding what is necessary to achieving true literacy today.
Literacy is about giving people the skills needed to navigate, Understand, and ask informed
questions about an increasingly complex and contradictory information. Landscape, and those
skills go far beyond the ability to simply read; today the set of skills requiring individuals to
"recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, cvaluate, and use
effcitivaly the needed information". What exactly are the skills inherent to information
literacy? The American Library Association has defined a core set of competencies to help us
out here a person who is information literate is able to :

• Determine the extent of information needed.

• Access the needed information officially and efficiently.
• Evaluate information and its sources critically
• Incorporate selected information into ones knowledge base
• Use information effedively to accomplish a specific purpose
• Understand the economic, Legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access
and use information ethically and legally.
Objectives: The study of the units in Block – will help the reader to understand the concept of
literacy, importance of literacy, literacy and current university graduatly, states and concerns. The
reader know the importance and relation of literacy and education, career end social life. The reader
understand literacy, thinking and selfestern. Find the importance of social understand English. The
reader the basic language skills. The reader Identity the strategies The reader know the Basic Braille
literacy and it's importance
UNIT-1 LITERACYAND CURRENT UNIVERSITY GRADUATES. STATUS AND
CONCERNS: ROLE OF LITERACY IN EDUCATION, CAREER AND
SOCIAL LIFE

Structure
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Objectives
1.3 Literacy and current university graduates status and concerns.
1.4 Role of Literacy in Education
1.5 Career
1.6 Social Life
1.7 Unit summary
1.8 Check your Progress
1.9 Assignments
1.10 Points for Discussion and Clarification
1.11 References

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Literacy in traditionally meant as the ability to read and write. The modern terms maning has
been expended to include the ability to use language, numbers, images, computers, and other
basic means to understand, communicate, gain useful knowledge, solve mathematical
problems and use the dominant symbol systems of a culture. Education as a bsic human need.
Education as a human right Education for all. The key to literacy is rading development, a
progress of skill that begins with the ability the understand spoken words and decode written
words, and culminates in the deep understanding of text. UNESCO (The United Nations
Educaitonal, Scientific and Cultural Organization) defined literacy as the ability to identify,
understand, interpret, create communicate and computer, asking pointed and written materials
associates with varying context. Literacy invelues a continum of learning in enabling
individuals to achieve their goals. University graduates employability is an important issue
for higher education institutions. It has been one of the main goals to be achieved with the
creation of Higher Educaiton. Indian higher education system has made considerable progress
interms of capacity creation and enrolment in the last decade, it large significatly in terms of
global relevance and competetiveness, according to a study by the Fedaration of Indian
chambers of Commerce and Industry, or FCCI. Literacy is critical to economic development
as well as individual and community wellbeing. In todays perspective, literacy does not mean
about the writing and reading capabilities 3 only. It has gained a broader meaning. It claims
to guide people towards awareness and the change which is needed in order to achicve abetter
way of living. Literacy is the key to human prograss and development. Eduation is a gift.
Today running schools, free education, adult education and incouraging womens educaiton in
many states of our country has attained the goal of 100% literacy. But the region still needs
more efforts. How important is the day when every indian is literate. We should all
cooperation in this direction. Proper education level in the country to improve the economic
and social prosperity. the roe of literacy in educaiton is very crusial. Literacy and numeracy
have a direct impact on employment, carear opportinities and progression improving literacy
is essential for adults in work and job seeking. THe national skills strategy (2007) aims to
reduce the number of adults who have use than a level qualification to 7% by 2020. We are
currently 18%. To achieve this we must prioritise rasources to adults with less than a level 4
qualification so they can access high quality literacy learning opportunities. So good literacy
skills are essential for young people to achieve their eduational and employment aspirations.
Career literacy is having the knowledge and basic skills to evaluate your performance in
today's workplace. career management is now you apply knowledge, communicate and
implement you plan to create a meaningful work life for tomorrow. Literacy opens up a
variety of New opportunities. Does educaiton matter to the quality of our life? the results of
extensive studies offer an off irnative answer to this question: High education levels are
politicaly associates withhigher income, with more highly qualification professions, with
lower risk of unemployment, with better physical health and also it is said that, with more
happiness. (Federicacornali 2011). The rational for recognizing literacy as a right is the set of
benefit's it confers on individuals, tumilies, communities and nations. Indeed, it is widely
reckoned that, in midum societies, literacy skills are fundamental to informed decision
making, personal empowerment, acticve and passive participation in local and global social
community.

1.2 OBJECTIVES

After completing the unit student-teacher's will be able to:

• Understand Literacy
• Know the importance of literacy
• Know the current university graduates status and concerns
• Understand the role of literacy in education
• Know the Role of litercy in career
• Understand the need of literacy in social life.

1.3 LITERACY AND CURRENT UNIVERSITY GRADUATES STATUS AND CONCERNS

The role of graduates field of student and its impact on the transition to working life: 4 Hara
Stajanovaa, Veronika Blaskovaa (2014) this paper address the questions about the relations among
graduated tield of study and the fure possibility to find a proper job, to reach the expectation of
content and form of graduates job positions, to achieve a equals remuneration. The resulting
framucuor of verified hypostasis and paper's partial target's provides the crucial importance of
choice of study options. The decision on the field of study determines the future professional
development, but its importance is under estimated by selection based on irrational choice, and
individual preference only. These research summaries that it demonstrated that the best
employment opportunities can be reached by the student's of technical disciplines, who in most
cases find appropriate work in their field of study. Educational Institutions provide students with the
maximum breadth and depth of theoretical knowledge, theism olymize and send student's for the
internships, allow them participation in many research projects, and all these efforts can help
students with proactive approach, with an effective transition in to the work life, and with finding
good job positions.
The Role of Higher Education in the changing world of work: Dianne F. Harrison (2017)

The changing world is a universal topic of interest, with particular response to higher education.
Colleges and universities research change, teach about change, and often impact current and future
change. University must produce graduates whoa re ready for any workplaces david dochery (2014)
araduates shouldn't be pigern noted by their degree subject, but should be able to walk confidently
intea number of careers. The evidence suggests that employer are recruting graduates for jobs
outside their specialism. Unfortunately, If we always assume that particular subjects must lead to
particular jobs, too many student will believe that the chaices they make at 16 and 18 will define
their career patta for ctar rest of their lives. There are, of course, career paths that demand certain
qualifications, but the choice isn't as clear - cut as for might assume. Students studying, say English,
creative and design courses or enjeneery are just as likely to evil up in teaching, healthcare or
estatimenagemtn as something more obviously tied to their course.

Employers want better – prepared graduates

As there ar fewer certainties about what career a dgree will lead to, employers want graduates to be
better propares for the work place. Universities need to be thinking about the skills they will need to
do well in a job.
• Students innovation / Let's get digital
• Life is a pitch. Bring out the innovative potential of student's.
• Graduates in italy and spain have low basic skills, says OECD (2014) report.
• UK has more graduates but without skills and social mobility to match. Iceland - the home of
developed worlds oldest graduates (2014) Employability of graduates big concern, Sayes FICCI – EY
Report: M. Saraswathy New Delhi (2014.

HRD Minister smritiirari with senior voice president Jyotsna sori US south carolitia governor Nikki
haley, UK universities minister Greg clark relase a knowledge paper during the FCCI higher Education
summit in New Delhi. This Report released at the FCCI Higher Solucation summit here today said that
low employability of graduates is driven by factors life out date's curricula, shortage of quality
faculty, high student-teacher rations, lack of institutions and industry unikages and luck of autonomy
to introduce new innovative course. "Only a small proportion of Indian graduaty all considers
employable. This reflects in the fact that placement outcomes drop significantly as we move away
top ties instity actions" said the report. It added that their resulted in closing down of lower rung
higher education institutly that are not able to deliver high-quality outcomes. In 2014 as many 120
colleges including 94 management institutes are expected to close down across the country because
of their inability to till the seats. The report showed that 3.5 billion jobs are expected to be created
by 2020 and china and India are likely to drive demand by 2020. The report in its vision has said that
by 2030 they aspire to have 20 play higher education institutes in top 200 global ranking, Further
they also aspire India to be among the top 5 in terms of research and gatenty, with 90% graduate
readly employable.
1.4 ROLE OF LITERACY IN EDUCAITON

Literacy and level of education are basic indicators of the level of development achieved by
societies. Spread of literacy is generally associated with important traits of modern civilization such
as modernization, urbanization, industryiatziation, communication and commerce. Literacy forms an
important input in overall development of individuals enabling them to comprehend their social,
political, and cultural environment better and raspons to it appropriately. Higher levels of education
and literarcy tend toa greater awareness and also contribute in improvement of economic and social
conditions.

It acts as a catalyst for social uplistment ensancing the ratwins on investment made in almost every
aspect of dept effort, be it population control, health, huggines, environments degradation control,
employment as weaker sections of the society. Education is importent for the personal, social, and
economic development of the nation. Education is important to live with happiness and prosperity
education empowers minds that will be able to conceive good thoughts and ideas. Education
enables student's to do the analysis while making knife decisions.

Literacy is probably the single most important part of Education without literacy, all other learning is
impossible. Literacy involves using reading; writing speaking, listening, and viewing do gain more
knowledge. Without the ability to do any one of these skills, there is absolutely no way to acquire
more knowledge. Literacy is essential for learning. It is crucial that language art's teachers are not
the only one in the school stressing the importance of literacy. While the language art's teachers
may be the only ones traly teaching literacy, it is the job of all 6 educators to facilitate literacy
learning. Literacy must before only other learning cancer, and we cannot grow as a society without
literacy. Balance is extremely important within the curriculum. Students need a variety of literates to
help them learn to their fulest potential. With the growth of technology, it is much easier to use
multiple literates. Students have the opportunity to be exposed to technology in the class room
daily. A balance from classic to contemporary is necessary. It is important to have variety on order to
best promote literacy. With English language learners in the class very it is necessary to differentiate.
Each student is unique and learns differently. Teachers should take care individually.

Literacy lights individuals out of poverty

Lacking basic reading and writing skills is a tremendoly Disadvantage. Literacy not only enriches an
individuals life, but it creates opportunities for people the develop skills that will help them provide
for themselves and their family.

Literacy reduces infant mortality rates:

 Illiteracy may affect's and individual's health and well being. So the importance of education on
physical health is vital.

Literacy impower's women and girls

Breaking the cycle of illiteracy and imporoving selfes term is crucial for women and girls in the
developing world. By enabling them to become economically productive and independent, they
become compowered and can take control of their lives. The importance of education in fostering
personal autonomy, and creative and critical thinking skills is central to helping girl's contribute to
their societies.

Literacy positively impact's economic growth beyond the local community:

The impact of improving literacy in girls not only has a positive economic impact at a local and
community level, but the productivity of the workforce flurishes at country level for byenhancing a
countries economic strength.

1.5 CAREER

Career literacy can be defined as providing students with the capacity to make informed decisions
about choosing a career and deciding the best course of action to reach their goals. In order to
achieve there goals, students must learn and master certain skills.

Career Literacy Defines

Career literacy can be defined as providing students with the capacity to make in forment decisions
about choosing a career and deciding the best course of action to reach their goals. In order to
achieve these goals, students must learn and master certain skills. Today's student find digital career
literacy even more important.

Know the difference between a job and a career

A job involves performing a designated set of responsibilities and duties and duties for a specific
employer. A career encompasses a "familes" of jobs your career is your life's work. "High school
English teacher at Govt High school" a job, and "teaching" is a career. Unless you know the
difference, for you, between a job and a career, you may spend time and money and energy
changing career when what you need is to change jobs or you might change jobs repeatedly and still
be dissatisfied because you are in the wrong career. Before you change your job or your career,
analyze whether your specific job or your career choice. Do not change your career just because you
don't like your supervisor, and do not keep changing jobs when you really are not well suited for
your career.

How Literacy Levels can impact your career

 Job developers, employers, and recruiters will tell you that strong communication skills are one of
the most important factors in finding, maintaining, and succeeding in your job. Effective
communication has the largest impact on both employer and employee satisfaction and can help to
build and maintain positive working relationships. Communication skills are what make people feel
valued and understand when interacting with other's language and Literacy skills are both essential
parts of Communication especially in a situation where English may not be your first language. You
may find that you have to put more effort in developing these language and literacy skills to reach
the level of career success that you want.

The difference between language and literacy

If you think that language and literacy refer to the same thing, you are not alone. Although many
people use these words inter changeably, they actually refer to two distinct but related concepts.
Language is the words, their pronounciation, and the methods of combinding them used and
understood by a community. It is specially about cinyuastic factors like understanding the alphet,
general vocabulary, and sentence structure of a particular language. Language skills are "Portable" in
the sense that the english language is teachnically use same across the globe, but the English
language is used differently depending on the location. literacy is about nondinyusitic factor's such
as cultural knowledge, educaitonal backround, and industry employer specific vucabulary. Literacy a
not portable, because each new enviornment har different communicationary that can given several
meanings to the same words. As defines Unesco Edcuation sector: "literacy is the abilites to
identified, understand, interprect, create, communicate, and compete using printed and writeen
meteads associates with verying contexts. Literacy is skill that needs to be ex ercised to maintain it.
It needs to evolue multiple limes in a variety of places, and is not guaranteeteed enven among those
who are fluent in english. Literacy skills are important to fully participate in social and civic activities
with in your community. They are essential you securiny and maintaining employment. Aspects of
literacy such as comprehension skills and the ability to analyze complex pieas of information are 8
especially useful different sectors that include information and communication technology,
engineers, finach and medicine. Literacy skills also influence your capacity to comportably and
confidently communicate your ideas and input in team meetings, conversations with your boss, and
interactions with external stoke holder's. High levels of literacy allow's to you to show your value as
an employer and work to your fulspotential which taking the leand in business decission and
decistion and dsicussions. It can deafine line to olistingish becuase "Language is about known cortain
words and vocubalary, but "Literacy" is about having the confidence to use thash words in a varielsy
settings and being willing to engase to others in all aspects of daily life. There are many resources
you can use to impture your English language skils, but indiean resource that focus an improuints
literacy skills can be more challangies. Remember a high level of literacy is central to carrer success.
Good literacy skills are essential for young people to achieve their educational and employment
aspiractions.

Poor literacy and numaracy skills limits job chances

If you find it difficult to read, write, solue problems and understand maths information you will limit
you job chances
• Find it difficult to get and keep a job
• Limit the type of job you can do
• Limit your leisure activitiey

1.6 SOCIAL LIFE

• It is an important need to line in the world.

• The valuable childhood is spont on Education so that he could live a better life infuture.
• Eduation provides a platform for a decent livelihood.

One can take cup a job in industry or another prfessional service if he / she educates education can
guarates a better job.
• A good education helps one communicate better it includes speech, signs, gestures and even body
languages. A person with better education has refined speech and other ways of communcation.
Even his bodly language sounds confident and optimistic due to eudcation.
• Education helps a person to express his opinions in a better manner. He can communicate with
the large audience by audience by writing in news paper's, letters etc.
• Many poets, author's are renowned and fumous world wide due to their ability to inflence people.
This ability though is an inherent talent and education enhances their skill one can even
communicate pryers-anal and personal issues in written form.
• Education also helped in ctrise of number of medical expert's, engineer's, teachers etc. By
education we can generate skilled personal. This has land to better health and also an imporvement
in lifestyle.
• So education helps us use technology in the better way.
• The means of economy and money making have changed with education. It is the primary cause of
rising in the employment opportunities all over the world.
• The mind get's matures by proper educationand travicing. A person cna judge what is right and
what is wrong.
• It also hleps us to improve our discipline, saly control and even sense of responsibility. Proper
education of masses can cut the crime rate and other sorts of social violence.
• Trensfer of knowledge from one yeneraliato othr generation is possible by education.
• Better Social Harmanb: Education is a way by which people of different cultures, religions, sects
come together during school, college, etc. Education can improve social har mony. Hence these are
the asluatages of education which make's it extential in modern life.

Education includes a Social life

 School is a social life.

 Education is a part of your social life. Anyway by having a social life you will halm
connertions.
 Literacy - the ability to read and write listeney speay is vital to a successful educaiton, career,
and quality of life in today's world. Inessence, the acquisition of litervacy skills provides all the
prerequisites for adienct in many areas of life from school to complyment.

1.7 SUMMARY

Literacy an indeed be defined as "the abilityto read and write". There is another defination of
litaracy is "knowledge that relates to a specified subject". This definition is more useful in
understanding what is necessary to achieving true literacy today. Literacy is about giving people the
skills needed to navigate, understand, and ask informed quasitions about an increasingly complex
and contradictory information landscape, and those skills go far beyound the ability to simply read.
The key to literacy is reading development, a progress of skills that begins with the ability to
understand spoken wards and decode writtenwords, and culminates in the deep understanding of
Text. University graduates employability is an important issue in higher education institutions.
Literacy is critical to economic development as well as individual and community well-being. Proper
education level in the country to improve the economic and social prosperity. Literacy and numeracy
have direct impact on employment, career opportunities, and progression. Literacy opens up a
varicity of new opportunities. Literacy skills are fundamental to informed decission-making, personal
employment, active and passive participation in local and global social community. the chambing
world is a universal topic of interest, with particular response to higher education. Universities must
produa graduates who are render for any workplace.

According to FICCF (2014) low employability of gradualy is driven by factors like out dated c ........... ,
shortage of quality faculty high student-teacher ratios, lack of institutional and industry intages and
tack of Autonomy to introduce a new Innovative course. 10 They aspire that india to be among the
top 5 iterm of research and patints with 90% Induates realy employable the report in its vision has
said that by 2030 they aspire to have 20 plus higher education stitutions in top 200 global ranking.
Further Literacy and level of Educaiton are basic indicators of the level of development achieved by a
society. Educaiton is important you the personal, social and economic dept of the nation. Strony
communication skills are one of the most important factors in findingmaintainy , and succeed by in
yhour job. Literacy skills are essentiar for young people to achieve their educational and
employment aspivations. A good education helps one communicate better it include speech, sisns
sesteurm adn even body language. Education is away by which people of different cultures. relision
sects cone together dury school collese, etc. Edcuation can helps to improve social Harmany.

Points to remember
• Literacy is definitely about reading and lowering the rate of illteracy around the globe is incredibly
importent.
• Education as a basic human need. Education as a human right. Educaiton for all.
• Leteracy as the ability to identify, understand, interprent, crents, communicats and computer
asking printed and written materials associates with varying contexts.
• University graduates employability is an important issue for higher education institutions. Literacy
is critical to economic development as well as individuals and commts well being the chambins world
is a universal topic of intevert, with particular response to higher education.
• Literacy opens up a variety of new opportunics. High education levels are portively associates with
highe income, with more mighly qualified progression, with lower risking of unemployment, with
better physical health and also happiness.
• Remember a high level of literacy is central to career sucess. Good literacy skills are essential for
career and social life.
• Education can improe social harmony.
• Literacy is vital to a successful educaiton, career, and quality of life in today's life.

1.8 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1. What is the role of literacy in education and social life?

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2. Write about literacy.
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1.9 ASSIGNMENTS
1. How litaracy levels can impact your career. Explain.
2. Write about Literacy.
11 1.10 POINTS FOR DISCUSSION AND CLARIFICATION

1.10.1 Points for

Discussion ........................................................................................................................................... ....
.......................................................................................................................................
1.10.2 Points for
Clarification ........................................................................................................................................... ..
.........................................................................................................................................
1.11 REFERENCES

1. https://hubpages.com/education/The-Impartance-of-literacy-in-Education
2. https://www.studyread.com/importance-of-educaiton/
3. https://www.writingforward.com/better-writing/characteristics-of-good writing
4. https://rover.who.istheo.com/reflections-on-literacy-9e12d77232c2 5. how do college graduates
benefit society at large? www.aplu.org
6. https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/may/22/universiitel-
mustproduce-graduates-who-are-ready-for-workplace.
7. www.business-standard.com/article/management/employability-of-graduates-bigconcun-says-
ficci-cy-report-114111301099-1.html.
UNIT-2 LITERACY, THINKING AND SELF ESTEEM: LITERACY OF SECOND
LANGUAGE/ ENGLISH: NEED AND STRATEGIES: BASIC BRAILLE
LITERACY
Structure

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Objectives

2.3 Literacy

2.4 Thinking and,

2.5 Self - Esteem

2.6 Literacy of second Language English

2.7 Need and strategies

2.8 Basic Braille Literacy

2.9 Unit Summary

2.10 Check your progress

2.11 Assignments

2.12 Points for Discussion and clarification

2.14 References

2.1 INTRODUCTION

Literacy as the ability, confidence and willingness to engage with language to acquire, construct and
communicate meany in all aspects of daily living. Language is explained as a socially and culturally
constructed system of communication. Literacy development occurs not only in school but in every
aspect of daily life. We interact with other when we have a conversation. Literacy opens the door to
the world. Literacy can benefit to economic growth, reduce poverty, reduce crime with literacy,
people can be educated and get employed for jobs. Literacy helps to boost self - esteem, confidence
and empowerment cognitive abilities like thinking, reasoning and problem solving may be
considered to be some of the chief characteristics which distinguish human being from other species
including the higher animals. The powers of thinking and reasons may they be considered to be the
essential tools for the welfare and meanyful existence of the individual as well as society. "Thinking
is a behaviour which is of ten implicit and hidden and in which symbols are ordinarily employed". -
Garrett 2 We all know that self - esteem sometimes referrers to a self - worth or self respect, can be
an important part of success. In psychology, the term self esteem is used to describe a person's over
all sense of self - worth/personal value. In other words, how much you appreciate and like you self.
It is a personality trait, which means that it tends to be stable and enduring. Self - esteem can play a
significant role in your motivational success throught out your life. Signs of healthy self - esteem are
confidence, abilities to see over all strengths and weakness and accept them, positive out look,
ability to express etc. A person's second Language or L2 , is a Language that of not the native
language of the speaker, but that is used in the locale in that person, in contrast, a foregy language is
a language that is learned in on area where that language is not generally spoken by the community
as a whole. Teaching english is a second language is a high - demand subject of instruction that
continues to experience growth in schools across the country. Readies, writing, speaking and listens -
the four foundation skills of language Cleary.

Four Language skills : Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing.

Input Receptive Productical Output

Listening Speaking
Reading Writing

All four skills support each other since, they are inter connected/ All four skills fecilate learning.
Knowing the level of english language progficiency at which your students are functioning
academically is vital in order to be able scaffold appropriately. Not all strategies are appropriate for
all levels of language learners. Creating and sustaining professional learning communities that
support EL's are vital for student success. Bringing all student's into discussion also on hences basic
language development. The development of literacy for all persons constitutes the cornerstone of
education. Literacy skills an equally significant for individuals who are visually impaired. Braise is an
extremely important tool for blind people to become literate and it is a critical complement that
supports educational advancement and increases employment prospect's there is a need to
promote programs that link the importance of develops braille teteracy skills with employment and
hence with independence and happiness.

2.2 OBJECTIVES

After completing the unit student - teachers will be able to

• Understand literacy, thinking and self esteem. 3

• Know the relation between literacy, thinking and self esteem.

• Understand literacy of second language English.

• Know the basic English language skills.

• Understand need and strategies skills.

• Know the basic Braille Literacy.

• Understand the importance of basic Braille literacy

• Reflect upon current level of literacy skills of the self

2.3 LITERACY

Literacy is the ability to "read, write, spell, listen and speak" Every child is an individual and has
unique sills and talents. They may excel in science, music, art, athletics etc. However, There is one
are that the ches all others : literacy, whenit comes to reading and writing as a students individuclity
really shins through. We know that reading and reading compreriveaffects all ther area of lew.
Literacy is a funamental human right and the basic of or any individual's ability to learn. It is essential
for social and human dupt. Highly literate populations and communities are in a for better porition
to deal governance in a highly diverse socicty. Inorder to secceed in modern life, your cureer and
improve your quality of life, it is vital to have good literacy skills.

