Double Entry Journal #6

First Speaker

1. Why is this video helpful for teaching in West Virginia?
This video is helpful for teaching in West Virginia because there are many children who speak the Appalachian dialect and it would be helpful to teach them how to code switch.
2. What evidence is presented that supports the credibility of the speaker?
Rebecca Wheeler is the associate professor of English, language, and literacy at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. She is the coauthor of  Code-Switching, and a literacy consultant for the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE). She also holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia, M.S. from Georgetown, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
3. Describe the traditional approach to responding to student writing.
When teachers see grammar issues with student work, they correct it. The teachers find error, what the student is not doing.
4. Why does the traditional approach not work in improving student writing?
Teachers focus on what the student is not doing, when they should be focusing on what the student is doing.
5. Name the three strategies associated with the linguistic approach to writing instruction.
Scientific method, contrastive analysis, and code switching.
6. How do you know the cat and Taylor go together?
Taylor and cat are next to each other.
7. What is different between the two patterns of possessives for informal and formal English?
The pattern for informal possessives is the owner and what ever it is that they own are next to each other. The pattern for formal possessives is the owner has an "'s" and then what ever it is that they own.
8. What strategy is being used for teaching the second grade students the different patterns between informal and formal English?
The scientific method applied to grammar discovery.
9. Describe how the scientific method is used to teach students to code switch.
Instead of seeing student writing as a bunch of mistakes, teachers look at the patterns. They collect data (sample of student writing), observe data and seek a pattern, describe the pattern (form hypothesis), check hypothesis, and modify hypothesis.
10. What question is being asked to engage students in the comparison and contrast strategy?
"Now let's look at formal English, what changed?"
11. How does code switching support meta cognition?
The students think about what they want to do to succeed in the setting and then choose their style to fit the setting: time place, audience, purpose.
12. What evidence is presented that the code switching approach works? Describe one of the studies.
One teacher talked to her students about when to use formal English and when to use informal English. The students made a list of when it's ok to use informal English: in quick writes, short answers, general conversations, and in question/answer sessions. Then they made a list of when they must use formal English: in essays/papers, in multiple sentence answers, for oral presentations, group projects, and in talking to classroom visitors. This shows that students know when they should code-switch. Taylor found that her African American students were continuing to struggle and failing, she decided to try an experiment where she had a control group with traditional correction and an experimental group with contrastive analysis. After one semester, she found that in the control group there was an 8% increase in grammar issues, and in the experimental group there was a 59% decrease in grammar issues. The No Child Left Behind test results for Rachel Swords' urban classroom showed that before code-switching there was a black-white achievement gap of 30 points; with code-switching the achievement gap is gone.

Second Speaker

1. How did the students respond when asked how they felt about being corrected when they talked?
The students felt stupid, angry, and confused.
2. Give an example of a "fund of knowledge" the teacher drew on to help students learn to code-switch?
The teacher drew upon the students already knowing about informal and formal clothing. They glued pictures of informal and formal clothing on paper. She also had them to draw and write places they would go wearing informal and formal clothing. She then moved to informal and formal language they already know. After that, she moved into the possessive patterns with informal and formal English. She always starts with what the children already know and use that to learn what they do not know.
3. What are some added benefits aside from raising test scores that stem from using contrastive analysis?
The students have taken upon themselves to recognize patterns in different places. They start to realize that people speak differently and it's ok. They are able to have command over their language to take control of being corrected.

On Your Own

Contrastive analysis is an example of generating and testing hypotheses because they can use their regular language to write a paper and then see how people react to it. They can then write a paper using proper English and then compare it to the first paper. Contrastive analysis is an example of identifying similarities and differences because they can use both their language and the proper English and compare and contrast the two. They can identify the similarities and the differences between the languages.