2.4 THINKING

Thinking is the base of all cognitive activities or processes and is unique to human beings. It involves
manipulation and analysis of information received from the environment. Thinking is a higher
mental process through which we manipulate and analyse the acquired or existing information. Such
manipulation and analysis occur by means of abstracting, reasoning, imagination, problem solving,
judging and decision making. It is mostly organized and goal directed. All daily life activities ranging
from cooking to solving academic problems like math have a goal thinking is internal mental process,
which can be inferred from overt behaviour. Psychologists define thinking as the manipulation of
mental representations of information. A representation may take the form of a word, a visual
image, a sound, or data in any other sensory modality stores in memory. Thinking transforms a
particular representation of information into new and different forms, allowing us to answer
questions, solve problems or reach goals. Some cognitive psychologists, states that such mental
images constitute a major part of thinking. Mental images are representations in the visual of an
object or event. They are not 4 just visual representations ; out ability to "hear" a tune in our heads
also relies on a mental image. In fact, every sensory modality may produce corresponding mental
images. Research has found that our mental images have many of the properties of the actual
stimuli they present. Some expert's sea the production of mental images as a way to improve various
skills. For instance, many athletes use mental imagery in their training. concepts are mental
groupings of similar object's, events or people. Concept's enable us to organize complex phenomena
in to simple and therefore more easily usable, cognitive categories. Concept's help us classify newly
encocentered object's on the basic of our past experience prototypes are typical or best example of
the concept. Concepts enable us to think about and understand more readily the complex world in
which we line.

2.5 SELF - ESTEEM

Our behaviour also reflects the view we have of over selves and the way we value the various part's
of our personalities. Self - esteem is the component of personality that encompasses our positive
and negative self - evaluations. unlike self-efficacy, which focuses on our views of whether we are
able to carry out a task, self - esteem relates to how we feel about ourselves. Although people have
a general level of self - esteem, it is not undenensional. We may see ourselves positively in our
domain but negatively in others. For example, a good student may have high self esteem in
academic domains but lower self - esteem in sport's self esteem has strong cultural componente. For
example, having high relationship harmony - a sense of success in forming close bonds with other
people - is more important to self - esteem in Asian cultures than it is in more individualistic western
societies. (Spencer - Rodgers et al ; 2004 ; Lun & Bond, 2006 ; chang & kwon, 2008). Although almost
every one goes through periods of low self - esteem (for instances, after an undividable failure),
some people are chronically low in self - esteem. For them, failure seems to be an inevitable part of
life. In fact, low esteem may lead to a cycle of failure in which past failure breads future failure. For
example, consider students with low esteem who are studying for a test. Because of their low self -
esteem, they expect to do poorly on the test. In turn, this belief raises their anxiety level, which
makes it increasingly difficult to study and perhaps even leading them not to work hard. Because of
these altitudes, they do, infact, ultimately perform badly on the test ultimately, the failure reinforces
their low esteem, and the cycle is perpetuated as illustrated in the following ;

Figure. In short, low esteem can lead to a self destructive cycle of failure

Figure 1

Low Low Reduced Actual

Self-Esteem Performance 1ffort Failure

High

Effort

The cycle of Low esteem begins with an individual already having low - esteem. As a consequences,
the person will have low performance expectations and expect to fail a test, ther by producing axiety
and reduced effort. As a result the person will actually fail and failure in turn reinforces low self
esteem.

What is self - esteem?

Feelings we have about our selves. Self esteem is a realistic respect for or favorable impression of
one self ; self respect. (Dictionary.com) It is feeling good about yourself, putting a high value on your
worth. Thinking or thoughts in your head about your self and it is different depending on
circumstances and relationships.

Self - esteem refers to the way we see and think about ourselves. Importance of self esteem is
• Confidence
• Pleasure
• Sense of optimism
• Happiness

High Self - Esteem

People who have nigh self - esteem generally feel good about their ability to participate, confident in
social situations and happy with the way. Generally they have following things, they are confident,
they have good sense of self - worth, they are positive, encouraging and supportive to others and
they passes good communication. They are extrovert, energetic, ambitions and they learn from their
mistakes. These things give them to strength and flexibility to take charge of their lives and grow
from mistakes without any fear. Self esteem plays an important role in how well the people do in
their lives, which is not obvious to them, so that it can determine how successful they become. 6
People with higher self-esteem are likely to be higher achievers in all performance oriented tasks
than those with lower self - esteem because they will be move conscientious about better
performance inorder to maintain perceived self - worth.

Ten Ways to Build your Child's Self - Esteem

Slef - esteem comes from having a sense of belonging, believing that we're capable and knowing our
contributions are valued and worth while sometimes we feel good about our selves and sometimes
we do not. Our goal is to ensure that our child develops pride and self - respect in him/her self and in
his cultural roots - as well as faith in his ability to handle lifes challenges.

Here are some strategies to help boost your child's self - esteem.

 Give unconditional love

 Pay Attention Teach limits
 Support healthy risk's
 Let's mistakes happen
 Celebrate the positive
 Resist comparisons Offer empathy
 Provide encouragement
Self - esteem can play a significant role in you motivation and success throught your life. Having a
healthy self - esteem can help you achieve a second Language need a variety of ways to demonstrate
their knowledge of concepts that are not wholly reliant on advances communication skills. Many
literacy goals are met through project work. No matter what the topic is, children are involved in
listening and peerdiscussion, writing for a purpase, forming quastions, and research. Becuase project
work is visual, meaningful, and relevant, it is a valuable resource for teachers of second language
learners. (Rebecca A. wilson). The ability of teacher to support literacy development of second
language learners depends on the Language knowledge of the teacher. In early childhood education,
literacy is most easily developed through the childs primary or home language.
Positive Thinking and Self-Esteem
People with low self-esteem find it very difficult to have a pasitive outlook on life. Self esteem is
affected by early life experiences and is a blend of internal confidence 7 and external achievements.
Self-esticem is something anyone can increase and maintain at a higher level. Two key components
of self-esteem are self-image and self-task. A positive attitude is at the heart of optimistic and
successful people. Successful and confident people have positive attitudes. Self-Confidence is based
on a belief that one's effort and abilities will allow one to reach a goal. Successful and confident
people have pasitive self-images. This image self-or self-image - is largely developed in early life.
Self-image is how you see yourself in relation to the world. Self-image includes:

 What you think you like physically - and acceptance of your physical characteristics.
• What you think other sthink of you - how your personality comes across.
• What you believe your strangths and weakness are -- your ability to have an accrate and objective
 view of your self.
• How much you like yourself-and how well you take care of yourself.
 How to Improve your Self - Image
BLOCK II REFLECTIONS ON READING COMPREHENSION

Introduction

Reflections on “reading comprehension. Reading is to introduce the human being into the
world which has been created by the human being himself; into this system of devised letters
whose goal is communication. This world communicates, broadcasts knowledge, experience,
instructions and much more; it broadcasts messages. The script and the reading make also possible
that this world created by the human being presents itself to us in several languages. And every
language means a new “reality” and a new culture. So, the access to a new language turns at the same
time into an access to a “universe” of knowledge, point of views and culture. In order to be able to
grasp all these things, you do not only have to be able to read (in the sense of recognizing and of the
ability to reproduce phonemes), but you have also to be able to “read well”. This means that you have
to be able to understand the meaning of what is written as well as the idea behind the text.

The reading comprehension is a part of the communicative skills. It is very important

because a large number of the texts which you have to read and understand are essential for
the life with a language. As for the second languages (L2) or rather the foreign languages
(LE), the effective comprehension is very important because on the one hand, it can concern
the reading of literal texts, but on the other hand also the comprehension of important
information as for example the of arrival and departure times on a timetable. Here, you can
distinguish between reading for pleasure  and reading out of necessity. The reading can also
be crucial for the comprehension of culture.

In this block have two units. Unit-3 Practicing Responses to Text: Personal, Creative and
Critical and Unit-4 Developing Good Reading Skills and Habits in Primary Level Students:
Activities and Strategies: Basic Understanding of Reading Comprehension of Children with
Disabilities
UNIT – 3 PRACTICING RESPONSES TO TEXT: PERSONAL, CREATIVE AND
CRITICAL

Structure

3.1 Objectives
3.2 Introduction
3.3 Practicing Responses to Text
3.3.1 Writing a Personal Reflection to Text
3.4 Personal
3.5 Creative and Critical
3.6 Summary
3.7 Check your Progress
3.8 Assignments
3.9 Points for Discussion and Clarification
3.10 References

3.1 OBJECTIVES
After complete this unit you will be able to:
 To understand the Practicing Responses to Text
 To know about writing a Personal Reflection to Text
 To describe the Personal and Creative and Critical

3.2 INTRODUCTION
The typical exercises which are given to develop this skill are especially texts which the
students have to read in order to receive certain information from them. But when one is
choosing the texts,  it is important to take the level which the students have into
consideration. The exercises train in general the reading process, the comprehension of the
current text as well as the ability to discern and to filter out certain elements. The texts are
often used as a premise to confront the students with yet unknown contents of grammar. For
example, new verb forms are introduced in the text. These texts can belong to the genre of the
“realia”, so they can be taken directly from the reality. But they can also be adapted or even
exactly written for this specific purpose. In this context, it is important that the teacher choose
the texts with pedagogical farsightedness because his choice will determine whether the
students are successful or not. That is the reason why the choice will also decide indirectly on
the value of this teaching unit per se.

Beyond that, it is absolutely important for the teaching and for the comprehension that the
texts are interesting and attractive for the students. Besides, they have to be exactly adapted
to the needs and the insecurity of the students. In this way, they will work more effectively
with the text and they will be more motivated. And apropos of nothing, they will develop
their linguistic abilities.

Reflections on the topic “reading comprehension

Apple, banana, blue, walk, tree, happy and sing. Surely you were able to read each of the
words in that sentence and understand what they meant independently. An apple is a fruit that
is usually round and red, green or yellow. A banana is another fruit that is yellow. Blue is a
color…and so on and so forth. However, when you look at the sentence as a whole, does it
make sense? Probably not. This nonsense sentence demonstrates the difference between
being able to read words and comprehend text. As practiced readers we may take this
distinction for granted since the acts of reading and comprehension occur almost
simultaneously for us. For developing readers this relationship is not as apparent, but is
essential for them to become strong, capable readers.

What exactly IS reading comprehension?

Simply put, reading comprehension is the act of understanding what you are reading. While
the definition can be simply stated the act is not simple to teach, learn or practice. Reading
comprehension is an intentional, active, interactive process that occurs before, during and
after a person reads a particular piece of writing.

Reading comprehension is one of the pillars of the act of reading. When a person reads a text
he engages in a complex array of cognitive processes. He is simultaneously using his
awareness and understanding of phonemes (individual sound “pieces” in language), phonics
(connection between letters and sounds and the relationship between sounds, letters and
words) and ability to comprehend or construct meaning from the text. This last component of
the act of reading is reading comprehension. It cannot occur independent of the other two
elements of the process. At the same time, it is the most difficult and most important of the
three.

There are two elements that make up the process of reading comprehension: vocabulary
knowledge and text comprehension. In order to understand a text the reader must be able to
comprehend the vocabulary used in the piece of writing. If the individual words don’t make
the sense then the overall story will not either. Children can draw on their prior knowledge of
vocabulary, but they also need to continually be taught new words. The best vocabulary
instruction occurs at the point of need. Parents and teachers should pre-teach new words that
a child will encounter in a text or aid her in understanding unfamiliar words as she comes
upon them in the writing. In addition to being able to understand each distinct word in a text,
the child also has to be able to put them together to develop an overall conception of what it
is trying to say. This is text comprehension. Text comprehension is much more complex and
varied that vocabulary knowledge. Readers use many different text comprehension strategies
to develop reading comprehension. These include monitoring for understanding, answering
and generating questions, summarizing and being aware of and using a text’s structure to aid
comprehension.

How does reading comprehension develop?

As you can see, reading comprehension is incredibly complex and multifaceted. Because of
this, readers do not develop the ability to comprehend texts quickly, easily or independently.
Reading comprehension strategies must be taught over an extended period of time by parents
and teachers who have knowledge and experience using them. It might seem that once a child
learns to read in the elementary grades he is able to tackle any future text that comes his way.
This is not true. Reading comprehension strategies must be refined, practiced and reinforced
continually throughout life. Even in the middle grades and high school, parents and teachers
need to continue to help their children develop reading comprehension strategies. As their
reading materials become more diverse and challenging, children need to learn new tools for
comprehending these texts. Content area materials such as textbooks and newspaper,
magazine and journal articles pose different reading comprehension challenges for young
people and thus require different comprehension strategies. The development of reading
comprehension is a lifelong process that changes based on the depth and breadth of texts the
person is reading.

Why is reading comprehension so important?

Without comprehension, reading is nothing more than tracking symbols on a page with your
eyes and sounding them out. Imagine being handed a story written in Egyptian hieroglyphics
with no understanding of their meaning. You may appreciate the words aesthetically and even
be able to draw some small bits of meaning from the page, but you are not truly reading the
story. The words on the page have no meaning. They are simply symbols. People read for
many reasons but understanding is always a part of their purpose. Reading comprehension is
important because without it reading doesn’t provide the reader with any information.

Beyond this, reading comprehension is essential to life. Much has been written about the
importance of functional literacy. In order to survive and thrive in today’s world individuals
must be able to comprehend basic texts such as bills, housing agreements (leases, purchase
contracts), directions on packaging and transportation documents (bus and train schedules,
maps, travel directions). Reading comprehension is a critical component of functional
literacy. Think of the potentially dire effects of not being able to comprehend dosage
directions on a bottle of medicine or warnings on a container of dangerous chemicals. With
the ability to comprehend what they read, people are able not only to live safely and
productively, but also to continue to develop socially, emotionally and intellectually.
Reflecting about the meaning of a text might result in:

 a connection between your own life and the text;

 a connection between other readings and the text;
 a connection between the social/political world and the text;
 making a visual image of the meaning of the text;
 making an inference about the underlying meaning of the text;
 generating questions about the text (this is a more important comprehension
strategy than most readers realize);
 evaluating the importance of the text; or
 summarizing and determing the most important messages in the text

3.3.1 Writing a Personal Reflection to Text

The format of a personal response is much the same as any other written response; you state your idea
and then you defend the idea with details from the text. Personal responses are worded as follows:

• Note that you are given the choice as to how to respond.

• The first bullet tells you to choose a prose form. (Prose is anything other than poetry.)
• In the table below are a few examples of forms that prose can take:

• You are also given the choice as to what perspective to use:

3.4 PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

►So, when writing a personal response, you need to determine four things before you begin writing:

1. theme of the text (idea, impression)

2. supporting details from the text

3. prose form the response will take

4. perspective the response will take

PERSONAL REFLECTION to TEXTS EXAMPLE

Examine the photograph below. Reflect upon the ideas and impressions
suggested by the photograph.
What ideas and impressions does the photograph suggest to you?

1. Start with a thesis statement, your answer to the question: Even at its poorest, humanity can still
find it possible to share what little it has.

2. Explain how the details in the visual and the creator's choices support this idea. Then think of at
least three points that back up your answer.

i. The old man is cold and dirty, which reflects poverty. The little girl is also dirty and has only
crackers to eat. They are poor and have little.

ii. The old man is in pain, by his expression. He is huddled into himself as if trying in vain to gather
warmth. The background is blurry and indistinct, accentuating the isolation of the two. There is no
one coming to help them; they are not part of the big picture.

iii. The little girl is offering a cracker, her only food, to the old man. She is holding the cracker up as a
gift, an offering, a hope to bring him comfort. Her facial expression, although not entirely clear, seems
to be one of concern.

3. Now, as you have a thesis statement and the support, which will act as a mini-outline, determine
your prose form and perspective, and write your response:

Dear Diary,

As I was walking through Prince’s Island Park today, I saw a man and his young daughter who moved
me to tears. They were off the regular pathway and virtually ignored by the downtown crowd strolling
through the park on their lunch breaks.
The two were most certainly homeless – the little girl’s winter coat, once pink, was a dingy grey. The
rest of her clothing and that of her father had a similar layer of grey filth. Her father’s jacket was torn
and didn’t appear to be protecting him from the elements, as he was shivering against the cold. Both
of them had red cheeks, the kind of rosiness that appears after a person has been out in the cold for
some time. Between them they had a rather lifeless, and very dirty, canvas knapsack. This knapsack
seemed to be a symbol of the father – from his facial expression and body language, he looked as
though all hope had long ago deserted him – he appeared deflated and defeated.

His little girl was holding on to a sleeve of soda crackers, trying to entice her father to eat. She had so
little to offer, but was doing her best to ease his pain and show her concern. He refused her offering;
most likely knowing that was all the food they had at the moment, with no idea as to where and when
any more would be found. He refused to eat the food that would have eased his hunger because he
wanted to prevent her hunger. She offered all she had in the cracker, in an attempt to ease his pain.
Even in their isolated hunger and cold, the man and the child both offered comfort and aid to one
another.

This is where my tears came in. Between them, these two had next to nothing, yet each was willing to
sacrifice the little they had for each other. They made me aware of what I was wearing – a coat I’d
already had for two years and last season’s boots. Amongst the downtown crowd, I had felt
unfashionable, but near these two I felt ashamed and guilty. I spend so much money on clothes,
jewellery, my hair . . . – and my children have stuffed closets and full bellies. We want for nothing,
yet when was the last time I put anything into the hamper at the grocery store for the food bank?
When was the last time I made a donation to the homeless shelter or the Y? I remember looking at my
charitable donations total at tax time and thinking I really needed to be giving more. I give, but it is
relatively painless. I need to be giving until it hurts!

I felt ashamed that I have been blessed with so much and have given so little, while these two, who
have next to nothing, were willing to share what little they had in order to ease each other’s pain. I
also felt ashamed at being moved to tears – as the old song goes “Tears Are Not Enough”. It’s one
thing to have wet cheeks in a park at lunch time, but a totally different thing to actually do something
about the situation that moves me to tears! It seems that it is always the poor and the weak who teach
the rest of us the true meaning of humanity. All of us are our brothers’ keepers, and I’ve finally
realized how cold and hungry my brothers are.

3.5 CREATIVE PERSPECTIVE AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE

. . . I am so cold. Winter is not even here, yet, and already I am suffering. And my poor Sophie! What
a brave little girl she is. Her cheeks are so red and her little fingers are moving stiffly. I look around at
the lunch crowd in this park and remember when I was part of their group. My life has changed so
drastically in such a short time. . .

. . .When Emilie took sick two years ago, at first we were excited by the thought that maybe she was
pregnant – she had terrible morning sickness when she carried Sophie. That was not to be, however.
She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Devastating! We knew that was almost always fatal, so we
took a second mortgage on the house to go to the States in order that Emilie could be treated by the
leading doctors in the field. We were desperate to try anything to save her life – and spend anything in
the process . . .
. . I miss Emilie so much. And how can I raise Sophie on my own? She needs her mother. And now I
feel as though I have so little to offer her – we hardly get enough to eat, and find shelter where we
can. Homeless shelters for a man and his small daughter are a bit of a problem. . .

. . It is unbelievable how much misery one person can endure. I feel like Job. Not long after Emilie
died, my company down-sized, and I was let go. The severance package covered the cost of her
funeral expenses and left little to live on. I could no longer pay the first mortgage, never mind the
second one, so I lost the house, along with all its contents . . .

. . . I don’t even have anyone to turn to. So many of my former co-workers are experiencing difficult
financial times, as well. And all of my family is in China. I was sending money back home every
month to try to make my parents more comfortable in their old age. Now they don’t have that, and I
feel like I have failed them, too. . .

Poor Sophie! How she cried when her mama died and then again at the auction sale where her
belongings disappeared. How terrible to take a mother away from a child, and then all those things
that would give her physical comfort. She doesn’t even have a home anymore – and what a home
Emilie had made for us . . . . . . Look at my little Sophie. She is trying to share those crackers with me.
Those crackers are the only thing between us and starvation. She has such a big heart. She never
complains and she must be as hungry as I am. . . “You eat, little one. Daddy’s not hungry.”

. . . My poor Sophie! You are all I have left in this world, and I for you. Is that enough for both of us?
It will have to be . . .

Notice how this interpretation is also defended with details from the photograph, but not to the same
degree as the first two. Since this is a creative response, much has been “read into” the photograph,
but all is logical for the viewer of the photograph. Everything that has been created logically fits with
the scene that has been portrayed.

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE

It seems that even in at its lowest, poorest, coldest, most desolate state, humans can find a way to
attempt to comfort one another. This candid photograph reveals a moment between an old man and a
child, where the child offers all she can to ease the discomfort of the old man. She has little to offer
but the offer itself.

The old man in the photograph is cold and hungry; his face reflects his pain. The man's jacket seems
to have a broken zipper, leaving only the buttons to attempt to shut out the cold. He huddles into
himself in a vain attempt to gather warmth. The man is perhaps the girl's grandfather. As the cold and
hunger of poverty can age a person prematurely, the man may even be her father. The little girl is also
cold; her soiled clothing and dirty hands indicate she shares the state of poverty with the old man. The
coat and hat, once a bright and cheerful pink have been covered with the dirt and soot of living in the
street.

The images in the foreground, the girl and the man, are sharp and distinct. Like the hunger pains and
cold winds, the images are sharp. The background abruptly blurs behind them. Like most of the poor
in society, they are not part of the 'big picture'. The back ground is blurred symbolizing a separation
from the rest of the scene, the rest of the world. They are isolated in their situation. There is not aid
forthcoming, no help advancing from the back ground. The background, like their future is blurry and
uncertain.

The little girl is offering a cracker. This is all she has to offer. Her face is not entirely visible but what
we can see indicates concern as does her body language. She is holding food up to her fellow man, an
offering of all that she has to offer in order to ease his pain. He, most likely, has refused to eat the
little food they have in order to feed the child. His sacrifice is another example of humanity in the
poorest of circumstances.

He refused to eat the food that would ease his hunger because he wants prevent her hunger. She offers
all that she has in the cracker, in attempt to ease his pain. Even in their isolated hunger and cold, the
man and the child both offer comfort and aid to one another.

There are still many more possibilities:

Imagine that you decided to eat your lunch in the park, and you witnessed this scene. Write the
journal entry you would pen that night. On what sorts of ideas would you reflect? Your own blessings,
perhaps? The wisdom and guidance of your elders that has kept you from a life of poverty?

As a newspaper editor, you are on a crusade to fight poverty and homelessness in your municipality.
Write an editorial inspired by witnessing these two people. What sorts of statements would you make
to your reading public? Would you be admonishing? Would you have a call to action of some sort?

Imagine that you are the small girl in the photo. What kinds of thoughts would be going through your
head? How have you interpreted the actions of your father? your mother? How do you feel about your
parents? Are you anxious? Trusting? Etc.

Perhaps you have had a personal encounter with street people. Relate your own experience.

Yes, and so is every other human language! Language is always changing, evolving, and

adapting to the needs of its users. Language changes for several reasons. First, it changes because the
needs of its speakers change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences require new
words to refer to them clearly and efficiently. Consider texting: originally it was called text
messaging, because it allowed one person to send another text rather than voice messages by
phone. As that became more common, people began using the shorter form text to refer to both the
message and the process, as in I just got a text or I'll text Sylvia right now.

Another reason for change is that no two people have had exactly the same
language experience. We all know a slightly different set of words and constructions,
depending on our age, job, education level, region of the country, and so on. We pick up new
words and phrases from all the different people we talk with, and these combine to make
something new and unlike any other person's particular way of speaking. At the same time,
various groups in society use language as a way of marking their group identity; showing
who is and isn't a member of the group.

Many of the changes that occur in language begin with teens and young adults. As young
people interact with others their own age, their language grows to include words, phrases, and
constructions that are different from those of the older generation. Some have a short life
span (heard groovy lately?), but others stick around to affect the language as a whole.
We get new words from many different places. We borrow them from other languages (sushi,
chutzpah), we create them by shortening longer words (gym from gymnasium) or by
combining words (brunch from breakfast and lunch), and we make them out of proper names
(Levis, fahrenheit). Sometimes we even create a new word by being wrong about the analysis
of an existing word, like how the word pea was created. Four hundred years ago, the
word pease was used to refer to either a single pea or a bunch of them, but over time, people
assumedthat pease was a plural form, for which pea must be the singular. Therefore, a new
word, pea, was born. The same thing would happen if people began to think of the
word cheese as referring to more than one chee.

Word order also changes, though this process is much slower. Old English word order was
much more 'free' than that of Modern English, and even comparing the Early Modern English
of the King James Bible with today's English shows differences in word order. For example,
the King James Bible translates Matthew as "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not." In a more recent translation, the last phrase is translated as "they do not toil,”
because English no longer places not after the verb in a sentence.

The sounds of a language change over time, too. About 500 years ago, English began to
undergo a major change in the way its vowels were pronounced. Before that, geese would
have rhymed with today's pronunciation of face, while mice would have rhymed with
today's peace. However, a 'Great Vowel Shift' began to occur, during which the ay sound (as
in pay) changed to ee (as in fee) in all the words containing it, while the ee sound changed
to i (as in pie). Overall, seven different vowel sounds were affected. If you've ever wondered
why most other European languages spell the sound ay with an ‘e’ (as in fiancé), and the
sound ee with an ‘i’ (as in aria), it's because those languages didn't undergo the Great Vowel
Shift, only English did.  

Meta Cognitive Awareness of Reading Processes and Strategies Applied for Meaning
Making

Metacognition is, put simply, thinking about one’s thinking.  More precisely, it refers to the
processes used to plan, monitor, and assess one’s understanding and
performance. Metacognition includes a critical awareness of a) one’s thinking and learning
and b) oneself as a thinker and learner.
Metacognitive practices help students become aware of their strengths and weaknesses as
learners, writers, readers, test-takers, group members, etc.  A key element is recognizing the
limit of one’s knowledge or ability and then figuring out how to expand that knowledge or
extend the ability. Those who know their strengths and weaknesses in these areas will be
more likely to “actively monitor their learning strategies and resources and assess their
readiness for particular tasks and performances”.

Putting Metacognition into Practice

In “Promoting Student Metacognition,” Tanner (2012) offers a handful of specific activities
which can be adapted to any discipline. She first describes four assignments for explicit
instruction:

 Preassessments—Encouraging Students to Examine Their Current Thinking: “What

do I already know about this topic that could guide my learning?”
 The Muddiest Point—Giving Students Practice in Identifying Confusions: “What was
most confusing to me about the material explored in class today?”
 Retrospective Postassessments—Pushing Students to Recognize Conceptual
Change:  “How is my thinking changing (or not changing) over time?”
 Reflective Journals—Providing a Forum in Which Students Monitor Their Own
Thinking: “What about my exam preparation worked well that I should remember
to do next time? What did not work so well that I should not do next time or that I
should change?”

METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES

Metacognitive strategies refers to methods used to help students understand the way they
learn; in other words, it means processes designed for students to ‘think’ about their
‘thinking’.
 Teachers who use metacognitive strategies can positively impact students who have learning
disabilities by helping them to develop an appropriate plan for learning information, which
can be memorized and eventually routine. As students become aware of how they learn, they
will use these processes to efficiently acquire new information, and consequently, become
more of an independent thinker. Below are three metacognitive strategies, which all include
related resources,that can be implemented in the classroom:

1. Think Aloud

Great for solving word problems.Think-aloud help students to consciously monitor and
reflect upon what they are learning. This strategy works well when teachers read a story or
problem out loud and periodically stop to verbalize their thoughts. This allows students to
follow the teacher’s thinking process, which gives them the foundation they need for creating
their own strategies and processes that can be useful for understanding what they are trying to
comprehend.
Anytime you can talk out loud (‘think aloud’) about how you view a document or a picture or
think about a book, or share your thinking processes with students you are helping them
become more metacognitive in their own approaches to the subject.
Once you have modelled for them how you would solve a problem or interpret a piece of
writing, have students work in pairs to talk out loud as to how they are thinking about an
assignment piece of homework or an assignment.

1. One student talks out loud while the partner records what they are saying (the
strategy going to be used to complete the homework 0or do the assignment). The partner
also guides them to think through all the steps.
2. Students switch roles and do the same for each other.

Now students have thought out the process for completing the assignment or homework,
received some feedback from their partner and possibly have a plan written down as to how
they are going to undertake the task.

Related Resource: readwritethink.org (High quality practices in reading and language arts instruction.

Type “think-aloud” in the search button for lesson plans)

2. Explicit Teacher Modeling

Great for math instruction. Explicit teacher modeling helps students understand what is
expected of them through a clear example/model of a skill or concept. When a teacher
provides a easy to follow procedure for solving a problem, students have a memorable
strategy to use for approaching a problem on their own.
 Related Resource: http://www.coedu.usf.edu/main/departments/sped/mathvids/index.html (Interactive
website for teachers who are teaching mathematics to struggling learners)

3. Reading Comprehension
Truly comprehending reading involves students actively engaging with a text and accurately
deciphering the layers of meaning. It is very important for students to develop solid reading
comprehension skills because statistics show that people who have low reading
comprehension ability suffer in academic, professional, and personal pursuits.

Related Resource: The resources in this guide from supersummary.com are effective strategies

for promoting reading comprehension.

4. Pre-assessment (Self-Assessment) of Content

A simple activity such as finding out what students already know about a topic can help
students begin to think about how learning works.
Here are a few ways to conduct a pre-assessment (or a student self-assessment) of new
content.

1. Create a few key questions about the content/topic a week prior to the class.  Questions
should ask students what they know already about the topic, possible identification of any
misconceptions they hold on the topic, challenges or successes they have had with the
topic, exploration into past experiences or applications of the content/topic.

These questions may be in the form of a homework assignment, a set of clicker questions for
in class voting, a short reflective writing piece done in class and handed in.

1. Have the students individually hand in their responses anonymously. Skim through
the answers after class. Possibly categorize/summarize all responses by themes.
2. Share responses with students the next class either verbally or a summary of themes.
3. Have a discussion with students about how asking these questions can help them in
thoughtful planning of how they might approach a new idea or topic or how they will
approach course content and associated studying/learning strategies.
 5. Concept Mapping and Visual Study Tools

Concept maps were originally developed to enhance meaningful learning in the sciences. A
concept map is a way of representing relationships between ideas, images or words. Concept
maps are a way to develop logical thinking and study skills by revealing connections to the
big ideas or the key concepts you are trying to teach. Concept maps will also help students
see how individual ideas relate to the larger whole or the bigger picture.
Every concept map responds to a focus question, and a good focus question can lead to a
much richer concept map. When learning to construct concept maps, learners tend to deviate
from the focus question and build a concept map that may be related to the domain, but which
does not answer the question. It is often stated that the first step to learning about something
is to ask the right questions.
Steps to create a concept map:
 

1. Construct a Focus Question

2. Identify the Key concepts

 Some people rank the concepts by importance as it may help with the
construction of the map
 This also helps the map maker sort the ideas and if they see no relevant
connection they do not have to include the conceptConstruct a Map
 3. Construct a Map

 If this is the first time you are doing one – do it as a group first
 You can use partially completed version with students to help them initially
build

Reflective Writing
Reflective writing helps students make connections between what they are learning in their
homework/class content and with how they are integrating the content into their current
learning structures. Writing helps students observe themselves before, during and after their
reading, watching and listening experience. Reflective writing can also take the form of
jotting down their affective and other personal reactions to learning the material. The most
popular reflective writing activity is the “minute paper” whereby you have students respond
to prompts that ask them to think about their experiences with the homework, class activities
or recent learning experiences in your class.  Here are some sample prompts to use for your
reflective writing activities:

 The most important part of the reading, video or class is….

 The most useful or valuable thing(s) I learned today was….
 The most surprising or unexpected idea I encountered was…
 The ideas that stand out the most in my mind are….
 This helped or hindered my understanding of the reading, video or class ….
 Two ideas that I have found confusing are….
 “I learned a lot doing this assignment”. I agree (or disagree) because….
 The advice I’d give myself based on what I know now and if I were starting this
assignment over again would be….
 If I were to paraphrase what we have learned today for a high school student it would
look like this….
 What I have learned today, I am able to connect to other courses in this way…

3.6 SUMMARY

Critical thinking allows us to monitor our understanding as we read.  If we sense that

assertions are ridiculous or irresponsible (critical thinking), we examine the text more closely
to test our understanding (critical reading).  Conversely, critical thinking depends on critical
reading.  You can think critically about a text (critical thinking), after all, only if you have
understood it (critical reading).  We may choose to accept or reject a presentation, but we
must know why. We have a responsibility to ourselves, as well as to others, to isolate the real
issues of agreement or disagreement. Only then can we understand and respect other people’s
views.  To recognize and understand those views, we must read critically.

Check your Progress

1. Explain about practicing to text.

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2. Write a short note about personal reflection to text.
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3.7 ASSIGNMENTS

1. What are personal perspectives?

2. What are critical perspectives?
3. What is a creative perspective?

3.8 POINTS FOR DISCUSSION AND CLARIFICATION

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3.9 REFERENCE

Web site
UNIT – 4 DEVELOPING GOOD READING SKILLS AND HABITS IN PRIMARY
LEVEL STUDENTS

Structure

4.1 Objectives
4.2 Introduction
4.3 Developing Good Reading Skills
4.4 Habits in Primary Level Students
4.5 Activities and Strategies
4.6 Basic Understanding of Reading Comprehension of Children with Disabilities
Check Your Progress
4.7 Summary
Check Your Progress Answers
4.8 Assignments
4.9 Points for Discussion and Clarification
4.10 Reference

4.1 OBJECTIVES

After study this unit you will be able to:

 To understand Developing Good Reading Skills

 To describe the Habits in Primary Level Students
 To Explain the Activities and Strategies
 To analyze Basic Understanding of Reading Comprehension of Children with Disabilities

4.2 INTRODUCTION
Reading is a fundamental skill that we all use every single day. We read newspapers, books,
directions, text messages, recipes, emails, safety warnings…Reading is everywhere!
Developing proficient reading skills from a young age is essential not only for academic
success, but for success in all areas and stages of life!

However, reading can be a challenging skill that many students struggle to master.  And as
teachers, we want nothing more than to help our students become comfortable and confident
readers. So, how can we better equip ourselves to help our students overcome their reading
struggles?
 Things like patience, dedication, and encouragement are certainly cornerstones of teaching
reading to primary learners.  But having an arsenal of effective reading strategies is also
incredibly helpful.

4.3 DEVELOPING GOOD READING SKILLS

Reading is a fundamental skill that we all use every single day. Teaching reading strategies to
help elementary students is so very important.

We read newspapers, books, directions, text messages, recipes, emails, safety warnings…
Reading is everywhere!

It’s no secret that developing proficient reading skills from a young age is essential not only
for academic success, but for success in all areas and stages of life!

However, reading can be a challenging skill that many students struggle to master.  And as
teachers, we want nothing more than to help our students become comfortable and confident
readers.

Improving our reading skills will reduce unnecessary reading time and enable to read in a
more focused and selective manner. We will also be able to increase our levels of
understanding and concentration. This is help to use, how to read with greater efficiency and
effectiveness by using a range of different reading skills.

To improve our reading skills we need to:

 have clear reading goals;

 choose the right texts;
 use the right reading style;
 use note taking techniques.

Reading goals
Clear reading goals can significantly increase our reading efficiency. Use reading goals to select and

prioritise information according to the task in hand.

Reading goals can be:

 an essay or seminar subject;

 a report brief;
 a selected subject area;
 a series of questions about a specific topic.

Use our reading goals to help us identify the information that is relevant to our current task.

Choosing a text
We will need to assess the text to see if it contains information that is relevant to our reading goals.

 Check the date of publication. Is the information up-to-date?

 Read the publisher's blurb at the back or inside sleeve for an overview of the content.

 Check the contents page for relevant chapters.

 Look up references for our topic in the index.

If the text does not seem relevant, discard it.

Once we have selected a text we can use the following techniques of scanning and skimming to help us

identify areas for detailed reading.

Scanning
Scanning is the technique you might use when reading a telephone directory.

 the introduction or preface of a text;

 the first or last paragraphs of chapters;
 the concluding or summarising chapter of a text;
 the book index.

Skimming
 Skimming is the process of speedy reading for general meaning. Use this technique to:

 pre-view a selection of text prior to detailed reading;

 refresh your understanding of a selection of text following detailed reading.

4.4 HABITS IN PRIMARY LEVEL STUDENTS

4.5 ACTIVITIES AND STRATEGIES

1. Focus on Fluency and Phonics Simultaneously

Phonics and fluency truly go hand in hand – you can’t really have one without the other.So,
why not teach them together?

Merging subjects in school and teaching them simultaneously is pretty trendy right now in the
world of education.  And while phonics and fluency pretty closely aligned, you can easily dip
your toe in this trend by teaching them at the same time.

Fluency can be defined as being able to decode text and read with accuracy, speed, and
proper expression.  Basically, it’s the ability to easily read through a text without stumbling
over words or sounding choppy and awkward.
It’s pretty essential for kids to become fluent readers in order to focus on comprehension. 
When they’re struggling to pronounce or decode, words, they can’t give the necessary
attention to understanding the text.

Phonics is often thought of as a precursor to fluency.  It deals with beginning readers

understanding the correspondence between letters and sounds.  Fluent readers often rely on
their knowledge of letter-sound relationships to decode words.

Without phonics, it’s pretty tough to become a fluent reader.  By teaching phonics while
working on fluency, your students have the opportunity to grow exponentially as readers.

Related Resource: https://www.readinga-z.com/fluency/fluency-practice-passages/

2. Explicitly Teach and Display Strategies

We all know that amazing feeling that comes with creating the perfectly decorated
classroom.  Everything is in its place and perfectly organized – until the kids get there, of
course.But when it comes to room décor, it shouldn’t just be pretty – it should be
meaningful.  You can make your classroom décor a powerful part of your reading curriculum
by displaying strategies around the room.

Displaying and explicitly teaching strategies that your students can use while reading.  By
keeping useful strategies displayed, you allow your students an element of independence. 
They can take control of their own reading and help themselves get through tough words or
pronunciation issues!

Plus, depending on what strategy posters you decide to use, you can add to the adorable-ness
of your room!  These Reading Strategy Posters are so useful to both teachers and kids!  They
offer your students purposeful and specific strategies with beautifully illustrated designs!

You can even purchase the bundle and give each student their own set of strategy cards or
keep sets in your reading corner for shared use!

3. Graphic Organizers

When it comes to reading comprehension, graphic organizers are an incredibly useful

strategy and tool to support this vital aspect of becoming proficient readers.The students in
your classroom are undoubtedly a diverse bunch with each of them learning and absorbing
information in different ways.  Using graphic organizers allows you to address a variety of
learning modalities at once during reading instruction.

Graphic organizers let student’s process information both visually and spatially which
encourages them to internalize the material.  The very nature of graphic organizers enables
students to quite literally see the connections in what they are reading.

There are a slew of graphic organizer products out there or you can even have your students
create their own!  Here are some of examples of how you can pair graphic organizers to any
unit you teach! Find more close reading units with graphic organizers here!

4. Employ the 3-2-1 Strategy

A fun technique to use when teaching reading is something called the 3-2-1 strategy.  This
can be very helpful in ensuring and monitoring student engagement.If students are not fully
engaged in their endeavor to learn how to read, their progress will occur at a much slower
rate.

After students complete a passage, ask them to write down 3 things that they learned, 2 things
that are interesting, and 1 question that they have.By using this simple strategy, you not only
boost their engagement but you allow them to  purposefully improve their reading
comprehension.

5. Decoding: Focus on Problem Sounds

Decoding is a common skill that students employ when learning to read.  I like to think of it
like a ‘word attack’ technique that helps my students translate printed words to speech.Using
manipulatives to teach letter-sound relationships is a great technique.  You can try counters,
magnetic letters, or sound boxes.

Another fun idea is to ask students to identify when you make ‘on-purpose’ mistakes.  Kids
love catching errors that teachers make and using this technique when decoding problem
sounds is very effective.  When they identify an error, have them correct it as well!

There are a slew of products out there that can help make decoding problem sounds more fun
for your students.  One of my favorites is the Crowns Bundle.  This bundle is a fun and
purposeful way to introduce each alphabet sound, blend, trigraph, or diphthong.

6. Use Metacognition
Metacognition can be defined as “thinking about thinking”.  What exactly does that mean
when it comes to your reading instruction?

Basically, by using metacognition, you help get your students in the habit of thinking about
their reading before, during, and after a text.

Before reading a text, you might ask your students to discuss their purpose for reading and
preview the text.

During reading, you can guide students to continually monitor their understanding, adjust the
speed they are reading to ensure that it aligns with the difficulty, or address any possible
comprehension issues that they come across.

After reading, you can use various methods such as finger signs, sticky note questions, or
round robin activities to check your students understanding of what they read.

When first using metacognition, you will likely have to offer quite a bit of support to your
students and ‘train’ them to get in the habit of metacognition strategies.  The goal is to
scaffold until they can get into the habit of thinking about their reading on their own.

7. Make It Personal

By making text to life connections and activating prior knowledge, students become invested
in their reading.  This can be a powerful tool to keep them engaged and motivated when it
comes to working on their reading skills.

Furthermore, connecting what your students are reading to their lives in addition to activating
prior knowledge often helps students retain more of what they read.

Asking students questions like:

 Is this subject familiar? What do you know about this topic?

 Do these characters remind you of anyone from your own life?
 What event from your life does this text remind you of?
 How do the ideas in the text relate to your own life or experiences?

These are just a few of the many possible questions that you can ask to effectively activate
prior knowledge and help students personally connect to a text.  By doing this you keep your
little readers actively engaged and involved in their reading.  When students care about and
connect with their reading, they tend to soar academically.

8. Word Walls
A word wall is often seen as simply a classroom decoration or fancy bulletin board, but this
couldn’t be further from the truth.  Maintaining a word wall is a highly effective strategy for
promoting literacy in your classroom.

Word walls are powerful tools to help students work on their spelling, vocabulary, and
reading skills.  They help promote a literacy-focused environment that’s rich in printed text.
Students can refer to the word wall for

When creating your word wall, don’t feel as if it needs to be a static resource!  They can be
utilized daily by incorporating various activities and word wall lessons into your curriculum.

Word walls should be referred to on a daily basis.  A few fun activities might include:

 Hot Seat: A student in the “hot seat” asks the other students questions to try and
figure out the secret word.
 OOPS: Pass around a box filled with word wall cards and each student draws a card,
shows the class, and reads the word. If they read it correctly, they keep it!
 Vocab Toss: Split the class into teams. Say a synonym or antonym of a word wall
word, say a sentence missing the word wall word, or provide a definition of a word wall
word.  Student must guess the correct word.  If correct, they get to make a basket using
paper and the trashcan to double their score.

9. More Than Just Books

Kids often associate reading with boring school textbooks or assigned chapter books that are
of no interest to them.  You can effectively change this association by allowing students to
read the world around them!When you open up your student’s eyes to new and exciting
reading material, you help them see the world in a whole new literacy-rich way.

Allow your students time to explore nontraditional reading material that interests them.  This
will not only motivate them and keep them excited about reading, but it will offer reading
challenges that typical texts may not.

Suggest material like newspapers, magazines, recipes, comic-books, blogs, or song lyrics!
Keep it fresh and fun and your students will be dying to read more!

10. Voice and Choice

Kids are opinionated – about everything!  What they read is no different.  The voice and
choice strategy is an effective way to get kids wanting to read.

If you were forced to read a book about a topic that was of no interest to you, would you be
excited?  Would you put forth your best effort?Probably not.But if you were allowed to
choose what book you wanted to read, chances are that you would be much more motivated
and engaged.

 Start by having a conversation with your students about what their interests are or
what they would like to know more about.
 Discuss your students hobbies, fears, curiosities.
 Based on these conversations, you can select a variety of different content for your
student’s to choose from that will help them stay excited about learning to read.

11. Integrate Technology

We all know that kids tend to excel at the things that they are interested in or care about.
Technology is the perfect way to not only get your kids excited about reading, but offer them
the opportunity to work on a variety of reading skills.  Aside from the obvious use of reading
on a kindle or other e-reader device, there are countless apps and programs out there that help
build fluency and comprehension in engaging ways.

Try allowing your students to play around with one of these apps or websites:

 ABC Spy App: actively helps kids learn letters and pronunciations
 Bookster App: storytelling app that reads to kids and allows them to record their
voice to the story as well
 Seuss’s ABC App: kids have the option to read the book or have it read to them;
words are highlighted for easy follow along
 MeeGenius App: audio playback; personalization where child can substitute their
name in the book; toddler to young teen
 readtomelv.com: celebrities reading books aloud; Common Core aligned activities
and discussion questions accompany each book
 Pbskids.org has a wide variety of different reading based games with characters that
kids know and love.
 roythezebra.com offers different interactive reading games that focus on rhyming,
word stops, capital letters, and much more.
 suessville.com brings Dr. Suess books to life with fun and interactive games that kids
can play after reading Dr. Suess books online.
 randomhousekids.com offers two reading games that focus on matching and drawing
to bring a creative element to reading.
 http://www.thepixiepit.co.uk/games_menu.htm for slightly older kids, this website
offers TONS of different word and letter games that help with a multitude of reading
related skills.

The innate understanding that kids today have with technology makes it an amazing strategy
for boosting learning and engagement during your reading instruction.

12. Write to Read

It’s common knowledge that great readers often produce great writers, and vice versa. 
Reading and writing go hand in hand, both skills work together to improve each other.When
students are engaged in writing, they end up working on their reading skills at the same time!
Using writing as a strategy to improve reading skills is a sneaky way to disguise practicing
things like fluency, comprehension, and phonics.

One fun way to use writing as a reading strategy is by asking students to become authors!
They can write a mini-book, picture book, or even try their hand at a chapter book or comic-
book.In order to write a book, students will need to rely on their knowledge of reading
conventions such as creating a cover, illustrations, text, chapter titles, and back cover
description.

Plus, when kids are reviewing their stories, they unknowingly edit and proofread their work. 
All of these skills help to improve reading skills in your classroom!

13. Make It A Game!

Everyone loves games!  They offer healthy competition, the possibility to win, and the
opportunity to be engaged in something fun!  Adding games to your reading instruction is a
great strategy to improve literacy skills.

There are ton of simple ways that you can turn reading into game…

…or you can use reading inspired games to help increase literacy skills!

For creative students, you might let them brainstorm some ideas for reading games in order to
give them some control and a chance to flex their creative muscles!  You might be surprised
with what they come up with!

If you want a bit more control over the types of reading game you play, try suggesting some
of the following:

 Each of you can take turns guessing what is going to happen next in the story based
on the pictures – then discuss who was more accurate.
 Implement a word hunt where your reader has to shout out a pre-determined ‘buzz’
word (any adjectives or verbs or main character’s name). If shouting is outside your zone,
perhaps they have to touch their nose or clap their hands when they come across a ‘buzz’
word.
 Try finding little words inside bigger words or asking your child to replace one word
on each page with a synonym or antonym.
 Ask your reader to read a page in the text to themselves. Then, let them act out what
happened and you have to guess, or vice versa.

14. Avoid Over-Correcting
As teachers, it’s second nature to want to correct your students when they make a mistake.
This urge to correct or jump in and help a struggling student simply comes love and wanting
to help them learn and improve.

Even though most over-correction truly does come from a place of kindness and an urge to
help, these corrections can often feel like hurtful criticisms to young readers.As teachers, it
can be difficult to balance when it’s appropriate to correct a student’s mispronunciation or
incorrect inflection while reading.    It helps to always remind yourself that the goal is
progress, not perfection.  And part of progress is building confidence.

A few things to keep in mind and phrases to avoid when correcting your readers:

 As a general rule when a student is reading through a text for the first time, do not
interrupt them.  Ever.  Let them get through it, mistakes and all.  Before their second time
reading through the text, discuss any unknown words or mistakes made.  Then you can
model the correct pronunciation for troublesome words or mistakes.
  Avoid saying, “Come on, hurry up!” or “Whoa, slow down!”  Fluency can be a
challenging skill to master and one that will take time and practice.  Now, there’s no rule
about saying “C’mon, hurry up”, in your head after hearing a student stumble through a
text for the tenth time!
 Try not to say, “Stop. Reread that line correctly.”  If the mistake did not interfere with
the meaning, let it go and review it later rather than interrupting.  This will help them
focus on fluency and build confidence.

 Do. Not. Laugh. Never laugh.  This is the most damaging thing that you can do when
teaching reading.  Now, if your student laughs at their mistake, it is okay to laugh together
– but NEVER laugh at your reader.  This seems like an obvious bit of advice…but you
would be surprised how hysterical some word mispronunciations can be!  Especially if the
student unknowingly mispronounces something as an ‘adult word’.  Regardless – don’t
laugh! 

15. Offer Proper PRAISE!

Of all the strategies that have been discussed, praising your students is by far the most critical
one to utilize when teaching reading.First and foremost, praise your student’s successes, no
matter how big or small – and praise them often.  It is important to offer praise for your
student’s efforts, their dedication, and even their struggles.

It is inherently in a child’s nature to want to make their teachers proud.  When they feel as if
they have accomplished this, it has the ability to seriously motivate and encourage them to
keep reading.For kids, learning to read is essentially part of their ‘job’ as students.  When
your students feel as if they’re failing at their ‘job’, or that their efforts are not being
acknowledged, there’s a good chance that their intrinsic interest or motivation in reading will
plummet.
When using praise as a strategy for teaching reading, it’s vital that you understand the most
effective way to offer praise to your students.

A commonly used sentiment may sound something like, “You read that perfectly, you are so
smart!”  And while this sounds harmless, you’re actually inadvertently planting a seed in
their mind telling them they’re only smart if they get something right.

Practice celebrating the efforts or the strategies that your students employ while reading.
This will teach them to utilize these skills again in the future.

Some things to keep in mind:

 Praise specific efforts: “You worked really hard using your context clues to figure out
that word.”
 Encourage your reader regardless of what level they’re at.  If your child is reading two
grade levels below where they should be, praise their perseverance and hard work without
mentioning their reading level.
 Be one-hundred percent sincere!  Kids are EXTREMELY intuitive and they
will sense false or empty praise when it’s offered, which will only discount their hard
work.

Praise is one of the simplest strategies that you can utilize when teaching reading!  If done
correctly, it can seriously impact your student’s reading success!

4.6 BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF READING COMPREHENSION OF CHILDREN

WITH DISABILITIES

A learning disability in reading comprehension affects the learner's ability to understand the
meaning of words and passages. Students with this issue may also struggle with basic
reading skills such as decoding words, but comprehension is the greater weakness.

Some students with a learning disability in reading comprehension can read aloud with little
or no difficulty pronouncing words, but they do not understand or remember what they've
read. When reading aloud, their words and phrases are often read with no feeling, no change
in tone, no logical phrasing, and no rhythm or pace. Their reading abilities may seem fine, but
they may understand very little of what they just read.

Causes

There are a number of potential factors that can contribute to a reading comprehension
problem. For example:

 A learning disability in reading comprehension likely involves difficulty with the language

processing and visual reasoning centers of the brain. This may be owed to an inherited
condition or developmental differences. Difficulty with hearing, speech, or vision, or a lack of
appropriate instruction may also be involved.
  Dyslexia is a learning disability characterized by difficulty recognizing speech sounds and
relating these sounds to letters. While it is often associated with reading problems, dyslexia
can also impact reading comprehension. Because dyslexia makes reading much more
difficult, it can also make it much harder to understand what has been read.
 ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) can make it difficult for an individual to
concentrate on what they are reading. Because their attention is not focused on the material
and they are frequently distracted, people with this disorder may also struggle with reading
comprehension.

Symptoms

There are a few different signs of reading comprehension problems. People with a learning
disability in reading comprehension:

Expressing ideas clearly, as if the words needed are on the tip of the tongue but won't

come out. What the child says can be vague and difficult to understand (e.g., using

unspecific vocabulary, such as "thing" or "stuff" to replace words

that cannot be

remembered). Filler words like "um" may be used to take up time while the child
tries to

remember a word.

 Learning new vocabulary that the child hears (e.g., taught in lectures/lessons) and/or
sees(e.g., in books)
 Understanding questions and following directions that are heard and/or read
 Recalling numbers in sequence (e.g., telephone numbers and addresses)
 Understanding and retaining the details of a story's plot or a classroom lecture
 Reading and comprehending material

 Learning words to songs and rhymes

 Telling left from right, making it hard to read and write since both skills require this

 directionality

 Letters and numbers

 Learning the alphabet

 Identifying the sounds that correspond to letters, making learning to read difficult

 Mixing up the order of letters in words while writing

 Mixing up the order of numbers that are a part of math calculations

 Spelling
  Memorizing the times tables

 Telling time

Identifying language-based learning difficulties

A speech-language pathologist (SLP) is part of a team consisting of the parents/caregivers

and educational professionals (i.e., teacher(s), special educators, psychologist). The SLP will
evaluate spoken (speaking and listening) and written (reading and writing) language for
children who have been identified by their teachers and parents as having difficulty.
For preschool students, the SLP may do any or all of the following:

 Gather information about literacy experiences in the home. For example, are there
books and other types of reading material around the home? How frequently does the
child see family members writing letters, notes, lists, etc.? How often do family
members read stories to the child?
 Observe the child during classroom activities.
 Evaluate the child's ability to understand verbal and written directions and to pay
attention to written information on the blackboard, daily plans, etc.
 Look for awareness of print.
 See if the child recognizes familiar signs and logos.
 Watch to see if a child holds a book correctly and turns the pages.
 Determine if the child recognizes and/or writes name.
 Evaluate whether the child demonstrates pretend writing (writing that resembles
letters and numbers).
 See if the child recognizes and/or writes letters.
 Have the child tap or clap out the different syllables in words.
 Evaluate if the child can tell whether two words rhyme or give a list of words that
rhyme with a specified word.

For the older child, the SLP may also do any or all of the following:

 Observe whether the child can read and understand information on handouts and in
textbooks.
 Assess the student's ability to hear and "play with" sounds in words (phonological
awareness skills).
 Have the child put together syllables and sounds to make a word.
 See if the child can break up a word into its syllables and/or sounds (e.g., "cat" has
one syllable but three sounds c-a-t).
 Assess the older child's phonological memory by having him or her repeat strings of
words, numbers, letters, and sounds of increasing length.

For all children, the SLP will also provide a complete language evaluation and also look at
articulation and executive function.
Executive functioning is the ability to plan, organize, and attend to details (e.g., does he or
she plan/organize his or her writing? Is he or she able to keep track of assignments and school
materials?).
 Naturally, reading comprehension problems affect many academic areas. Students
who struggle to understand what they are reading may experience deficits in a variety of
academic areas beyond reading and writing. Any class that relies on reading, understanding,
and explaining written material, including language arts, science, history, and related topics,
can become a struggle for those with reading comprehension problems.

Evaluation

Evaluation can provide information to help educators develop effective strategies for helping
students with reading comprehension problems. Typical strategies focus on using pre-reading
tasks, mediated reading instruction, graphic organizing, and improving comprehension and
retention.

Teachers use assessment information to identify the specific types of reading problems a
student has, and they choose effective strategies to correct the problems. This information is
included in the child's individualized education plan (IEP).Student progress is measured over
time and adjustments are made as needed.

Considerations

Like other learning disabilities, reading comprehension problems are often a "hidden"
disability. Other people may be unaware that others struggle with this issue, especially since
their reading proficiency seems fine otherwise.

People with a learning disability in reading comprehension have general learning ability that
is as high as, or higher than, those without learning disabilities. They simply have a skill
deficit in this single area.

This often means that people with learning disabilities must work harder to get their work
done. They may appear as if they are not putting forth effort, when in fact they are just
overwhelmed. Children with learning disabilities often know they are behind their peers,
which can affect their self-esteem and motivation.All students with a learning disability are
at-risk for being underestimated in their abilities.

5.Testing and Assessment

Learning disability diagnostic reading tests can be used to determine what specific types of
problems are affecting the learner's reading skills. Through observations, analyzing student
work, cognitive assessment, and possibly language assessment, educators measure progress
and can develop IEPs.

Support

If you believe your child has a learning disability in reading comprehension, contact your
school principal or counselor for information on how to request an assessment. If school staff
are unable to help you, contact your school district's special education administrator for
assistance.
For students in college and vocational programs, their school's advising office can assist with
finding resources for assessment and accommodations for their learning disability.

It is possible for adults to have a reading comprehension learning disability, though they
weren't diagnosed in childhood. The Learning Disabilities Association of America
(LDA) recommends contacting a psychologist, community mental health center, or an LDA
chapter to find a professional who can perform an assessment for you. LDA's website also
contains helpful information for people of all ages.

Reading comprehension is not just an important academic skill; it is a critical life skill. It can
influence a student's success in school and their later functioning and satisfaction in the
workplace. Teaching good reading strategies, offering early interventions, and providing
support can help those who struggle with reading comprehension problems.

Strategies for reading comprehension for children with learning disabilities

1. Visually organizing information

Many students who struggle with reading and writing, and even students who avoid such
tasks for other reasons, tend to be visual in how they process information. Thus, utilizing
those visual skills can be a great asset while reading to comprehend. Visualization is a
process where the students create a visual picture mentally to correspond to the ideas they are
listening to or reading. Visualization is a powerful tool that helps many students comprehend
a passage. It increases active reading and helps the information "stick."
To encourage visualization, have your student close her eyes and imagine a common object.
Then have your child verbally describe or draw what she imagined.
Once she understands the process, you may move to the next step. You read a sentence and
cue her to develop visual images by asking detailed questions. For example, possible
questions for the sentence, "The girl scurried down the street" include:

 What does the street look like?

 How do you think the girl is going down the street?
 What size is the girl?
 What is she wearing?
 What colors are in her clothes?
 What you think the girl is thinking or feeling as she is running?
 Is it daytime or night? What in your picture in your head led you to that conclusion?

Reinforce that there are no right or wrong answers and each person creates a different visual
picture. The important aspect is to be able to explain why you imagined your image (if the
girl is small, for example). What cues did you use?
"Enhancing a student's use of the mind's eye enhances comprehension. Strategies are useful
tool to accomplish this."
Another way to represent information visually is to have your child draw a picture that shows
what he read. Many children may find that representing words and/or stories in picture form
creates a visual image that clarifies the meaning and the connection between people or events
in what they read.
Visual organizers
Visual organizers are extremely valuable techniques, and there are many different types. It is
useful to select a format that matches the type of information the student is reading. Three of
many ways that organizers may be used are:

 Before reading — before beginning, create an organizer of the primary sections. Then
during the reading, add additional details.
 While reading — create an organizer using information as it appears.
 After reading — create an organizer to summarize what the information.

Following are some examples of common types of visual organizers.

Basic visual organizers
Format for a basic organizer:

A descriptive organizer focusing on attributes of a person, place, or thing.

Cause and effect organizers

In this example, many causes lead to an event.

 In this example, one cause leads to many effects.
Organizers to identify the sequence or episode: episodic organizers

An event can be organized beginning with what happened first.

 This organizer progresses from an introduction to a conclusion.

2.Vocabulary development
Accurately understanding the vocabulary is a very important aspect of both listening and reading
comprehension. You can help your student enhance his vocabulary through a variety of
interactive, hands-on experiences. The more fun and involvement your student has, the more
efficient will be his recall. It will also be easier for him to generalize his knowledge to new
situations.

3. Trigger recollection with a hook

Whenever possible, encourage your child to think of a "key" or a "hook" to help remember a
given word. He can then act out (or pantomime) the hook. This develops motor memory
which is a very powerful way to help trigger the meaning, as in the following examples:

4. Angles
Learning the names of different angles causes confusion for many students. Let's use three
common angles as an example of incorporating motor memory and "hooks." In this example,
students learn the names of right angle, acute angle, and obtuse angle.
Right angle — have your student make a right angle with their first finger and thumb, with
exaggerated movement, say "Right on! Right angle!"
Acute angle — have your student make an acute angle using her pointer and middle finger.
Using exaggerated movement and voice, have your student say, "Oh, what a cute angle!
Acute angle!"

Obtuse angle — have your child make an obtuse angle using his pinky and thumb. Then,
with an exaggerated "high five" movement with his hand, he says, "Hang loose, obtuse!"

When students learn vocabulary words by rote and mechanically, as when memorizing the
definition, many quickly forget. Even if they happen to remember the definition, they may
struggle to apply it and generalize their knowledge.

5. Prepositions

Students can act out the meaning of prepositions by role-playing with a box: they can climb into, around,
through, over, and under the box.
Older students may prefer a wad of cotton and a small toy airplane to demonstrate the meaning of many
prepositions. They can move their airplane in relationship to the cotton to demonstrate the meaning of words
such as above, before, past, behind, across, below, beneath, beside, in, to, along, between, in, beyond, over, on.
Explain that a preposition is a word that describes the relationship between a toy airplane and the cotton: a
preposition is like a word that points.

6. Morphology (word parts)

A critical aspect of learning to read, spell, and comprehend involves having an understanding
of word parts. Young children can begin this understanding by comparing different words
that end with -ing. For example, ask, "what is similar about words such as running, jumping,
and singing?" Help the child realize that these words are all actions that we can do. The
ending -ing often means that the word is an action. An activity for children beginning in early
elementary is to use a chart such as the one below to emphasize the value of word parts. With
older students, use more complex word parts because the complexity of vocabulary and
concepts dramatically increases as students move through school.
For example:

unit
bi
tri

Start with the word part "bi" and ask your child to think of as many words as he can that
begin with this word part. He might think of words such as bicycle and binoculars. Work with
your child to determine what the word part "bi" means (it means two). You may write his
words on the appropriate spaces on the chart.

Next, ask your child if he can think of another word that has the same ending word part as in
bicycle ("cycle"). Perhaps he will think of tricycle. You can then show the relationship
between these two words by filling in the chart as follows:

cycle
unit
bi bicycle
tri tricycle

Discuss the meaning of the word tricycle and the word parts "tri" and "cycle". Then introduce
the word unicycle and have your child guess what it means. Add it to the chart. Depending
upon your child's age and experience, use other word parts such as "angle" to create words
such as triangle or "lingual" to create words such as bilingual and trilingual. Older children
may explore words such as unilateral and bilateral. Dinosaur names are also fun to explore
and use.
7. Theatre/drama
While reading scripts, they are able to improve their reading fluency, vocabulary and
reading accuracy, without finding it to be a burden.
Not being able to perform as per others can sometimes lead to frustration amongst
kids. A kid with a learning disability needs a confidence-boost which makes them
feel they are no less. Theatre and drama are one such activity that can help kids with
dyslexia a lot.
While reading scripts, they are able to improve their reading fluency, vocabulary and reading
accuracy, without finding it to be a burden. It is a creative outlet that lets them express their
feelings in a much better way.It is also a fun environment to teach them interactive and social
skills.

8. Learn by doing

Some kids are more hyperactive and impulsive than others. The usual chalk and board
methods don’t seem to sustain their attention for long, owing to which they lag behind in
class.
Many people think this problem is incurable but there are solutions available that could
stimulate the sensory system, improve learning by activating the gross motor function and
also help break the ice by developing collaboration and teamwork amongst the children.
One such example Step and Learn (Wizefloor). This is a supplement to classroom teaching
that promotes collective and differentiated learning styles and needs through play and
physical activity. From a projector in the ceiling, different learning-games are projected onto
the floor.
The children use their hands and feet to interact with the floor allowing them to solve the
games. Young children diagnosed with ADHD will find this activity a lot of fun as it retains
their attention and focus longer than other things.
9. Interactive learning

A child can take multiple paths to learn. You just need to find the right way. Children with
autism curtail themselves from communicating and interacting.
This doesn't mean they don’t want to learn. It’s just they don’t want to engage themselves
with others so often for it. But like any other problem, there is a solution to this as well.
Parents, schools, and libraries around the world trust a simple and effective program Muzzy
by BBC. Designed for children of all ages; this programme works by teaching children
through fun and animated stories featuring Muzzy and friends.
These stories use the natural immersion method, which is modeled after the way children
learn their rst language.
It is extremely helpful for autistic children as it clears their concepts by the use of repetition
and spiraling which makes learning come naturally and without any social obligation.
10. Personalised learning

Children with learning disabilities like dysgraphia or dyscalculia need a personalized learning
solution that tells them about their individual IQ, learning style, learning gaps, and
proficiency.
Every child is unique and so are their learning needs. This is why parents need to create a
personalized learning path for their kid, which will enable them to know about their kids
grasping power through a step by step analysis.

Children with learning disabilities like dysgraphia or dyscalculia need a personalized learning
solution that tells them about their individual IQ, learning style, learning gaps, and
proficiency.Artificial intelligence and adaptive learning are actually helping many overcome
this bridge in more ways than one.
11. Voluntary work:
 The more exposed kids are to the world in terms of communication, the better they
understand what’s happening around them and so more enhanced is their self-esteem.
Voluntary work is an exceptionally interesting way of helping children overcome their
learning disabilities.The more exposed they are to the world in terms of communication, the
better they understand what’s happening around them and so more enhanced is their self-
esteem. Every child has its inherent potential, strengths, and weaknesses; it just needs to be
dealt with properly. Since teachers struggle with lack of time and a good chunk of kids to
deal with, they can only teach at one level to the entire class.

Therefore, don’t let your child lag behind. Even though at times parents are faced with
numerous hurdles when it comes to finding solutions for various learning problem,
nonetheless, it is not an obstacle to your kid having a successful future.

Check Your Progress

1. How can develop good reading skills in 9th class students?
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2. How can you indentify habits in primary level students?
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4.7 SUMMARY

Here are some simple and effective ways to help students build reading skillsto better
understand classroom curriculum.
1. Annotate and highlight text. ...
2. Personalize the content. ...
3. Practice problem solving skills. ...
4. Incorporate more senses. ...
5. Understand common themes. ...
6. Set reading goals. ...
7. Read in portions. ...
8. Let students guide their reading.

4.8 ASSIGNMENTS

1. What are the activities to developing learning habits at primary level? Explain.

2. What are the strategies of reading and learning of the children with disability?

3. Explain about basic reading comprehension of children with disabilities.

4. How can you better equip to help our students overcome their reading struggles?

4.9 POINTS FOR DISCUSSION AND CLARIFICATION

Developing good reading skills

Developing a good learning habits

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4.10 REFERENCE

https://www2.le.ac.uk › offices › resources › study › reading

https://www.wikihow.com › ... › Reading › Improving Reading Skills

https://www.edutopia.org › article › 6-techniques-building-reading-skills-s...

Websid
BLOCK III SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN RESPONDING TO TEXT

Introduction

In ‘the information age’ we all need to be able to read and respond to information presented
in many different forms. Reading information from a chart or diagram requires different skills
from reading a story. As a teacher, your role is to help pupils understand what they read,
summarise the main ideas in a text and respond with their own ideas. While it is important for
pupils to be able to write answers to questions on what they have read, some will produce
better work if they have opportunities to demonstrate what they understand through other
activities, e.g. making posters or pie charts.

To make your summary coherent, relate your points by using: transitions, repeating key
words, and using parallel structures. Respond to one idea or more that the author is making,
depending on the question given. Classroom and study approaches to developing reading
Comprehension and literary response skills. Effective literary response exercises
include graphic organizers such as story maps, plot diagrams, and Venn diagrams. These help
students understand plot and other literary devices in a visual format. Venn diagrams are
good tools for comparing and contrasting characters or other items within a text or studying
similar themes or elements in different texts or genres. Reader response exercises and lists are
other techniques that can be focused on any literary element. All of these activities can be
done with the whole class, as an individual, or in groups.

In this block have two units. Unit-5 Indicators of Text comprehension: Retelling,
summarizing, answering, Predicting, commenting and discussing: Practicing responding to
text (Using indicators) for recreational reading material (Narrations) and school text books
(Description). And unit -6 Practicing Responding to Text (Using The Indicators) for Reports,
Policy Documents and News (Expositions) and Editorial, Academic Articles, Advertisement
Copy, Resume (Argumentation) : Practicing Web Search, Rapid Reading and Comprehensive
Reading.

UNIT: 5: INDICATORS OF TEXT COMPREHENSION

Structure

5.1 Objectives
5.2 Introduction
5.3 Indicators of Text comprehension
5.3.1. Retelling,
5.3.2. Summarizing,
5.3.3. Answering,
5.3.4. Predicting
5.3.5. Commenting and discussing
5.4. Practicing responding to text (Using indicators)for recreational reading material
(Narrations) and school text books (Description)
Check your progress
5.6. Summary
5.7 Check your progress Answers
5.8 Assignments
5.9 Points for Discussion and Clarification
5.10 References

5.1 OBJECTIVES

The student will demonstrate the ability to respond to a text by employing personal
experiences and critical analysis.
The Student will use after-reading strategies appropriate to both the text and purpose for
reading by summarizing, comparing, contrasting, synthesizing, drawing conclusions, and
validating the purpose for reading

5.2 INTRODUCTION

Reading is a highly strategic process during which readers are constantly constructing
meaning using a variety of strategies, such as activating background knowledge, monitoring
and clarifying, making predictions, drawing inferences, asking questions and summarizing.
Strategies are used in combination to solve problems, to think about text and to check
understanding. Consequently, teaching comprehension strategies should focus on thinking
(Harvey &Goudvis, 2000)

Good reading skills is not only essential in the context of language sub-skills, but it is the
basis of academic success in all subjects (Cain & Oakhill, 2007).

Comprehension, or extracting meaning from what you read, is the ultimate goal of reading..
The process of comprehension is both interactive and strategic. Rather than passively reading
text, readers must analyze it, internalize it and make it their own.

The process of comprehending text begins before children can read, when someone reads a
picture book to them. They listen to the words, see the pictures in the book, and may start to
associate the words on the page with the words they are hearing and the ideas they represent.

Comprehension strategies are used consciously by the reader to monitor and check
understanding, to clarify confusion, and to process text. Strategies are situational and are used
intentionally by readers. (McEwan, 2004). In contrast, once skills are learned, they are used
unconsciously, i.e. decoding words or breaking words into syllables. Skills are also the tools
readers use to organize the structure of text, e.g., main idea and supporting details, compare
and contrast, sequencing, etc. Activities such as charts like KWL (McEwan, 2004)

Reading comprehension involves the reader interacting with the text to construct meaning
(Snow, 2002). Proficient readers use a variety of strategies resulting in active, intentional and
self-regulated reading (Trabasso and Bouchard, 2002) as they prepare to read, as they read
and after they read.
Research has identified a common set of strategies that support successful reading: activating
background knowledge, summarizing, predicting and checking predictions, clarifying, asking
questions and finding answers, These are in a way act as indicators of text comprehension.

When reading fiction, readers may activate prior knowledge by browsing the text to use one
or more of the following browsing activities to activate background knowledge.

• Think about what you know about the author.

• Identify the type of selection, e.g., fiction vs non-fiction.

• Identify the genre, e.g., fantasy vs. realistic fiction.

• Notice interesting words, text, or illustrations.

• Obtain a general idea of what a selection is about.

• Get a general idea of setting and characters in a fictional story.

When reading informational text, readers may move beyond browse to skimming the text for
specific information and organization. Skimming is defined as “the rapid reading of text to
get a sense of text structure, organization and gist” (Spafford and Grosser, 2005, page 143)
focusing on chapter previews, headings, bolded type, titles, and marginal glosses.

• Notice anything interesting including text features.

• Identify the structure of the text.

• Set a general idea of what a selection is about.

• Notice problem words, text or confusing illustrations or particularly surprising information.

• Decide what one expects or wants to learn from the text.

• Obtain a general idea of what an expository selection is about by reading title, headings,
subheadings, and first sentences of paragraphs.

• Raise wonderings and questions.

During the independent writing stage, the teacher's role is to guide the students in their

composition, supporting them to creatively design and compose their texts independently
 The teaching and learning four key stages which incorporate social support for reading,
writing and speaking and listening through varied interactional routines i.e whole group,
small group, pair, individual in order to scaffold students’ learning about language and
meaning in a variety of texts. 

These stages are:

 Building the context or field - understanding the role of texts in our culture and
building shared understanding of the topic 
 Modelling the text (or deconstruction) - the use of mentor or model texts to focus
explicitly on the structure and the language of the text, how language choices work to shape
meaning, and to build a metalanguage
 Guided practice (or joint construction) - teachers and students jointly constructing a
text 
 Independent construction – students’ independent writing or approximation of the
genre
(Derewianka& Jones, 2016; Humphrey, 2017; Humphrey &Feez, 2016)

5.3 INDICATORS OF TEXT COMPREHENSION

Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning, and to integrate
it with what the reader already knows.

When we think of a text, we may think of words in print, but a text can be anything from a
road map to a movie. Some have expanded the meaning of "text" to include anything that can
be read, interpreted or analyzed. A painting can be a text to interpret for some meaning it
holds, and a mall can be a text to be analyzed to find out how modern Americans behave in
their free time.

Previewing a text means gathering as much information about the text as you can before you
actually read it. The following questions may be asked,

What is the Purpose for Reading?

The purpose of reading is to connect the ideas on the page to what you already know. Reading
comprehension requires motivation, mental frameworks for holding ideas, concentration and good
study techniques.

To summarize a particular piece of writing, look for the thesis and main points. Respond to
the text consciously by understanding the topic and giving the opinion. Give reasons for
arriving at that opinion.
What can the Title Tell about the Text?

Before reading, look at the title of the text. What clues does it give about the piece of writing?
It may reveal the author's stance, or make a claim the piece will try to support. Good writers
usually try to make their titles do work to help readers make meaning of the text from the
reader's first glance at it.

Who is the Author?

If you have heard the author's name before, what comes to your mind in terms of their
reputation and/or stance on the issue you are reading about? Has the author written other
things of which you are aware? How does the piece in front of you fit into to the author's
body of work? What is the author's position on the issue they are writing about? Are they
liberal, conservative, or do you know anything about what prompted them to write in the first
place?

How is the Text Structured?

Sometimes the structure of a piece can give you important clues to its meaning. Be sure to
read all section headings carefully. Also, reading the opening sentences of paragraphs should
give you a good idea of the main ideas contained in the piece.

To reflect on reading is to take the ideas and sense impressions, the mood and expressions
that the author has conveyed to by language, and compare them to other mental constructs
such as your own experiences, beliefs, values, or other texts you have read, or other ideas or
sense impressions within the text itself.

The Indicators of text comprehension are detailed below.

5.3.1. Retelling

Retelling is students orally reconstructing a story that they have read. As part of retelling,
students engage in ordering and summarizing information and in making inferences.
Retelling requires students to activate their knowledge of how stories work and apply it to the
new reading. The teacher can use retelling as a method to assess how well students
comprehend a story, and then use this information to help students develop a deeper
understanding of what they have read.

The teacher should use explicit and clear instruction, explaining why retelling is useful,
modeling the procedure, giving students opportunities to practice, and providing feedback.
students' retellings should become more detailed as they become better readers.

Types of Retelling: There are different types of retelling and re given below

Simple retelling : In this the student can:

 identify and retell the beginning, middle, and end of a story in order.
 describe the setting.
 identify the problem and the resolution of a problem.

More complete retelling : The student can

 identify and retell events and facts in a sequence.

 make inferences to fill in missing information.
 identify and retell causes of actions or events and their effects.

Most complete retelling :The student can

 identify and retell a sequence of actions or events.

 make inferences to account for events or actions.
 offer an evaluation of the story.

Read and retell activity can be used as an opportunity by the teacher to assess children’s
understanding of the reading process, and their overall literacy development, particularly
meaning. Retelling enhances comprehension at word, sentence and text levels and requires
readers to recall, select, organise and summarise information. Retelling also provides
meaningful practice in the use of a range of oral or written activities. Different types of
retelling can be developed to suit a range of reading and writing abilities.

Retelling activity may be evaluated by the following criterion

 Prior knowledge of the reader

 behaviours of the reader during reading, writing or sharing times
  · knowledge of text structure ·
 knowledge of language features of particular types of texts ·
 knowledge of language conventions such as spelling, punctuation and grammar
 knowledge of ideas from the text
 word and phonic knowledge · ability to predict, infer, hypothesise, summarise and
generalise.

Reading and retelling can also be evaluated by assessing: Meaning · Ideas · Clarity ·
Relevance to form/purpose Organisation · Sequence · Unity between parts and whole
Conventions · Spelling · Vocabulary · Punctuation Cognitive abilities · To infer · To
predict · To hypothesise

5.3.2. Summarizing

Summarizing involves the ability of readers to pull together, or synthesize information in a

text so as to explain in their own words what the text is about. Summarizing is an important
strategy because it can enable readers to recall text quickly. It also can make readers more
aware of text organization, of what is important in a text and of how ideas are related.

In other words Summarizing can be understood as an abridgement expressing the main ideas
of a text through reported speech and relating to paraphrasing.

Summary has to be shorter than the original text, contain the main idea of the text, and when
necessary, reported speech is to be obligatorily used. Summarizing techniques focused on
four important techniques:

 reading at least twice to get the main idea of each paragraph,

 making an outline before writing a summary;
 using ones’ own words to avoid plagiarism;
  checking the correctness of summary writing with the original text to avoid
committing distortion

Effective summarizing of expository text may involve such things as condensing the steps in
a scientific process, the stages of development of an art movement, or the episodes that led to
some major historical event.

Effective summarizing of narrative text can involve such things as connecting and
synthesizing events in a story line or identifying the factors that motivate a character's actions
and behavior.

Summarizing requires students to process the text by omitting irrelevant information and
generalizing ideas with several examples. In order to summarize, students must pay more
attention to the text while they read or reread it. This also results in increased engagement.
Summarizing helps students understand the structure of the text. Summarizing narrative text
involves focusing on the story elements. Effective readers do not wait until the end of a text
to summarize but rather create a series of summary statements as they are reading to check
understanding and build meaning. Students need to learn what these logical points are, for
example, the end of an episode. Summarizing informational text, like fiction, involves
identifying the gist, the main thesis, the key idea or main points of what was read. Creating a
summary for informational text is often very challenging for students, since there is a
tendency to include details, not just the main ideas. For younger students, summarizing
begins by talking about or retelling what they remember about the story. Sequence cards,
story maps, and other graphic organizers offer the scaffolding needed for students to
summarize text.

For example, in primary classes, students might use pictue sequence cards to retell the
events in terms of what happened first, next and last. Here they identify and use basic story
elements to retell the story. Children of second class can learn to summarize the plot in
chronological order by using a graphic organizer

. Effective Teaching Strategies for Reading Comprehension : The literature teaching

summarizing contains a range of activities, many of which do not result in the development
of good summaries. For example, having students continuously add to a summary that one
student started, only teaches students that “more is better” when conciseness should be the
focus. The goal of instruction should be moving students toward identifying the central idea
 as stated in the text or in their own words. The following is a continuum of skills leading to
summarizing. Summarizing is a complex skill and takes years to develop. Young children
have difficulty with the skills necessary to for summarizing. They delete information but
don’t combine or condense details. Learning to paraphrase precedes their ability to begin
combining and condensing. This continuum can be helpful for the scaffolding students need
to become more proficient in summarizing.

• Retelling anything remembered.

• Retelling (paraphrasing) in one’s own words.

• Retelling ideas in sequence.

• Summarizing the main idea and details.

• Recognizing convenient or necessary spots for summing up, not just at the end of
every paragraph but at the end of chapters and key story events.

• Summing up the most important information concisely by creating a gist statement

. • Using inferences to summarize (Gear, 2006).

Summarizing requires students to determine what is important in what they are reading and to
put it into their own words. Instruction in summarizing helps students to,
 Identify or generate main ideas
 Connect the main or central ideas
 Eliminate unnecessary information
 Remember what they read
5.3.3. Answering

By generating questions, students become aware of whether they can answer the questions
and if they understand what they are reading. Students learn to ask themselves questions that
require them to combine information from different segments of text. For example, students
can be taught to ask main idea questions that relate to important information in a text.

. Answering questions

Questions can be effective because they:

•Give students a purpose for reading

•Focus students' attention on what they are to learn

•Help students to think actively as they read

•Encourage students to monitor their comprehension

•Help students to review content and relate what they have learned to what they already know

The Question-Answer strategy encourages students to learn how to answer questions better.
Students are asked to indicate whether the information they used to answer questions about
the text was textually explicit information (information that was directly stated in the text),
textually implicit information (information that was implied in the text), or information
entirely from the student's own background knowledge.

There are four different types of questions:

•"Right There"

Questions found right in the text that ask students to find the one right answer located in one
place as a word or a sentence in the passage.

Example: Who is Frog's friend? Answer: Toad

•"Think and Search"

Questions based on the recall of facts that can be found directly in the text. Answers are
typically found in more than one place, thus requiring students to "think" and "search"
through the passage to find the answer.

Example: Why was Frog sad? Answer: His friend was leaving.

•"Author and You"

Questions require students to use what they already know, with what they have learned from
reading the text. Student's must understand the text and relate it to their prior knowledge
before answering the question.
Example: How do think Frog felt when he found Toad? Answer: I think that Frog felt happy
because he had not seen Toad in a long time. I feel happy when I get to see my friend who
lives far away

•"On Your Own"

Questions are answered based on a students prior knowledge and experiences. Reading the
text may not be helpful to them when answering this type of question.

Example: How would you feel if your best friend moved away? Answer: I would feel very
sad if my best friend moved away because I would miss her.

By generating questions, students become aware of whether they can answer the questions
and if they understand what they are reading. Students learn to ask themselves questions that
require them to combine information from different segments of text. For example, students
can be taught to ask main idea questions that relate to important information in a text.

5.3.4. Predicting

When students make predictions about the text they are about to read, it sets up expectations
based on their prior knowledge about similar topics. As they read, they may mentally revise
their prediction as they gain more information.

This strategy involves the ability of readers to get meaning from a text by making informed
predictions. Good readers use predicting as a way to connect their existing knowledge to new
information from a text to get meaning from what they read. Before reading, they may use
what they know about an author to predict what a text will be about. The title of a text may
trigger memories of texts with similar content, allowing them to predict the content of the
new text.

During reading, good readers may make predictions about what is going to happen next, or
what ideas or evidence the author will present to support an argument. They tend to evaluate
these predictions continuously, and revise any prediction that is not confirmed by the reading.

Predicting , confirming predictions and making predictions motivates and engages readers,
provides direction for reading and leads to deeper thinking about text (Harvey and Goudvis
2000). Predictions are not wild guesses. They involve making inferences, using information
in the text and prior knowledge to anticipate what will happen next. As readers continue
through the selection, predictions can be confirmed or verified, updated or revised based on
new information or not confirmed or not verified. Predictions are similar to conjectures and
when not born out should result in new learning. Therefore, even after reading, students
should reflect on their predictions.

Students need to learn to do the following to make thoughtful predictions:

• Identify clues in the text and one’s background knowledge to support a prediction

• Decide when to make a prediction based on a turning point or other point in a story

• Confirm or verify predictions during and after reading

• Make and evaluate alternative predictions

• Review predictions

When the process of predicting and confirming predictions is first being

introduced and practiced by students, it is helpful to record predictions to be sure they are
revisited. This provides an opportunity for students to provide a model for others. Confirming
also requires students to reread and to check author clues which supports close reading.

Whether realize it or not, we are always making guesses about what will encounter next in a
text. Making predictions about where a text is headed is an important part of the
comprehension equation. It's alright to make wrong guesses about what a text will do--wrong
guesses are just as much a part of the meaning-making process of reading as right guesses
are.

5.3.5. Commenting and Discussing

Teachers should provide opportunities for students to engage in high-quality discussions of

the meaning and interpretation of texts in various content areas as one important way to
improve their reading comprehension.

Discussions that are particularly effective in promoting students' comprehension of complex

text are those that focus on building a deeper understanding of the author's meaning or
critically analyzing and perhaps challenging the author's conclusions through reasoning or
applying personal experiences and knowledge.
In effective discussions students have the opportunity to have sustained exchanges with the
teacher or other students, present and defend individual interpretations and points of view,
use text content, background knowledge, and reasoning to support interpretations and
conclusions, and listen to the points of view and reasoned arguments of others participating in
the discussion.

Priding opportunities for discussion and

Sharing ones’ knowledge of a text with others reading the same text is a good way to check
one’s own understanding and open up new avenues of comprehension. You can annotate a
text on your own first, and then confer with a group of classmates about how they annotated
their texts. Or, you can be sure to participate in class discussion of a shared text--verbalizing
your ideas about a text will reinforce your reading process.

5.4. Practicing responding to text (Using indicators) for recreational reading material
(Narrations) and school text books (Description)

Reading becomes more of an option and an opportunity to partake in intriguing new subjects.
However, when it comes to school reading- the books are already selected. Thus, the students
no longer have the freedom of choice when it comes to selecting which book to read. School
reading is mandatory, whereas recreational reading is entirely discretionary.

It is important for students to understand that although recreational reading offers more
freedom of choice, it seems as though school reading opens the door to new ideas and
potential interests! For example,. After reading the book and writing an essay on it one is
realized that they had learned so much about how an author can use both a literal and
thematic lens of perspective to convey a deeper, more profound message about the work. The
reader also had the opportunity to read Einstein’s Dreams as a part of the English curriculum.
If students can think of reading school books as an opportunity to become more well-rounded
readers and scholars, then they can reduce the overwhelming feelings that are associated with
school reading.

Reading for recreation at any age is highly correlated with reading rate, comprehension, and
vocabulary. The main goal of a recreational reading program is to provide an opportunity

for children to read for pleasure. This can contribute toward enabling children
to become lifelong readers by providing them with a safe, caring community, and
a significant degree of choice about what, how, and why they are reading. Some times experts
felt and indicate that implementing a recreational reading program in the classroom is more
complicated than previously thought.
The response component was implemented based on research that showed that for
adolescents and younger children, extensive recreational reading with self-selected materials
contributed to improvement in reading comprehension, critical thinking, vocabulary
acquisition, and reading enjoyment (Everett, 1987, Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkerson
1988, NAEP, 1992, Nimon, 1992, Howard, 1999, Caldwell, K. &Gaine, T. 2000).

Responding to what is read is an important step in understanding what one reads. The student
can respond in writing, or by talking about what is read to others. Here are several ways one
can respond critically to a piece of writing:

 Writing a Response in the Notebook

 Discussing the Text with Others

To understand a piece of writing is to write a response to it. It will be beneficial to first write
a summary of the text, covering the main points in an unbiased way. Reporting on the "facts"
of the text to a friend who has not read it, for sharing opinion out of the summary. The
author's ideas are to be summarized objectively, and response to the text is to be written in a
notebook. Response may agree or disagree with the text, interpret it, or analyze it. Working
with the reading of the text by responding in writing is a good way to read critically.

Reading Text book

Textbook without having a general idea of the central themes and topics can make textbook
reading much more challenging. We learn best when we move from general to specific.
Previewing and developing a big picture of a text before reading will enable better
identification of what's important to read and make it possible to retain the detail.

The following strategies will help to maximize comprehension and retain information while
reading textbooks.

Reflect.

From reviewing chapter headings, subheadings, bold or italicized words, questioning helps
to reiterate leaning.

Answer the questions developed while previewing the text.

Try and predict the answers to the questions and find out if predictions are correct.

Read aloud. Reading aloud improves comprehension and retention of information.

Develop a picture of the concepts presented. Visualizing information, concepts or material
presented make it much easier to remember.

Highlight. While reading text, highlight important passages that support central themes and
concepts. Be selective. If you're highlighting more than 20% of a passage you're not being
selective enough.

As you read, try and identify important concepts and facts that could be likely test questions.
Underline and identify these concepts with a "Q" in the margin.

Circle with a pencil key terms and vocabulary. Write a short definition for each in your notes
or in the margin of the textbook.

Take well organized notes on the backside of your corresponding class lecture notes. This
way your lecture notes and textbook notes for the same topic will be easy to access and
review in preparation for the test.

Make visual aids, including, picture, graphs, diagrams, or tables, to help visualize what you're
reading. Visualization is a great way to take information that is complex or difficult and make
it easy to understand and remember.

Write a brief summary of the central themes and ideas in your notes. Being able to develop a
summary of what is learnt will help to master the material and retain the information.

Initially, children develop fluency through familiar narrative structures and themes. As the

children achieve fluency, however, they benefit from increased exposure to expository text.
Supporting this thrust are varied approaches and resources, including the classroom library,
read

alouds, and magazines. Maintaining a balance of narration and exposition also means not
overdoing one type of text to the de emphasis or preclusion of the other, regardless of the

teaching-learning context.

Check your progress

1. Explain about indicators of text comprehension.

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2. Write a short note about predicting.
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5.6. SUMMARY
Comprehension is understanding a text that is read, or the process of "constructing meaning"
from a text. Comprehension is a "construction process" because it involves all of the elements
of the reading process working together as a text is read to create a representation of the text
in the reader's mind.

Reading comprehension strategies for specific purposes are planned for and explicitly
taught.Students can articulate the characteristics of different texts. Background knowledge is
considered and planned for in instructional areas. Connections to text (text to self, text to
author, text to text, text to world) are planned for and explicitly taught.

5.8 ASSIGNMENTS

What types of teaching aids (visual prompts, graphic organizers, reference charts) are used to
promote understanding, mastery of content, and generalization of skills?

What strategies are used to promote content area vocabulary understanding?

How do we provide instruction that ensures students are able to identify various structures
(text structures) of expository text?

5.9 POINTS FOR DISCUSSION AND CLARIFICATION

Students actively engaged in the comprehension process can become reflective, critical
thinkers.
Text comprehension helps individuals make sense of the texts they read and the world they
live in.
Used as a connection to cognitive strategies, conversation fosters comprehension acquisition.
Students need help developing the strategies necessary for meaningful comprehension.
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5.10 REFERENCES

https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/page.cfm?pageid=638&guideid=31

http://alternativepencils.weebly.com/meaningful-writing-activities.html

– http://www.med.unc.edu/ahs/clds/resources/deaf-blind-model-classroom-resources/Emerg
WrtgObs Inventory.pdf/view

Erickson, K., and Koppenhaver, D. (2007). Children with Disabilities: Reading and Writing the Four-
Blocks Way. Greensboro: Carson-Dellosa
Check your progress Answers

1. Reading comprehension is the ability to process text, understand its meaning. When we
think of a text, we may think of words in print, but a text can be anything from a road
map to a movie. Some have expanded the meaning of "text" to include anything that can
be read, interpreted or analyzed. Reading comprehension requires motivation, mental
frameworks for holding ideas, concentration and good study techniques. To summarize a
particular piece of writing, look for the thesis and main points. Respond to the text
consciously by understanding the topic and giving the opinion. Give reasons for arriving
at that opinion.
2. Predicting: When students make predictions about the text they are about to read, it sets
up expectations based on their prior knowledge about similar topics. As they read, they
may mentally revise their prediction as they gain more information. This strategy
involves the ability of readers to get meaning from a text by making informed predictions.
Good readers use predicting as a way to connect their existing knowledge to new
information from a text to get meaning from what they read.

During reading, good readers may make predictions about what is going to happen next,
or what ideas or evidence the author will present to support an argument. They tend to
evaluate these predictions continuously, and revise any prediction that is not confirmed
by the reading. Predicting, confirming predictions and making predictions motivates and
engages readers, provides direction for reading and leads to deeper thinking about text
(Harvey and Goudvis 2000).

UNIT-6 PRACTICING RESPONDING TO TEXT

Practicing Responding to Text (Using The Indicators) for Reports,

Policy
Documents and News (Expositions) and Editorial,
Academic Articles,
Advertisement Copy,
Resume (Argumentation) :
Practicing Web Search,
Rapid
Reading and Comprehensive Reading
BLOCK IV: REFLECTING UPON WRITING AS A PROCESS AND PRODUCT

Introduction

Whereas the product approach focuses on writing tasks in which the learner imitates, copies

and transforms teacher supplied models, the process approach focuses on the steps involved
in creating a piece of work. The primary goal of product writing is an error-free coherent text.
Process approach to the teaching of English Writing has been advocated in contrast with the
traditional product-oriented method of teaching writing, and has been generally accepted and
applied by English teachers in their classroom teaching of English writing, though
controversy occurs occasionally among researchers concerning which P is better, the process
approach or the product method.

In this block have two units. Unit-7 Understanding writing as a Process: Content (Intent,
Audience and Organization): Understanding writing as a Process: Language (Grammar,
Vocabulary, Spelling): Understanding writing as a Process: Surface Mechanics (Handwriting,
Neatness, Alignment and Spacing) Unit-8 Practicing Self Editing and Peer Editing of Sample
Texts: Practicing Evaluating Students Writing Using Parameters: Productivity, Correctness,
Complexity, Text Organization and Literary Richness.

UNIT-7 UNDERSTANDING WRITING AS A PROCESS

Structure

7.1 Introduction
7.2 Unit Objectives
7.3 The Process of Writing
7.4 Content
 7.4 Intent
7.4 Audience
7.4 Organization
7.5 Language
7.5 Grammar
7.5 Vocabulary
7.5 Spelling
7.6 Surface Mechanics
7.6 Handwriting
7.6 Neatness
7.6 Alignment and Spacing
7.8 Check Your Progress
7.9 Assignments
7.10 Points for Discussion and Clarification
7.11 References

7.1.0 INTRODUCTION

The acquisition of a language, whether our native tongue or a second language presumes a
process in which both receptive skills (listening and reading) and productive skills (speaking
and writing) intervene to affect and complement each other simultaneously. The writing
process is the series of actions required to produce with a coherent written text. Writing is
a process, and it also serves as a method for generating ideas and building connections. This
means that opening yourself up to writing without limitations can allow for a multitude of
good - and bad - ideas to flow into those initial drafts. For that any writer should keep on
standard or customized process to make their draft orderly with which one can captivate
readers. In 1972, Donald M. Murray published a brief manifesto titled "Teach Writing as a
Process Not Product", a phrase which became a rallying cry for many writing teachers. Ten
years later, in 1982, Maxine Hairston argued that the teaching of writing had undergone a
"paradigm shift" in moving from a focus on written products to writing processes. Writing
needs a step by step process to attain the good result, starting with composing ideas,
understand the what to write, know how to use grammar, words, sentence, paragraph, and the
end with text production. Writers need to rearrange the ideas and end up as an orderly
sequence that will inform or persuade the reader in starting to write (Grenville 2001:72, Gelb
1962:1-4).

7.2.0 OBJECTIVES

After completing the course student-teachers will be able to

 Get familiarity with the process of writing

 Reflect upon the importance and purpose of content writing.
 Understand the different components of content writing
 Realize the usage of language in content writing as per the grammatical aspects
 Realize the importance of hand writing, neatness and other annotation techniques

7.3.0 THE WRITING PROCESS

Writing is not a natural process. Good writers formulate plans in their heads, think about
what they have to say and to whom, they constantly revise, edit and review what they have
written.

For many years, it was assumed that the writing process generally operated in some variation
of different stages; the configuration below is typical:

Writing process proceeds following steps:

o Choosing your topic and Readers

o Collecting the ideas
o Choosing your words
o Organizing your writing
o Organize events under sub-topics
o Drafting
o Editing
o Reviewing
o Redrafting and Making finalization

7.4.0 CONTENT
Content refers to matter of a document or publication in any form. Content is
the information and experiences that are directed towards retro style an audience. Content is
what the user derives value from. Content can refer to the information provided through the
medium, the way in which the information was presented, as well as the added features
included in the medium in which that information was delivered. The validation of the
content is also as well important to produce audience with authentified information.

The significant things in content writing include Intent, Audience and organization.

7.4.1 INTENT

Intent is a way to introduce your personal application before an employer gets to resume. It
should be sent along with resume and include meaningful credentials and show off writing
skills.

7.4.2 AUDIENCE

Writing is a conscious process. Writing is to an audience, may be a much generalized group

of readers knowing the audience or sometimes for oneself. If you know the audience you can
make good decisions about what information to include, as well as the line and language in
conveying it.

7.4.3 ORGANIZATION

It refers to how ideas are presented. it is the larger part of a piece of writing, although it refers
to how paragraphs and sentences are written. The flow of a piece of writing effects how
readers interpret ideas.

7.5.0 LANGUAGE

One of the most important functions of language is to build "homophile" or a sense of

commonality with one's readers. Language which is foreign and unfamiliar to the reader
tends to emphasize the differences between writer and reader, and makes the message
difficult to understand. As a writer, it is important not only to think about what you say,
but how you say it. To communicate effectively, it is not enough to have well organized ideas
expressed in complete and coherent sentences and paragraphs. One must also think about the style,
tone and clarity of his/her writing, and adapt these elements to the reading audience. Again, analyzing
one's audience and purpose is the key to writing effectiveness. In order to choose the most effective
language, the writer must consider the objective of the document, the context in which it is being
written, and who will be reading it.

Characteristics of Effective Language

There are six main characteristics of effective language. Effective language is: (1) concrete
and specific, not vague and abstract; (2) concise, not verbose; (3) familiar, not obscure; (4)
precise and clear, not inaccurate or ambiguous; (5) constructive, not destructive; and (6)
appropriately formal.

7.5.1 GRAMMAR

Grammar provides information that helps the reader’s comprehension. It is the structure that
conveys precise meaning from the writer to the audience. knowing about grammar also helps
us understand what makes sentences and paragraphs clear and interesting and precise

7.5.2 VOCABULARY

It represents one of the most important skills for teaching and learning a foreign language. It
is the basis for the development of all other skills like Reading comprehension, listening
comprehension, speaking, writing, spelling and pronunciation. Vocabulary is the main tool
for the students in their attempt to use English effectively.

7.5.3 SPELLING

Spelling helps to the connection that is shared between sounds and letters. Learning high
frequency sight words is shown to help reading and writing.

7.6.0 SURFACE MECHANICS

Error-free writing requires more than just using good grammar. You must also use correct
mechanics of writing in your documents. The mechanics of writing specifies the established
conventions for words that you use in your documentation. Grammar reflects the forms of
words and their relationships within a sentence. For instance, if you put an apostrophe in a
plural word (“Create two file’s”), you have made a mistake in the mechanics of writing, not
grammar. The mechanics of writing guidelines in this chapter work well for computer
documentation, but other style guides might suggest different rules that are equally effective.
In most cases, which rules you follow doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent within
your document or documentation set.
7.6.1 HANDWRITING

For graceful handwriting we need uniformity of the spaces and uniformity of slant.
Handwriting with pen and paper still has an important role from early childhood through our
adult lives, but more and more, people are shifting from paper to electronic modes of
communication. Interestingly though, many personal computers now have handwriting
recognition capability so that handwriting as means of interacting with computers is
becoming more pervasive. It seems, therefore, that even in this modern age, handwriting
remains an important skill for communication.

7.6.2 NEATNESS

Neatness actually captivates the reader.

o Use a nice pen

o Maintain a relaxed grip
o Start with drill
o Experiment with proper rotations

7.6.3 ALIGNMENT AND SPACING

Correct letter sizing relates to alignment or use of the bottom hand writing

The key to alignment is to make the elements logically consistent and fits with the problem,
purpose and other elements of study.

Word spacing is indicative of the sound of speech where audience gaps or pauses take place.
Letter spacing refers the amount of space between a group of letters to affect density in a line
or block of text.

7.7.0 SUMMARY

Writing as one of the productive language skills plays a key role in any language. Writing is
considered to be the most complex and difficult skill to be learned. Writing like other
language skills has its own features and conventions which makes it unique. It is the core
responsibility of any writer to look after grammar and vocabulary that he or she uses in
writing. Surface Mechanics like alignment and Spacing are also important to present content
neatly and clearly to the audience

7.8.0 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS (SELF STUDY)

Students can check, at what extent they have understood the unit by producing answers to the
below questions.

 What are the steps included in writing any content?

 What do you mean by vocabulary in language?
 What are the surface mechanics in writing?

7.9.0 ASSIGNMENTS

 How to captivate audience through writing content?

 “Surface Mechanics are kind of rhetoric’s in writing” – comment.
 How does calligraphy helpful in improving writing skill
 Write a descriptive essay for a teenage magazine about the first time you tried a new
food.

7.10.0 POINTS FOR DISCUSSION AND CLARIFICATION

7.11.0 REFERENCES

 Brown, D. (2001) Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language

Pedagogy, Second Edition. New York: Pearson Education
 Hedge,T. (2005) Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Kohil, A.L (2007). Techniques of Teaching English.
 McCarthy, M. (1991) Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers.Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
 Stuart Redman (2009). English Vocabulary in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
 https://faculty.washington.edu/ezent/el.htm
 http://writing.ku.edu/writing-process

UNIT-8 PRACTICING SELF EDITING AND PEER EDITING OF SAMPLE TEXT

Structure

8.1 Introduction
8.2 Unit Objectives
8.3 Self Editing
8.4 Peer Editing
8.5 Practicing Evaluating Students’ Writing Using Parameters
8.5 Productivity
8.5 Correctness
8.5 Complexity
8.5 Text Organization
8.5 Literary Richness
8.6 Unit Summary
8.7 Check Your Progress (Self Study)
8.8 Assignments
8.9 Points for Discussion and Clarification
8.10 References

8.1.0 INTRODUCTION

Editing operates on several levels. The lowest level, often called line editing, is the stage in
the writing process where the writer makes changes in the text to correct errors such as
spelling, subject/verb agreement, verb tense consistency, point of view consistency,
mechanical errors, word choice, and word usage (there, their or they're) and fine-tune his or
her style. Having revised the draft for content, the writer's task is now to make changes that
will improve the communication with the reader. Depending on the genre, the writer may
choose to adhere to the conventions of Standard English. These conventions are still being
developed and the rulings on controversial issues may vary depending on the source. For
example, Strunk and White's Elements of Style, first published in 1918, is considered by
some to be an authority on stylistic conventions, but has been derided by linguist Geoffrey K.
Pullum as "stupid". A more recent handbook for students is Diana Hacker's A Writer's
Reference. An electronic resource is the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), where writers
may search a specific issue to find an explanation of grammatical and mechanical
conventions

8.2.0 UNIT OBJECTIVES

After completing the course student-teachers will be able to

 Use self editing and peer editing techniques to ensure a refined text to the readers
 Adopt the text organization to well shuffle the content as per its order
 Realize the significance of literary richness
 Show interest in self editing and peer editing
 Prepare a text with correctness and with literary richness

8.3.0 SELF EDITING

Self editing of text makes ones work more professional, readable and effective. Self editing is
a process that every writer goes through after they complete a draft of their written work. It is
when we check grammar mistakes, continuity, spelling errors, types, missing words,
repetitions, awkward sentences, passive voice, subject-verb agreement, clarity, misplaced
modifiers, and homonyms and so on.

Reading for mechanical errors and formatting issues is a different activity than reading for
content sometimes, if the writer focuses on their own ideas, they will miss common mistakes
and typographical errors. Here are some strategies to avoid getting distracted by content when
proofreading a draft:

 Reading aloud or listening to the draft read aloud by someone else helps to see

and hear errors a writer may miss when reading silently to themselves.

 Making the document look different on the screen or on the page (changing font,
size, and formatting) helps to read what is actually written and not what a writer
meant to write.

 Printing out a hard copy also gives the writer a different visual format, which may
help with identifying issues that could be missed when reading on a computer screen.
  Using a ruler or a blank sheet of paper and placing it under each line being
proofread can help give the eyes a manageable amount of text to focus on.

 Proofreading backwards. Starting at the end of the document and reading backwards

sentence by sentence, line by line, allows the writer to focus on the word choice and
sentence-level grammar of the sentence rather than on the context or content.  

 Proofreading at a specific time of day allows the writer to select a specific time of

day (or night!) when they are most alert to spotting errors. Morning person? Try
proofreading then. Night owl? Try proofreading then.

 Using grammar and spelling checkers, but not exclusively. Although useful,

programs like Word's spell-checker and Grammarly can misidentify or not catch
errors. Grammar checkers give relevant tips and recommendations, but they are only
helpful if the writer knows how to apply the feedback they provide. Similarly, MS
Word's spell checker may not catch words that are spelled correctly but used in the
wrong context (e.g., differentiating between their, they're, and there). Beyond that,
sometimes a spell checker may mark a correct word as wrong simply because the
word is not found in the spell checker's dictionary. Scan the document for possible
misspellings; determine whether the word is correctly spelled by looking at MS Word
Spell Check’s suggestions or http://www.merriam-webster.com.

8.4.0 PEER EDITING

It is a strategy that helps writer to receive the inputs and guidance and it also helps the peer
editor understand how to improve writing. Peer review helps writers to see their writing from
a reader perspective.

Peer editing is an interactive process of reading and commenting on a classmates, read each
other paragraphs, and make helpful comments to improve your classmate’s content and
organization and therefore his or her clarity (Oshima and Ann 1999:29). peer editing allows
students to function as audience and respond to other students’ writing, thus, it enable
students to use each others’ comments while revising their draft. It is process when a pairs or
group of students working together on a piece of writing, they can respond to each other’s
ideas both in terms of language and content in making suggestion in changes and contributing
to the success of the finished product.

Quick tips for peer editing:

 Be respectful. Give the sort of helpful comments that you would like to receive.
 Be specific about strengths and weaknesses. “Work on your transitions” is less clear
than “What sentence connects your first and second paragraphs?” “I like this” is not
as helpful as “This sentence shows me exactly what the main idea of this paragraph
is.”
 Remember, grammar isn’t everything. The main focus of a peer editing session is to
see that the student has a clear, readable, and logical argument. Without one, no
degree of grammatical sophistication will make a paper successful.
 Write a list of comments or suggestions at the end of the paper in order of importance.
If a student has a problem with subject-verb agreement but also doesn’t have a thesis,
the thesis is the more important issue for her to address.
 Approach each other as sailors in the same boat. You’re here to help each other, so
relax!

8.5.0 PRACTICING EVALUATING STUDENTS’ WRITING USING

PARAMETERS

Assess at primary stage starts with assessing the writer’s background, age, experience,
familiarity with language. Then determine the assessment criteria the use of proper writing
convention, the writer’s mastery of written vocabulary, the clarity and fluency in presentation
and the use of clear and logical structure within the text. Evaluating student writing can be
one of the most daunting tasks an instructor can face. It takes time, and above all, it takes
mental energy, and I think we are likely all looking for a way to make it a little bit easier.
Evaluating and Commenting on student writing quite often becomes an exercise in simply
“correcting” or “justifying” rather than a practice of offering useful feedback that promotes
growth and the process of writing towards that improvement. Instructors certainly face a host
of challenges that can complicate the process of evaluating and offering feedback on student
writing.

Assess the writer’s background. Before you can assess a person’s writing skills, you must
take their background into account. For example, you would not evaluate an ESL student’s
writing the same way you would if they were a native English speaker. Consider such factors
as:

 The writer’s age and developmental level.

 Their educational background and experience.

 Their familiarity with the language in which they will be writing.

Determine your assessment criteria. There are many different types of writing skills, so
you will need to select a few to focus on. Decide exactly which skills you want to evaluate,
since this will determine the nature of the assignment and how you evaluate it. For example,
you might focus on:

 The use of proper writing conventions, such as good spelling, grammar, syntax,
capitalization, and punctuation.

 The writer’s mastery of written vocabulary.

 The clarity and fluency with which the writer presents their arguments.

 The use of clear and logical structure within the text.

PARAMETERS OF EVALUATING STUDENTS’ WRITING

8.5.1 PRODUCTIVITY

High productivity lies mainly in two things i.e., discipline and motivation. Your lifestyle does
affect your work and as long as you have the wrong life schedule your productivity will not
achieve its maximum potential.

Set up the time when you work and when you have breaks, make your own working place at
home, avoid distracters that surround you and it will help you to concentrate on your work.

8.5.2 CORRECTNESS
It refers to spelling, punctuation, grammar and writing style. The words that a writer chooses
can have a major impact on the tone, clarity, and quality of their writing. When looking at the
writer’s work, consider factors such as:

 Whether the words they use clearly express the desired meaning.

 Whether the words they use are appropriate for the tone of the article (e.g., do then
need to be more formal or casual?).

 Whether the vocabulary is varied enough to keep the reader’s interest.

 Whether words are being used correctly and at a level appropriate to the writer’s age,
developmental level, or experience level.

 Whether the word choice is appropriate for the intended audience of the piece.

8.5.3 COMPLEXITY

Three factors are used to determine the complexity of the text: qualitative measures,

quantitative measures, and considerations relating to the reader and task, all of which have to
be rated on the basis of grade-level appropriateness.

8.5.4 TEXT ORGANIZATION

How a text is organized to help readers follow and understand the information presented.

A well-organized piece of writing should have a clearly-defined structure. While the nature of

that structure will vary depending on the type of writing, most written works should have:

 An introduction that briefly summarizes the topic or introduces the theme of the piece
in some way.

 A body, in which the major points of the text are laid out.

 A conclusion, which wraps up the text and ties up any loose ends.

8.5.5 LITERARY RICHNESS

Explore the richness of language in a high cultural way. For a sentence to be syntactically
correct, both individual words and entire clauses must be arranged in an order that makes
sense. In English, word order is especially important for establishing clear meaning and
correct syntax. Look for:

 Clear and correct word order.

 The use of conjunctions to link coordinating clauses within a sentence.

 Use of a variety of sentence structures (e.g., simple declarative sentences,

interrogative sentences, and compound sentences).

8.6.0 UNIT SUMMARY

Whether you are a teachers assigning students’ writing or as editor offering feedback to a
writer, it can be useful to be able to evaluate writing skills. Since different types of writing
requires different skills. You need to carefully consider your evaluation criteria. Provide
some constructive feedback for improving his/her skills.

Writing is very important form of communication. It is a way of discovering ideas as well as

a way of expressing it. Therefore, few writers are able to express their ideas and words
together perfectly on the first draft. Most of writers produce several drafts, or experimental
version of a piece of writing before finishing a final draft. If people cannot write well, they
will miss many opportunities in their life and carrier. So that writing well request student to
learn a variety of techniques used for different writing purposes. Learn a variety of writing
techniques that can help students to improve their Some of techniques in writing that can be
used to enhance students writing skill are peer editing and self editing technique writing and
become proficient writer.

Undoubtedly, evaluating and providing useful feedback on student writing will always be a
complex process! It’s much more than reading a paper and slapping a grade on it, especially
if we want to help our students become better thinkers and writers.

8.7.0 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS (SELF STUDY)

Students can check, at what extent they have understood the unit by producing answers to the
below questions.
  Distinguish between self editing and peer editing?
 What are the tools available for self editing?
 What are the parameters of evaluating students’ writing?
 What do you mean by literary richness?

8.8.0 ASSIGNMENTS

 Take a text from any book/journal/news paper and edit the same by self and in group
of your friends.
 How does text organization important?
 “Gramarlly software helps in refinement of writing/text” - Justify
 “End view of any writing is productivity” – comment.

8.9.0 POINTS FOR DISCUSSION AND CLARIFICATION

8.10.0 REFERENCES

 Calderonello, Alice Heim and Bruce L Edwards. 1996. Rough drafts: The Process of
Writing. Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company.
 Livingston, Kathy. 2001. “Guide to Writing a Basic Essay”.
(http://members.tripod.com/~lklivingston/ essay/topic.html. accessed on 20
September, 2014
 Oshima, Alice and Hogue, Ann. 1991. Writing Academic English: A Writing and
Sentence Structure Handbook. 2nd Ed. London: Addison-Wesley Publishing
Company, Inc.
 Richards, Jack, C. and Willy Renandya. 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching:
An Anthology of Current Practice. London: Cambridge University Press.
 https://faculty.washington.edu/ezent/el.htm
 https://thewritelife.com/self-editing-basics/
 https://www.academia.edu/37325082/PEER_AND_SELF_EDITING_STRATEGIES_TO_IMPROV
E_STUDENTS_WRITING_SKILL
BLOCK V: PRACTICING INDEPENDENT WRITING

Introduction
UNIT : 9: PRACTICING WRITING

Structure

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Objectives

9.3 Picture Description, Expansion of Ideas, Essays, stories

9.4.Practicing Daily writing : Leave letter, applications, Agenda,Minutes,Note taking

9.5 Converting written information in to Graphical Representation

9.6.Unit summary

9.7 Check your progress

9.8 Assignments

9.9 Points for Discussion and Clarification

9.10 References

INTRODUCTION

Writing is a complex task, involving ideas, language, words, spelling and

transcribing or selecting letters. There is a need to teach all of these skills so that students
need to be able to do all of these, within the one task, to learn good writing skills.

Independent writing is one component of balanced literacy. Independent writing

provides a structured time for children to write. By allowing time for the students to write,
they expand their writing skills and apply spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Grammar is
truly learned, because it is taught in context. Little teacher support is needed, because
children write using known words and construct the spelling of unknown words. They learn
to use resources available to expand their skills such as spell check, a thesaurus, a word wall,
etc. Independent writing is just that- writing independently. After writing time, the students
are helped to edit their work. This is useful, because they learn how to correct errors.

A emergent writer is one who is learning to use written language to express communicative
intent, and beginning writing is defined as starting with emergent writing (drawing,
scribbling, and writing letters) and ending with conventional writing abilities, usually
acquired by second or third grade for typically developing children (Strum, Cali, Nelson,
&Staskowski, 2012).

How can students benefit from writing?

Writing allows students to:

• attend closely to letters and letter/sound relationships

• slow down the process of message construction and examine how ideas relate to
each other

• learn to read through writing

• learn to speak by writing

• gain fluency in recording and revising their ideas

• gain confidence in communicating ideas to others

• develop skills to independently write a wide variety of texts for real purposes on
topics of interest

Which students would benefit from structured and independent writng?

Students who:

• are interested and engaged during shared reading interactions

• know most of the letters (name or sound) on most of the days

• understand that print has meaning

• are starting to select letters specifically when writing (e.g. ‘d’ for dad)

• are using invented spelling

• are writing individual words

• are writing with a pencil or alternative pencil and

have a means of communication and use it to initiate exchanges and interact with others.

Writing process

Make the writing process explicit to support students as they write independently. Students
should be able to articulate what they hope to achieve during their independent writing time.
The process involves:

• planning

• organising

• composing

• revising

• editing and publishing

Purpose of the writing

Encourage students to ask themselves before they begin writing, ‘What is the purpose of this
piece of writing?’

• Is it for me to learn more about a particular topic?

• Is it to inform the rest of the class of what I have learnt?

As the purpose is explored ask students to explicitly identify the intended audience.
9.3 Picture Description, Expansion of Ideas, Essays, stories

9.3.1. Picture Description

A picture description is an ideal way of practising English vocabulary in all sorts of fields. ...
Describing paintings or other art pictures , caricatures is very useful for learner of English as
the description includes simple details of colour, objects to a complex talk talk about the
artists intention and the impression on the viewer.

Pictures are considered a visual media that provide textual information. Moreover, they can
be used to enhance students’ participation and create a positive attitude towards English.
Wright (1989) say that the use of pictures can stimulate and motivate students in language
learning. When learning a second or foreign language, what learners concentrate on is
grammar and phonology. Thus, Wright also states that the use of pictures provides motivation
and the nonverbal stimulus that make students understand better. Wright (1989) presents a
compelling argument in saying that pictures help both teachers and students, since they
provide motivation to students when it comes to speaking or writing. On the other hand,
pictures also help to set a context and provide learners with information to use. They
represent a guide for students in spoken and written descriptions. Additionally, they sponsor,
stimulate, and provide information for writing and speaking activities without teacher
guidance. Thus, from that point of view, pictures represent an advantage helping teachers in
the learning process. They can provide a model to follow and motivation to students. using
pictures encourages students to use their imaginations.

Picture-Cued Technique According to Brown (2004), the picture-cued technique can be

considered an important and powerful method to elicit students’ oral language performance at
extensive and intensive levels.

Preparation

Have a close look at the picture and decide on how to structure your picture description.
What is important or special? What should the viewer pay attention to?

Structure and Content

It's not easy to follow a picture description ,Therefore, make sure that the description is
logically structured, for example:

from left to right (or from right to left)

from the background to the foreground (or from the foreground to the background)

from the middle to the sides (or from the sides to the middle)

from details to general impressions (or from general impressions to details)

Which structure you finally choose depends on your taste and the picture you want to
describe.

Pictures in General

short description of the scene (e. g. place, event)

details (who / what can you see)

background information (if necessary) on place, important persons or event

Paintings

name of artist and picture, year of origin (if known)

short description of the scene (e. g. place, event)

details (who / what can you see)

impression on the viewer

artist's intention

describing pictures can be an ideal activity to begin the class because learners focus on
content. In addition, they are likely to learn new topical or content vocabulary and grammar
through teacher scaffolding during this activity. pictures represent the nonverbal sources of
information. Therefore, it becomes important for the teacher to prepare students for
communication, making use of both verbal and nonverbal sources.

9.3.2. Expansion of Ideas

The ability to expand a sentence or a short passage into a large paragraph is essential to be a
good writer. The expansion of a passage practically amounts to the writing of miniature
essays on the subject of the original passage. There are no strict rules for the length of the
paragraph. It must be neither too short nor too long.

Method

Carefully read the original sentence or paragraph until you fully understand its meaning.

Once you have understood the meaning of the passage, expand it by adding details,
illustrations, examples etc.

The expanded passage must contain all that was in the original passage. You may also add
details that are strictly relevant to the subject.

If the sentence for expansion is a metaphor, explain its meaning in plain language and give
reasons to support it.

If the sentence for expansion is a conclusion, it is your job to trace the steps by which this
thought has been arrived at.

The expanded passage should be a complete piece of composition. It must be written in good
English.

Carefully look for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.

Expansion of an idea is simple and straightforward. It involves 5 easy steps. They are:

Step 1: Understand the symbol of the words in the given phrase: Most ideas are symbolic.
The name of place or animal or thing or person stands as a symbol of some quality. We have
to try to understand that in the context of the proverb.

For example take the proverb, ‘Rome was not built in a day‘. Here the noun ‘Rome’ is the
name of a place. We also (should) know that Rome was a great city. So what does Rome
stand for? It stands for Greatness or success. (Remember it was a great city).
Or take the example of ‘All that glitters is not gold‘. Here we have the noun ‘gold’. It is the
name of a thing. We know that gold is a precious metal. So what does gold stand for? It
stands for precious.

Step 2: Substitute the meaning in the idea or the proverb: Take the two previous examples.

‘Rome was not built in a day’ and ‘All that glitters is not gold’. Now substitute the symbols
we found out earlier in the sentences. What do we have?

‘Greatness or success was not built in a day’

‘All that glitters is not precious’

The proverb is now decoded and ready for understanding.

Step 3: Look for a story or anecdote or example or illustration: Now that you have understood
what the proverb stands for or what the proverb means, we should look for a suitable example
to illustrate it.

Where do we get these stories? There are plenty of them.. So are the tales of India, the
Panchatantra.

Step 4: Look for similar proverbs or ideas: “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an
unbeatable combination for success” by Napoleon Hill is similar to ‘Rome was not built in a
day’; so is the proverb ‘Do not judge the book by its cover’ similar to ‘All that glitters is not
precious’.

Step 5: Sum up the paragraph: Use summing up words or phrases to indicate that you have
finished the expansion and intend to sum it up. You could use ‘Thus’ or ‘In fine’ or ‘So’ or
‘The proverb advises that’. Let the reader know that you are signing off.

So we have 5 Steps on ‘How to do expansion of an idea or expansion of a proverb’:

Step 1: Understand the symbol of the words in the proverb

Step 2: Substitute the meaning in the idea or the proverb

Step 3: Look for a story or anecdote or example or illustration

Step 4: Look for similar proverbs or ideas

Step 5: Sum up the paragraph

Example

SPEECH IS THE GIFT OF ALL, BUT THOUGHT OF FEW. Human beings have been
blessed with the gift of speech. Without freedom of speech one feels curbed, confined and
constricted. No man can grow to his fullest stature without freedom of speech and expression.
But while almost every body talks, few people take the trouble of thinking. Talking comes
naturally to a human being, but thinking requires mental exertion. Everybody is gifted with
reason, but few person make use of this faculty. Man is a rational animal, but all men do not
benefit by the rational faculty. Thinking is, indeed, foreign to most people. The result is that
words are spoken, decisions are taken, and actions are performed by people without any
previous thinking. The want of thinking in most such cases leads to unpleasant, and even
disastrous, consequences. If an individual says or does something thoughtlessly, he may have
to pay heavily for it. If a politician makes speech without giving due thought to what he says,
he may cause a tumult, an agitation and even a riot. Some people have the gift of the gab but
little capacity for thinking. They often blurt out words, without realizing the implications of
what they are saying. They are reckless in speech. So thinking is an essential part of a wise
man’s mental equipment. Indeed, a wise man speaks less and thinks more. And whatever he
speaks is the result of his thinking. But wise men are in small minority in this world. The
world is inhabited largely by talkative people who consider thinking to be an avoidable
hardship.

9.3.3. Essays

Essay asks the writer to describe something—an object, person, place, experience, emotion,
or situation. It attempts to convey how that subject looked, felt, tasted, sounded, smelled, and
so on, and express the emotion or sensation so clearly and vividly that the reader can feel it,
too.
There is an opportunity to do some creative writing, can use creativity to bring the boring
topic also to life. It requires to work really hard at creating something that readers will enjoy
reading.

essay is all about the details. Whether the topic is a simple one or a difficult, essay is sure to
be as success, as long as it can be made come alive on paper and amuse and surprise
audience.

An essay aims to persuade readers of an idea based on evidence. An essay should answer a
question or task.It should have a thesis statement (answer to the question) and an argument.It
should try to present or discuss something: develop a thesis via a set of closely related points
by reasoning and evidence.An essay should include relevant examples, supporting evidence
and information from texts or credible sources.

Basic steps in writing an essay

Although there are some basic steps to writing an assignment, essay writing is not a linear
process. Student might work through the different stages a number of times in the course of
writing an essay. For example, you may go back to the reading and notetaking stage if you
find another useful text, or perhaps to reread to locate specific information.

steps

Analyse the question and define key terms

Establish a possible thesis/ point of view

Research the topic. Use books, journals and other credible academic sources for support and
evidence.

Take notes from readings.

Write an essay plan and organise your ideas

Write a first draft to include your introduction, body and conclusion

Set the draft aside for a day or two, then re-read and make changes.

Have a friend/parent/colleague read it.

Edit and re draft essay

Complete or finalise references and citations

Complete final draft

Step I: Subject and Topic

1. Decide on a subject and topic.

2. Narrow the subject into a workable topic. Subject vs.Topic. For example you could have a
broad subject such as politics or dogs. The topic has a narrow focus within the subject, such
as the cost of running a campaign or the training of a police dog. You will need to find a
subject.

3. You can find a subject in many ways. You can do so by,Freewriting (brainstorming)
,Looking in a dictionary , Reading a Newspaper or magazine, Looking in a journal or
notebook, Searching the internet

4. When choosing a topic think about the impact you will have on the reader and allow
yourself time for consideration.

5. Things to consider when shaping a topic:

It should have an impact on the reader by being informative, entertaining, influential,

emotional, or interesting.

6. Narrowing a Topic. Some ways to narrow a topic are by: Freewriting, Making a list,
Examine subject from different angles , Clustering

7. Once narrowed the Topic, establish a purpose .

The purposes of writing an essay are:

 To express feelings or ideas with the reader and/or relate experiences.

 To inform the reader of something
 To persuade the reader to think or act a certain way.
 To entertain the reader.

8.Developing your topic. You can do the following:

Freewriting
List Write. Jot down everything you know about the topic in a short list.

Questions. Ask yourself questions, and answer those questions.

Cluster. Start with the essential ideas and then connect ideas in a cluster.

Write a letter to yourself or someone else explaining exactly what you know about a
particular idea or topic.

Keep a journal. Jot down things during the day that pertain to your topic as your thinking
about developing your essay.

Collaborate. Talk with other people about your topic see if they know anything that you may
want to use in your essay.

9.3.4. Story

Story writing is a strategy to encourage students to write and, more importantly, to feel an
identity with their texts. For this, students are required to write narratives that allowed them
to portray their experiences using the target language and to look for appropriate , accurate
words and descriptions. From a pedagogical perspective, writing the story helps the teacher
with the possibility of knowing her students better and to feel an affiliation towards them.

Further it empower students to take an active role in their writing, and to have them reflect on
the application of grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and so on, in their texts. Their voices
are important and they can be heard by means of the target language.

A story is a brief work of fiction. It usually contains one major conflict and often only one
major character. Its brevity usually suggests concise narration and limited setting. 

The work in story writing lies in developing the major elements of fiction — character, plot,
theme, point of view, etc. 

Requirements to Writing a Story

An idea.

Use Few Characters and Stick to One Point of View

Limit the Time Frame

Though some short-story writers do jump around in time, your story has the biggest chance of
success if you limit the time frame as much as possible. It's unrealistic to cover years of a
character's life in twenty-five pages. By limiting the time period, you allow more focus on the
events that are included in the narrative.

Be Selective

Follow Conventional Story Structure

The standard rules of narrative learned in the high school literature classes apply to writers as
well.

However much experiment with form, something has to happen in the story or at least make
the reader feel as though something has happened. Things like conflict and resolution achieve
this effect. Storytelling may seem magical, but the building blocks are actually very concrete.
As with any type of writing, the beginning and the end are the most important parts first and
last lines are supposed to be the strongest in the story.

Know When to Break the Rules

As with all rules, these are made to be broken. Alexander Steele points out in his introduction
to the Gotham Writers' Workshop's Fiction Gallery that the short story lends itself to
experimentation precisely because it is short: structural experiments that couldn't be sustained
for three hundred pages can work beautifully for fifteen. And today, the lines between genres
such as the short story and the poem are blurred in exciting ways. however, that telling
story is still the most important thing. If breaking a rule allows to tell the story more
effectively, by all means, break it. Otherwise, think twice, or at least be honest if the
innovation fails.

Following these rules should help complete stories successfully.

These five elements are the building blocks of story, and they are:

1. Action. What are your characters doing?

Notice all the action verbs: drove, walked, passed, walking, sat, closed, fell.

2. Dialogue. What are they saying?

n dialogue, make sure you only use the verb said (as in he said / she said). It can be
tempting to mix it up with verbs like exclaimed, shouted, whispered, added,
countered, and so on. However, readers tend to ignore speaker tags, and varying them
is distracting and doesn’t add to the dialogue.
3. Description. What are they seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling?

Description is a great way to pace for writing a story. If story is loaded with description,
story moves too quickly for the reader. Don’t use too much at one time though or your reader
will get bored.
 4. Inner Monologue. What are they thinking?

Inner monologue is the thing that sets apart writing from most other art forms. In film
or theater, the audience rarely has access to the minds of the characters. Maybe that’s
why the “reality television” style has become so popular on shows like The
Office and Modern Family.
However, if you overuse inner monologue your story will sound like a diary. It’s also
easy to lose the plot of the story if you use too much, and it can become too much
telling and not enough showing.

5. Exposition / Narrative. What other information does the narrator (IE you) want us to
know?

Exposition is when the narrator takes over the story, often through some kind of
summary or information dumping. It’s like a voice over in a movie.
Exposition is necessary to tell almost all stories. However, it’s an example of telling,
and you want to show as much as possible. Use it sparingly.

https://thewritepractice.com/show-more/

9.4.Practicing Daily writing : Leave letter, applications, Agenda,Minutes,Note taking

9.4. 1. Leave letter

Leave letter is written when we are studying in a school or college. Through this letter,
people can formally inform the concerned person regarding his or her absence in college also
mentioning the reason for the same.
It can be either your ill health, attending a function or any other reason. It should be your
moral duty as a student to inform about your leaves to the concerned person.

Some students also write leave letter for college after taking leave. Leave letter can also be
written when a student gets fever or health issues and want to take sick leave.

Firstly it is vital to state the reason of your inability to attend college for a specified period of
time.

The letter should be written with sheer sincerity and genuinity

You must enclose documents supporting your fact.

Tone and content of the letter should be formal and polite

Once you are through writing the letter, please recheck the same for spelling mistakes or
punctuation errors.

From,
_________________
_________________

Date (Date on which letter is written)

To,
_____________
_____________
 Sub:________________________

Respected ________________,

I would like to bring to your kind attention that my name is _________ and I am studying
__________ in your college. My roll no. is ______________. I am really very sorry to inform
you that after a prolonged illness, my ______________ died ____________. I would be
needed to present at the funeral and is required to do rituals for the peace of ___________
soul.

Considering my situation, I request you to grant me leaves for __________ days starting from
__________ to _________. I hope you understand.

 Thanking you,

Yours Faithfully,

9.4.2. Applications

There are broadly two types of letter, namely Formal Letters, and Informal Letters. There are
also a few types of letters based on their contents, formalities, the purpose of letter writing
etc. Let us have a look at the few types of letters.

• Formal Letter: These letters follow a certain pattern and formality. They are strictly
kept professional in nature, and directly address the issues concerned. Any type of business
letter or letter to authorities falls within this given category.

• Informal Letter: These are personal letters. They need not follow any set pattern or
adhere to any formalities. They contain personal information or are a written conversation.
Informal letters are generally written to friends, acquaintances, relatives etc.
• Business Letter: This letter is written among business correspondents, generally
contains commercial information such as quotations, orders, complaints, claims, letters for
collections etc. Such letters are always strictly formal and follow a structure and pattern of
formalities.

• Official Letter: This type of letter is written to inform offices, branches, subordinates
of official information. It usually relays official information like rules, regulations,
procedures, events, or any other such information. Official letters are also formal in nature
and follow certain structure and decorum.

• Social Letter: A personal letter written on the occasion of a special event is known as a
social letter. Congratulatory letter, condolence letter, invitation letter etc are all social letters.

• Circular Letter: A letter that announces information to a large number of people is a

circular letter. The same letter is circulated to a large group of people to correspond some
important information like a change of address, change in management, the retirement of a
partner etc.

• Employment Letters: Any letters with respect to the employment process, like joining
letter, promotion letter, application letter etc.

Letter Writing Tips

Now that we have learned the basics of communicating via letters and the types of letters as
well, let us focus on some tips for the actual letter writing.

1] Identify the type of letter

This obviously is the first step of the letter writing process. You must be able to identify the
type of letter you are to be writing. This will be dictated by the person the letter is addressed
to and the information that will be conveyed through the letter. Suppose you were writing to
the principal of your college to ask for leave, this would be a formal letter. But say you were
writing to your old college professor catching up after a long time. Then this would be a
personal (informal) letter.

2] Make sure to open and close the letter correctly

Opening a letter in the correct manner is of utmost importance. Formal letters open with a
particular structure and greeting that is formal in nature. Informal letters can be addressed to
the person’s name or any informal greeting as the writer wishes.

Even when closing the letter, it must be kept in mind what type of letter is being written.
Formal letters end respectfully and impersonally, whereas informal letters may end with a
more personal touch.

3] Establish the main intent of the letter

Once you start writing, make sure to get to the point as soon as possible. Especially in formal
letters, it is important to immediately make clear the purpose of the letter.

4] Be careful of the language

A letter is always supposed to be polite and considerate. Even if it is a complaint letter, the
point must be made in a careful and courteous manner. So it is necessary to use polite
expressions and civil language in all types of letters.

5] Length of the letter

And the other important factor to be considered is the length of the letter you are writing. It
should be kept in mind that formal letters are generally to the point, precise and short.
Lengthy formal letters tend to not have the desired effect on the reader. The length of an
informal letter is determined by the message in the letter and the relation to the recipient.

Example of Job application letter is given below

There are also set rules for the sections included in the letter, from salutation to sign-off, and
how the letter is organized. Here's a quick lowdown on the main sections included in a job
application letter: 

Heading: A letter of application should begin with both you and the employer's contact
information (name, address, phone number, email) followed by the date.

If this is an email rather than an actual letter, include your contact information at the end of
the letter, after your signature.

Salutation: This is your polite greeting. The most common salutation is "Dear Mr./Ms."
followed by the person's last name. Find out more about appropriate way including what to
do if you don't know the person's name, or are unsure of a contact's gender. 

Body of the letter: Think of this section as being three distinct parts.

  In the first paragraph, you'll want to mention the job you are applying for and where
you saw the job listing.
 The next paragraph(s) are the most important part of your letter. Remember how
you gathered all that information about what employers were seeking, and how you
could meet their needs? This is where you'll share those relevant details on your
experience and accomplishments.

 The third and last part of the body of the letter will be your thank you to the
employer; you can also offer follow-up information. 

Complimentary Close: Sign off your email with a polite close, such as "Best" or
"Sincerely," followed by your name. 

Signature: End with your signature, handwritten, followed by your typed name. If this is an
email, simply include your typed name, followed by your contact information.

Tips for Writing an Effective application Letter

 Always write one. Unless a job posting specifically says not to send a letter of
application or cover letter, you should always send one. Even if the company does not
request a letter of application, it never hurts to include one. If they do ask you to send
a letter, make sure to follow the directions exactly (for example, they might ask you to
send the letter as an email attachment, or type it directly into their online application
system). Following application directions is the first step to getting selected for an
interview.
 Use business letter format. Use an official business letter format when writing your
letter. Include your contact information at the top, the date, and the employer’s
contact information. Be sure to provide a salutation at the beginning, and your
signature at the end.

 Sell yourself. Throughout the letter, focus on how you would benefit the company.
Provide specific examples of times when you demonstrated skills or abilities that
would be useful for the job, especially those listed in the job posting or description. If
possible, include examples of times when you added value to a company. Numerical
values offer concrete evidence of your skills and accomplishments.

 Use keywords. Reread the job listing, circling any keywords (such as skills or
abilities that are emphasized in the listing). Try to include some of those words in
your cover letter. This will help the employer see that you are a strong fit for the job.
 Keep it brief. Keep your letter under a page long, with no more than about four
paragraphs. An employer is more likely to read a concise letter.
 Edit, edit, edit. Employers are likely to overlook an application with a lot of errors.
Therefore, read through your cover letter, and if possible ask a friend or career
counselor to review the letter. Proofread for any grammar or spelling errors.

Tips for Writing a Strong Application Letter

A cover letter can either help or harm you. In order to ensure that your job application
supports your resume, rather than detracts from it, follow these tips:
  Get off to a direct start: In your first paragraph, explain why you are writing.
Mention the job title and company name, and also where you came across the job
listing. While you can also briefly mention why you are a strong candidate, this
section should be short and to-the-point.
 
 Offer something different than what's in your resume: It's rare to send an
application letter without also sending a resume. Your application letter, therefore,
should not duplicate your resume. Your language can be a bit more personal than in
resume bullet points — you can tell a narrative about your work experience and
career.
 
 Make a good case. Your first goal with this letter is to move on to the next step: an
interview. Your overarching goal, of course, is to get a job offer. Use your application
letter to further both of these causes. Offer details about your experience and
background that show why you are a good candidate. How have other jobs prepared
you for the position? What would you bring to the position, and to the company?  Use
this space to emphasize your strengths.
 
 Close with all the important details. Include a thank you at the end of your letter.
You can also share your contact information. If you'd like, mention how you will
follow up.   

A job application letter, also known as a cover letter, should be sent along with resume
when applying for jobs.

Application Letter Writing Tips

In order to write strong letter of application, it is important for you to follow below-
mentioned tips:

Always write application letter

It is always advisable to write an application letter until and unless the employer specifically
does not mention details related to not sending such a letter. In the case, when a company
does not ask for application letter but also does not offer any kind of restrictions, then in such
scenario you should definitely send your application letter. Emailing such a letter is also a
considerable option.

Make use of business letter format

If you want to make such letter effective, then make use of business letter format. Friendly
letter format is strictly not allowed. In business letter format, you should always add contact
information at the top. Don’t forget to add salutation at the beginning and signature at the
end.
Mention your skills and abilities

Understand that in such a letter, you are selling yourself. So it is important to mention your
skills and abilities in detail but without exaggerating. See to it that skills you mention can
benefit the company. If required, you can also add numerical values to your
accomplishments.

Make use of key phrases or keywords

Have you read the job listing carefully? If yes, then circle the important phrases mentioned in
the job listing. Use those phrases in your application letter in order to create a good impact on
an employer.

Write concise letter

It is important to write a concise letter because the employer will not be interested in reading
a long letter. Your letter should not include more than 4 paragraphs.

Editing is important

Don’t just submit your letter without proofreading it. It is important to edit in order to avoid
any kind of errors. Editing can allow you to get rid of grammar and spelling errors.

Things to Include in Application Letter

First Step is Preparing Letter

 It is important to get familiar with the requirements of the job application. You can
get familiar when you know the set of requirements and set of your skills. Correlate
requirements as well as your skills and mention them effectively in your job application
letter.
 Don’t forget to add contact information on the top of the letter. This can make it easy
for a prospective employer to get in touch with you when needed. You can include
details like name, address, phone number, email address, LinkedIn profile details etc.
 In this letter, it is important for you to add the company related information. Name of
the employer, job title, company name, address etc. can be added in your job
application letter. Writing contact information of the company can allow an employer to
now that you are actually interested in the job offer.
 Never address your letter in a way like, “To Whomsoever It May Concern”. It is
important to address the letter to the right person.

Second Step is Writing Your Letter

 The first paragraph of the letter should always be engaging. One can add strong and
declarative statements. In short and specific manner, you can write the reason that
attracted you towards a particular job.
  It is important for you as a candidate to know the details about the post for which you
planning to apply. Inquire about the company and find out if you know anyone in the
company. It is always good to have a reference. It is important for you to mention the
source from where you found the job application in your letter. The source can be
anything like newspaper advertisement, job site, any particular employee reference etc.
 State the benefits of hiring you as a new employee for a particular task. Mention the
accomplishments that you have achieved before but only if it is related to the job that
you are applying now.
 In the second paragraph, you need to mention your skills that can show your strength
and experience. Look at the skills that you have mentioned in your CV and describe
briefly about it in your job application letter.

Third Step is Finishing Your Letter

 End your letter by summarizing, in short, that why you are the perfect candidate for a
particular job position.
 Conclude the letter by thanking your employer or hiring manager and show your
interest in further conversations or interviews.
 Show respect while signing off the letter and it can be shown by writing, ‘Yours
sincerely”.
 Don’t forget to write your name underneath and sign a letter.

Hints and Tips Related to Job Application Letter

 Write the letter on a good quality of paper.

 It is suggested to avoid using flowery language.
 Check spelling errors.
 Don’t write a letter that is too long.
 The typed or computer-generated letter is always preferable.

Different Types of Application Letters

Job application letter is commonly written in the application letter category. Apart from it,
other application letters that you may have to write are like:

 Visa application letter

 Leave application letter
 Scholarship application letter, etc.

Whichever type of letter you may have to write, but it is important to make use of formal
letter writing format.

Application Letter – Don’ts

 Don’t write a long letter

 Don’t address the person by a first name unless you know him or her personally
 Don’t write more than 3 to 4 paragraphs
  Don’t forget to personally sign a letter

9.4.2. Agenda

An agenda, also called a docket or a schedule, is a list of activities in the order they are to be
taken up, from the beginning till the adjournment. An agenda helps in preparing for a meeting
by providing a list of items and a clear set of topics, objectives, and time frames that are
needed to be discussed upon.

Format of an Agenda

An Agenda normally includes the following elements −

Meeting Agenda Title − at the top; preferably center-aligned

Meeting Information − Description of the purpose

Objective − description of Agenda

Date − for maintaining records of correspondence

Location − the place of meeting

Time − the actual time of commencement of the meeting

Meeting Type − brainstorming or Discussion or Assessment

Time of Arrival − time to begin the meeting

Time of Adjournment − time the meeting ends

Attendees − Number of people present, with their names

Preparation for Meeting −

Please Read − instructions to be followed

Please bring − things supposed to be carried that day

Action Items −

Last Action Responsible Authority Due Date

New Action Responsible Authority Due Date

Other notes − other instruction or information to be taken down.

Example - Agenda Writing

Minutes Meeting

Update after meeting with Hasta La Vista representatives

Meeting Information − Update after meeting representatives of Hasta La Vista.

Objective − for the purpose of interior decoration of our office premises.

Date- 23rd April, 2015

Location- Meeting Room-1

Time- 10:30 AM

Meeting Type- Discussion

Attendees- Akhil, Lalitha. J ,Pranav, Vanamali, Kiran K. Panigrahi, Gopal K Verma, Manisha

Preparation for Meeting:

Please Read – Staff duties, NCTE norms

Please bring – B.EdCurricum , Timetables

Action Items:

Due Action:

9.4.4 . Note taking

Taking notes is an important process. It allows you to have a written record of the lecture
which may not be in your textbook. It also ensures that you become an active and involved
listener and learner
A more important reason for taking notes is that there is a direct relationship between what
happens in lectures and what comes up in the exam. If the lecturer does not personally set the
exam, it is likely that he/she will still submit a number of questions.

When thinking about note-taking it is important to consider the lecturing style adopted by
different lecturers. Some will prefer dictating, others will provide printed notes. If you are a
Wits student you will also have the lecture slides posted on SAKAI.

The following areas are covered below:

 Setting the stage

 Listening actively
 Formatting and structuring notes
 General note-taking tips
 If the lecturer talks too fast
 Note-taking abbreviations
 The note-making process

To summarize. To highlight important information. Most importantly, to review and study

from later.

Preparation for Lecture.

Preparation before the lecture provides the background knowledge you need to be an
effective listener and an effective student.
 Know what the lecture will be about. Check the course outline for weekly topics.
 Do any required pre-reading.
 If lecture slides are available before class, download them.
 Review notes from previous lectures.
 Set up notebooks/ documents for note-taking.
 Arrive on time and sit near the front - in order to take good notes, you need to hear
and see clearly.

  

Strategies for effective note-taking

Concentrate and pay attention
Arrive prepared to actively listen and learn, and to think criticially. Analysing and
questioning the information helps you to focus and understand what you hear.
Be selective
—you don’t have to transcribe the entire lecture. Effective listening note-taking involves
recognising key concepts and identifying and selecting what is relevant. Listen for the overall
argument and note the main points and key information.
 Distinguish between main points, elaboration, examples, ‘waffle’ and new
points by listening for:
 introductory remarks. Lectures often begin with a useful overview of
the key ideas or themes of a particular topic. This helps you grasp the ‘big picture’.
  verbal ‘signposts’ that indicate something important is about to be said.
Lecturers often signal key information with phrases like: “There are four main
aspects”, “This is important…” or “To sum up”.
 repetition. Important points will often be repeated, especially in
introductions and conclusions.
 phonological cues (voice emphais, change in volume, speed, emotion
and emphasis) often indicate important information.
 final remarks. Most lectures conclude with a summary, a restatement
of the main ideas and an indication of how the topic connects with upcoming
material.
 Look for:
 non verbal cues (facial expressions, hand and body signals) that
indicate something important is being said.
 visual cues (note what is on the visuals, note references to names and
sources)
After the Lecture
To get the most out of your notes it’s important to review and re-engage actively with them
several times.
Review your notes while the lecture is fresh in your mind. Reviewing helps you remember
what was said, builds up your understanding, and helps identify gaps in your knowledge.

To review:
 Read through your notes. Make sure they are clear and legible. Clean them up - fix
spelling errors, expand on abbreviations, tidy up handwriting (if necessary).
 Fill in missing words or information and add anything extra that you may have
thought of since the lecture.
 Code your notes - use colour and symbols to mark structure and emphasis, highlight
major sections, main points and diagrams. Use different colours to emphasise main points,
classify different topics and link concepts or information.
 Explain and clarify diagrams by writing a simple version of their meaning.
 Identify anything that needs further clarification.
Label and file your notes along with any lecture handouts.

Reviewing the notes

 Try to pool similar pieces of information into categories that you can remember more
easily.
 Transcribe key concepts in own words.
 Add questions to the notes to help to recall the key ideas.
 Write a brief overall summary of the notes.
 Reflect on the learning process itself—

9.5 Converting written information in to Graphical Representation

Presenting huge data to audience/reader is sometimes cannot be avoided. In such kind of

situation large
data can be presented clearly and meaningfully with the aid of non-verbal items like maps,
charts, tables
and graphs.
Converting data into diagrammatic representation requires different set of skills.
While converting data in diagrammatic representation one needs to know the following:
 The form of diagram , that suits the data better
 How to convert the data into a diagram or text
 The steps and nuances involved in it.
Simultaneously one should be able to decode the diagrammatical presentations into either
oral
presentation or written document.
Uses:
I. This kind of representation of data is one of the vital aspects of reports and proposals.
II. Non-verbal items are especially meant to convert the data into diagrammatic form.
III. It is especially in the context of…
 Narration
 physical and process description
 listing, classifying, comparison and contrast
 shows cause and effect relationship
 generalizes from numerical data
Advantages of graphical representation:
 Quick viewing of a large amount of data at one glance
 More accuracy of data is possible through graphs
 Comparison, contrast and division can be done in one go
 More effective than written text
 Stimulates quick analytical approach to huge text
Before transferring the verbal data into pictorial form analyse the data, choose an
appropriate graphical representation.
There are different kinds of graphic representation:
 Maps and plans
 Tables
 Graphs
 Tree diagrams
 Pictograms
Flow charts
Maps and plans: Maps are representations, usually on a plane surface, of a part of the
earthcontinents, countries, cities, villages, small areas and even buildings. They show outlines
of areas them and feature such as roads, coastlines, rivers etc.

Tables: A simple form of graphic representation is the table, in which data is arranged in
rows and columns that carry labels to identify what they represent.

Graphs: Graphs are different of different types like bar graph, line graph or pie chart.

Tree diagrams: These diagrams begin with a key word and are connected to other words
below it by a number of arrows until the final level is reached. The branches of such tree
diagrams are known as groups or sub-groups.
Pictograms: It is another interesting way of presenting data. The name itself suggests that ,
bars or figures are replaced by pictures.

Flow charts: It is generally used to narrate or describe a process in a chronological sequence.

Graphic Information

All those graphic elements of reading assignment provide important information to help
understand whatever it is reading abou . tOne should not skim over them or ignore them
completely because might miss something very important. In this lesson, we will learn about
some types of graphics and practice analyzing them in order to draw out as much data as
possible from the text.

Types of Graphic Information

Many different types of graphic information are presented below Let's learn about a few of
them.

Pictures - Have you heard the old saying 'A picture is worth a thousand words'? It really is!
Pictures reveal details about a topic that written text can never capture.

Maps - Maps allow us to form a mental picture of places and physical movements across a
landscape. Readers often encounter political, physical, climate, topographic (the shape of the
land), road, and economic or resource maps as well as thematic maps that show everything
from battles to population growth.

Graphs - Graphs offer a visual portrait of data and its relationships. Texts feature line graphs
that show changes in data over time; bar graphs that make comparisons over time and
between groups; pictographs that represent data through pictures; and pie graphs that show
parts of a whole.
Charts - Charts show organizational relationships (like a family tree) or processes (like a flow
chart).

Diagrams - Diagrams often provide a visual portrait of how something works or is put
together (like a schematic) or of how sets of data overlap (like a Venn diagram).

How to Analyze Graphic Information

Graphic information should never be ignored in a text. In fact, must be carefully analyzed
each graphic, examining it closely to draw out as much information as possible.

five-step process to analyze graphical information

1. Take an initial look at the graphic and to determine what kind it is. What is strikingly
interesting or important?

2. Determine the topic of the graphic. What is it about? What kind of information is it
sharing?

3. Read all the accompanying text. Read the titles, captions, map keys, labels, and any other
text surrounding the graphic. Don't skip anything; it is all important to your understanding of
the graphic.

4. Look closely at the graphic itself. Notice its details, read its information, and jot down
interesting points and questions you might have. Spend the time to really get to know the
graphic. Ask and try to answer some important questions for each type of graphic.

For a picture, for instance, think about who or what is pictured and try to figure out how the
photographer or artist portrays the person, object, or event.

For a map, identify the type of map used, the area it covers, and its theme.

For a graph, figure out its type, the kinds of data it presents, and the relationships it shows.

For a chart, determine whether it shows a relationship or a process.

For a diagram, think about whether it presents how something works or is constructed, or
whether it shows overlapping data.
5. Pay attention to how the graphic adds to or complements the text. A text and its graphic
elements always work together. Spend some time determining what the graphic tells you that
the text doesn't say or how the graphic presents the text's information in a different way.

The Text and Its Graphics: Working Together

This last point is very important to understand. Graphics either add to the information
presented by the text or present it again in a different way. As a reader it is to determine how
the text and its graphics work together to present information.

9.6.Unit summary

Self-confidence is crucial to the success of a Teacher. If student teachers gain this confidence
as budding writers, it remains with them throughout their lives. Confidence is developed
when one realize that can do something independently. Independence leads to motivation. It
is important to help students strengthen their internal motivation.

As teachers will always be there when a student is writing a proposal, business letter, brief,
or any other writing which future jobs will expect. Independence is developed bit by bit
through these various writing practice activities and can become successful as professionals .

9.7 Check your progress

1. Explain how does graphics supplement text.

2. Write an agenda to conduct a Parents Teacher Meet.

9.8 Assignments

Find a picture that you really like in a magazine, newspaper, or on a postcard. Cut it out and
tell the story that you see happening in the picture.

Have you seen any great, or not so great, movies? Write a movie review.
If you are a sports fan and following the teams at school? Write a sports article for a
newspaper. Check out the sports pages of today’s newspaper for inspiration.

Write about an interesting person in the community or in our school community who’s story
must be told. Interview that person and write a profile of them.

Do you have an opinion about an issue that we are facing in our community or our world?
Write an editorial essay that showcases your opinion.

Write a review on the opinion of articles in the newspaper

Talk to your classmates. Find out what they are doing.

Create the application for a job and submit to a college

Observe the Graphical data in News papers and analyze.

9.9 Points for Discussion and Clarification

9.10 References

https://komarrajuvenkatavinay.wordpress.com

Salamanca González, F. O. (2015). Personal narratives: A pedagogical proposal to stimulate

language students’ writing. HOW, 22(1), 65-79. http://dx.doi.org/10.19183/how.22.1.134.
UNIT : 10 PRACTICING WRITING

Structure
10.1 Introduction

10.2 Objectives

10.3 .Practicing Filling up Surveys forms,feedback responces, checklists

10.4. Reflections on the course, from theory to practice to initiating processes to improve self

10.5 Course work, practicum, field engagement

10.6.Unit summary

10.7 Check your progress

10.8 Assignments

10.9 Points for Discussion and Clarification

10.10 References

10.1 INTRODUCTION

The writing process teaches students how to develop their ideas and record them in written
form. The process involves the following distinct steps:

• Planning

• Writing a draft

• Revising

• Editing

• Publishing
Each stage of the writing process is important and needs to be explicitly taught. The writing
process can be taught in sequence, but it is also important to help students understand that
writers go back and forth between the steps as they write. Some writing is never taken to
completion.

All students, regardless of their stage of development as writers, are introduced to the writing
process through modelled and shared instruction. Students in participate in different aspects
of a balanced writing program, depending on their stage of development. Each student will
engage in the writing process at his or her own level – for example, a Kindergarten student
might label a group picture during shared writing.

Teacher and peer interactions play an important role in the writing process and are discussed
below in the sections on revising and editing.

Teachers need to model all aspects of the writing process many times so that students become
familiar with each stage. This will enable students to participate in the writing process with
understanding and confidence.

Planning

The first step of the writing process, sometimes referred to as “rehearsal”, results in a

plan to guide students as they write. Students generate ideas based on prior knowledge

or personal experience. They may be prompted to visualize or draw their story and

then tell a friend. After brainstorming with other students, they evaluate their ideas,

narrow their focus, and select a topic. Some students may be provided with a generic

graphic organizer. As students create a plan, they need to consider why they are writing

(the purpose), and who will read what they write (the audience). At this point, students

may determine the form their writing will take.

Talk is an integral part of the writing process. Students are given the opportunity to talk to

each other in order to expand their ideas and/or make improvements in their writing.

Writing a Draft
Following the development of their plan, students write a first draft. The intent of

this draft is to get ideas down on paper. The focus, at this point, is on the message, not

the mechanics of writing. Once the draft is complete, students need to read what they

have written and decide if it says what they want it to say and if they like what they

have written. It is crucial that they understand that not all writing will be developed

beyond this point. (Teachers will tell students how many pieces of writing are

expected to reach publication over the course of the year.) If they consider that the

draft has potential, they will move on to the next step in the writing process. However, if the
draft is not satisfactory (e.g., does not address the purpose for writing), they may choose to go
back to the planning stage and begin again. It is essential that students be taught how to
evaluate their own writing at this stage in the process.

Revising

The focus of this step is to improve the quality of the message. Students are taught to
examine their writing critically and use a variety of strategies to revise their writing
effectively. A good

way to begin is to ask themselves, “Does this make sense?” They need to determine if their
ideas are clear and if their organization is appropriate for the form chosen. Students will also
consider the style of their writing, including sentence structure, paragraphing, and
vocabulary, and ensure that they have made the best word choices for their topic and
audience.

Word choice is a key concept related to developing the writer’s style. If students decide that
significant changes are necessary, they may choose to go back and produce a complete
second draft.

Teacher and/or peer interaction is an effective approach to revision. After a revision the
student writer will decide if he or she will implement any of the suggestions made.
It is important for teachers to remember that students may reach plateaus in their writing.
Rather than progressing on to the next stage of development, they may need more experience
and time in order to expand their repertoire of ideas and their sense of writing style and form.
With young there may need to be a strong emphasis on oral language (e.g., frequent
opportunities to talk to peers or listen to the teacher read a variety of books) in order to help
them internalize different perspectives and ideas and incorporate them into their writing.

“A process writing classroom tends to be characterized by a number of elements such as:

having students establish purposes for their writing; establishing author groups; peer

conferencing; student-teacher conferencing; finding ‘real’ audiences for students’ writing;

teachers writing with students; recognizing students’ personal writing processes; ecognizing
social and cultural influences on student writing.” (Peterson, 2003, p. 1)

 Drafting
 Publishing
 Editing

By this stage, students are satisfied with their message. They feel they have addressed

the purpose, used the appropriate text form, and considered their audience. Therefore,

they now need to focus on the mechanical aspects of their writing – they need to be

taught to proofread their own writing and the writing of others. During proofreading,

students will check the correctness of their spelling, grammatical structures, and

punctuation. Class-developed editing checklists are a most effective tool since they

reflect students’ capabilities. Ultimately, students will need to develop a variety of

strategies, through a balanced writing program, before they are independently able

to edit their work and the work of others.

Publishing

Students now make their writing presentable to the intended audience. They consider
the visual layout of the text (e.g., margins, headings, graphics, and photographs) and

its legibility. Once their writing has been published, it should be shared with their

audience.

Students engage in independent writing at all phases of the learning process. Independent
writing is not just ‘free choice’ writing but what the student does with their work as a result
of the explicit instruction and scaffolds offered by the teacher. In this sense, it is the
independent phase of the gradual release of responsibility (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Duke,
Pearson, Strachan &Billman, 2011).

Independent writing is both the culmination of the genre curriculum cycle (Christie, 2005;
Gibbons, 2015; Hammond, 2001) and of ideas around a gradual release of responsibility
(Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Duke, Pearson, Strachan &Billman, 2011).

As well as forming a part of staged, sequential teaching, independent writing can be a time
the student writes with little support from the teacher, trying out ideas in a risk-free
environment where genuine writing attempts are recognised and rewarded.

Wilson (2006) sees independent writing as an opportunity for children to write “exploratively
and wonderingly” (p. 9), finding voice through writing about things they find important.

Independent writing provides students with the opportunities to employ the various skills and
knowledge they have developed throughout the more supported teaching practices of
modelled and shared writing as well as those areas which have formed the focus of the mini
lessons or writing conferences.

As part of the writing lesson, students are provided with clear learning intentions as they
write independently.

As students write independently, the teacher:

• guides the students in their composition, supporting them to design and compose their
texts independently and creatively

• conducts writing conferences with individual or small groups of students to provide

additional support

• monitors the students’ writing to identify strengths and future goals

• provides opportunities for the student to self-assess

• provides feedback about the processes of writing and intended message

• engages the students in conversations about their writing, building their capacity to
talk about their texts, the choices they have made and how these choices reflect their intended
meaning.

During independent writing, students might:

• plan, draft, revise or edit their texts

• work on completing a final copy of published text

• compose a text related to an area of study set by the teacher, for example, an
information report about an Australian animal

• research a topic and take notes

• compose a text on a topic of their own choice

• add to their writing repertoire

• consult with the teacher or peers for advice on their writing.

10.2 OBJECTIVES

 Learns to fill various tools of data collection like survey forms, feedbacks,checklists
 Compose narrative, descriptive, and process paragraphs unified by a central topic
or theme
 Incorporate changes and corrections during the revision process to produce final
draft of written assignments
 Compose written assignments under timed, exam conditions

10.3 PRACTICING FILLING UP SURVEYS FORMS, FEEDBACK RESPONSES, CHECKLISTS

Effective practice can be accomplished through cooperative learning, which involves students
working together as partners or in small groups on clearly defined tasks. Tasks like filling up
survey forms, check lists, feedbacks will certainly increase the skills of the student teacher..
Students works together to understand texts, helping each other learn and apply
comprehension strategies. Teachers help students learn to work in groups.

10.3.1. Filling up Surveys forms

Surveys are a research method by which information is typically gathered by asking people
questions on a specific topic and generalising the results to a larger population .They are an
essential component of many types of research including public opinion, politics, health, and
others. Surveys are especially important when addressing topics that are difficult to assess
using other approaches Without clear reporting of the methods used in surveys, it is difficult
or impossible to assess .

The best surveys are also written in clear language and have unbiased questions. And when
you’re smart about survey format and question flow, you avoid satisficers (people who don’t
think carefully about their answer choices, rush through your survey, or misrepresent
themselves). Here are key tips and best practices for getting reliable survey results

10.3.2. feedback responses

Feedback is a part of how we work. It can be a simple comment on a piece of work or can be
a more detailed and structured discussion about how we are going and what we could do even
better.

it’s important to know how to provide feedback to others, effectively and constructively
without causing offence.There are many opportunities in life for providing others with
feedback, from commenting on the way that your colleague has carried out a task, to
discussing children’s behaviour with them.

Feedback should be about behaviour not personality

The first, and probably the most important rule of feedback is to remember that you are
making no comment on what type of person they are, or what they believe or value. You are
only commenting on how they behaved. Do not discuss aspects of personality, intelligence or
anything but behaviour.

2. Feedback should describe the effect of the person’s behaviour on you

After all, you do not know the effect on anyone or anything else. You only know how it made
you feel or what you thought. Presenting feedback as your opinion makes it much easier for
the recipient to hear and accept it, even if you are giving negative feedback. After all, they
have no control over how you felt, any more than you have any control over their intention.
This approach is a blame-free one, which is therefore much more acceptable.

3. Feedback should be as specific as possible

Especially when things are not going well, we all know that it’s tempting to start from the
point of view of ‘everything you do is rubbish’, but don’t. Think about specific occasions,
and specific behaviour, and point to exactly what the person did, and exactly how it made you
feel. The more specific the better, as it is much easier to hear about a specific occasion than
about ‘all the time’!

4. Feedback should be timely

It’s not good to give feed back months later. Feedback needs to be timely, which means while
everyone can still remember what happened. If you have feedback to give, then just get on
and give it. That doesn’t mean without thought. You still need to think about what you’re
going to say and how.

10.3.3.Checklists

The value of the checklist lies in its assembling core instructional concepts so that each item
serves as a reminder to apprentice writers working toward final drafts.

Used effectively, checklists can help students develop metacognitive awareness of their
intellectual processes. Metacognitive research consistently suggests that students who know
how to learn, know which strategies are most effective when faced with a problem or a task,
and have accurate methods of assessing their progress are better learners than

those who don’t. By articulating and labeling operational steps, checklists scaffold students’
metacognitive development. Designed by teachers, the checklists described below function to
help learners develop confidence and independence as they internalize
newly encountered operations and strategie

10.4. REFLECTIONS ON THE COURSE, FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE TO INITIATING

PROCESSES TO IMPROVE SELF

The course evaluation is considered to be one of the very valuable tools of teaching and
learning since it can provide useful feedback both for teachers and their institution about the
quality of education. Moreover, it can reveal its impact on student’s learning and teacher’s
practices. There are two main approaches to the course evaluation: informal/personal and
formal/institutional.

The private one is done by the course teacher who reflects on his/her teaching practices in
order to eliminate student’s insufficiencies and difficulties in the process of learning, reflect
on one’s own teaching methods, approaches and strategies so that s/he could consequently
improve his/her teaching performance. It can be done during the course (formative
evaluation) or just at the end of the course (summative evaluation). The institutional one is
usually done by the faculty administrators for different reasons. They make a (summative)
evaluation in order to decide about the teacher’s prolongation or termination of his/her
contract, promotion or a salary increase. In addition, they can make a (formative) evaluation
in order to discover in which areas the teacher needs to improve These evaluations can be
combined with supervisor’s evaluations and results of student’s test scores to create an
overall picture of teaching performance.

The evaluation can have different forms. Students can be given questionnaires (nowadays, it
is usually done anonymously online) and/or focus interviews can be held. Sometimes, the
evaluation can be done in form of student’s written reflection on the course in which student
expresses an overall impression on the course, including his/her motivation for attending this
particular course and realizing what s/he has learned.
Thus, an objective evaluation of the course should consist of:

Student results;

Self-reflection;

Teacher and/or peer review;

Institutional questionnaires and/or focus interviews.

The obvious thing to do is to put together a list of the learning outcomes for Part 1 of the
course and ask them to score themselves against it, but I wondered if anyone had any other
ways that they have done this sort of thing, that I might be able to modify for our course. The
challenge that I face is how we help people to identify how well they can actually support
those who contact us. To use a driving analogy if I asked them to score themselves against:
-Check the car is out of gear -Check Hand-break -Start Engine -Check Mirror -Depress
Clutch etcetc Someone might score highly on each individual competence, but might be the
world's worst driver when it comes to putting them all together! So - has anyone got any
suggestions for ways that we could get a person to reflect on their learning over the entire
course and how well they are putting it all together

First, reflection is essential for the development of understanding and of the ability to make
use of complex ideas and concepts. Second, it is also essential for raising awareness about
how we learn and might improve our learning.

These reasons are the foundation for all the hints and tips about study skills and improved
personal communication that you will find in this course – indeed they are not likely to have
much effect if you do not combine them with self-reflection and review. Reflection on your
own learning is part of this course because it can improve both the quality and the quantity of
what you learn, especially if you give yourself time to reflect adequately as a regular part of
studying.

Reflection is also something we do spontaneously in everyday contexts, and we may not

often notice when and for how long we are reflecting. It may seem unfamiliar, even strange,
to reflect as a specific and planned activity. The reason for doing so is because a more
strategic use of reflection – giving yourself time to do it regularly and building it into your
study methods – enables you to monitor progress, learn from good and bad experiences and
plan for better ways of doing things.

More universities are including study skills and 'learning-to-learn' materials in their
programmes to encourage students to develop their general learning abilities.

10.5 COURSE WORK, PRACTICUM, FIELD ENGAGEMENT

10.5.1. Course Work

Program Learning Outcomes are the specific learning outcomes students will have achieved
when they successfully complete a program. They are identified, mapped, taught, practised
and assessed within each Education program.

For professional programs it is appropriate to begin with the framing Course work document
provided by the accrediting body and then to consider and incorporate the other relevant
frameworks. Course learning outcomes are informed in a clear and unambiguous language.

A coursework is a written or practical work done by student in form of thesis, dissertation,

project or paper as a part of course. This is often an essential requirement for being awarded a
degree and counts towards successful completion of the course. A coursework is assessed by
class instructors or by other teachers in the school. Many students cannot clearly define what
is a coursework. In a nutshell, a coursework is written in the form of projects or essays. There
are few guidelines and good practices which should be followed while writing a coursework.
Perfect examples of a coursework include extended essay, field studies, practical activities,
design studies and internal assessment test set. Conversely, each coursework have differing
objectives from one course unit to another. In addition, a coursework may incorporate work
for which the experiments, topics, themes or parameters of a project or essay have been
designed by the teacher, or specified in the syllabus, or selected by the students themselves.
Therefore, a coursework is presented in a form of a research assignment meant to reflect the
understanding of topics and concepts by the student. Students can handle their coursework
either at school under the controlled conditions in class sessions, or as homework.

Planning-
First and foremost step is to give a thought about before writing. Deciding the objectives,
scope, limitations of the course.Before writing a coursework, a student has to plan based on
duration and the materials needed and as instructed in coursework tips. Proper time planning
must be based on teacher’s remarks, as well as creating time for final editing and
proofreading.

Research –

Many coursework writing help insists on conducting research and gathering of background
data on the topic selected. Research is about collecting significant and supporting literature
from both primary and secondary sources. Some coursework subjects such as sciences and
geography are written based on the premises or hypotheses that are stressed as an essay’s
thesis statement to offer a ground for researching. Since subjects should be backed by reliable
experimental data that was obtained through rigorous scientific approaches and rational
model

Structure Planning

The actual writing of course work commences after gathering sufficient data that will do
justice to the topic. Student has to write down the paper structure before writing. Though, the
outline provided in the essay instructions where students are expected to follow.

A standard essay format comprises of an introduction, body and conclusion. In particular,

structure planning in important for big projects, because there is a likelihood of having
disorganized and waffling writing since it entails a lot of information to convey that needs to
be arranged. This has a significant impact on your data analysis and presentation.

Writing – Writing is a sensitive part as aspects such as grammar, choice of words,

punctuation and word limit are checked during the marking.

Consequently, one has to perfect their writing abilities to produce a high quality paper that
bases around the standard essay format. For complex projects in sciencethere is a need to be
more analytical and interpretive to get the accurate inferences of the data collected in the
writing.

Supporting Materials for writing a coursework Supporting materials are defined as the
evidencing materials that are included in the writing to reinforce the theories explained. For
example table, graphs, charts, and images are mostly applicable and relevant in subjects such
as geography and sciences. Supporting materials are written in the appendix part of a paper to
avoid cluttering of information in the main part of the paper. For instance, the coursework
focus is survey oriented, the raw survey responses, survey templates, questionnaires, in an
appendix and present the analysis and discussions in the main body of the coursework.

Finalizing the Coursework

The steps on how to finish a coursework is easy as it necessitates one to edit their papers prior
to the submission. Prior to the submission, students would have time to proffered and confirm
features such as word count, word choice, grammar errors, spellings as well as the
punctuation mistakes. It is advisable to carry out a manual proofreading as the modern spell
checking and grammar checking software can overlook some common mistakes. Importantly,
a student is required to include in-text citation according to the writing style used. A well-
written coursework is thought-provoking, enjoyable for the reader and enhances the reader’s
knowledge.

10.5.2. Practicum

Practicums are designed to provide students with practical work experience. They emphasize
the importance of learning by doing. Practicums can also open many opportunities to
network and make important contacts within the industry.

The practicum constitutes an integral part of many professional courses in higher education;
and is manifest in several different forms depending on the discipline: field experience,
cooperative education, sandwich programs, internships, clerkships, clinical practicum, and
the like.

An important role of the practicum is to provide a supported entry to the profession. The
factor with the strongest impact on retention seems to be the quality of the first teaching
experiences, and what student teachers experience in their practicum creates their view of the
profession. It is therefore essential that student teachers are offered quality practice
placements. In order to learn from field experience it is necessary to look back at it and
reconstruct it through interaction between the individual, objects and other persons. In this
way, the experience can prepare the individual for the future. Systematic reflection in
dialogues with peers, mentors and supervisors prepares student teachers for the real and
complex classroom and provides future teachers with tools for developing confidence to act
professionally in unique situations.

A high quality practicum program: • integrates theoretical knowledge and professional

practice across the three domains of a teacher education program; ‘content’ knowledge
gained through a liberal education, professional knowledge, pedagogical skills and insights. •
is designed and implemented within a partnership involving teacher education institutions
(TEIs), schools, school systems and relevant professional bodies • articulates clear and
progressive stages for the development of the acquired knowledge, skills, attributes and
dispositions of beginning teachers • provides diverse experiences in a range of school
contexts and with a variety of students • assesses against clear delineations of purposes, roles
and expectations of TEI student activity and performance • includes an assessment of
resource needs and implications • is flexible and encourages innovation • involves ongoing
evaluation and response. With regard to how is the practicum planned and implemented the
same author summarized the general nature and planning and operation of a quality
practicum as follow

Connecting knowledge to life outside the school and enriching the curriculum by making it
less textbook-centered are two important concerns of the NCF. This is possible only when
teachers are able to play an active role in the design of learning materials and are also able to
organize meaningful learning experiences for children. To enable this, the teacher needs
several support mechanisms, including a pool of learning resources to choose from, the skills
to identify developmentally appropriate text materials, a critical and analytic mind and the
opportunity to engage children with learning outside the classroom. In order to help children
to move away from rote learning, teachers will need to be prepared to give children the
opportunity to make meaning of what they read, see, hear and experience. (NCF TE 2009)

10.5.3. Field engagement

The field engagement is where students put into practice what they have learned in the
classroom with respect to micro, meso and macro skills and also with respect to upholding
professional values and following ethical codes of conduct.

Though field coordinators and other faculty serve as liaisons to the student and the
field instructor throughout the course of the practicum, there are many experiences that

students have with their field instructors apart from those listed in the learning plan and

discussed in the field seminar. As students near graduation and prepare for either their

first professional positions or further education, a more complete picture of their field

experiences can be gained from gathering their reflections on their field experiences in a

way that differs from the typical final input they may have in their evaluations with their

teachers or faculty liaisons.

One obvious benefit to this data gathering process is that the student reflections can

be used to assess strengths and limitations in current field placement settings. More

importantly, however, the authors posit that this time for self-reflection on practice

(Furman, Coyne, & Negi, 2008) is, of itself, an essential aspect of students’ learning. As

students recount meaningful experiences in their field placements, they have the

opportunity to explore these experiences in a different way, critically reflect upon them,

and perhaps develop a new perspective on the situation. While this process has the

immediate effect of helping a student reflect on his or her current level of professional

development, this process may also model for students the importance of continued

reflection on their professional practice.

field experiences comprising an organized set of activities outside the classroom with the aim
of embedding theoretical learning in practical experiences. with the courses and students
learn to conceptualize, plan and implement, critically examine some of the practices in
various institutions. They also learn to work in groups.
10.6 SUMMARY

Independent writing is described as a time when students accomplish their own writing

through the application of knowledge and skills that have been the focus for previous

instruction. Previous instruction is said to consist of modeling and guided activity where

knowledge and skills required for independent writing are taught through social interaction

with the teacher. Descriptions of independent writing emphasise the activity of individual

students to the social interaction that occurs between young students when they write .

10.7 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Develop questions to seek the other person’s views and ideas and encourage a two-way
discussion.

10.8 ASSIGNMENTS

Develop a feed back form to assess your classroom teaching.

10.9 POINTS FOR DISCUSSION AND CLARIFICATION

10.10 REFERENCES

https://www.cmtedd.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/463728/art_feedback.pdf

https://www.teachthought.com › Teaching