Chapter 1,3,4

• Vacca, R. T., Vacca, J. A., & Mraz, M. (2014). Content area reading: literacy and learning across the curriculum(Eleventh ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.
• Chapter 1 - Literacy Matters
• p.13 "Because they are the first generation to be immersed in information and communication technologies for their entire lives, they have at their fingertips more information than any generation in history (Considine, Horton, & Moorman, 2009)"
• Students now have so much information they can access, our job is to teach them how to comprehend it and navigate through it.
• p.21 "To use written texts strategically and effectively, you must first be aware of the powerful bond between reading and knowledge construction."
• Students need to learn how to learn with texts, in order for the learning to be meaningful and to comprehend the text which will lead to knowledge construction.
• Chapter 3 - Culturally Responsive Teaching in Diverse Classrooms
• p.66 "Teachers cannot assume, for example, that a modern Mexican American person child will be able to relate to a book about Mexico."
• When selecting text for a student or classroom, you can never assume that they will automatically relate to it, you need to consider their background.
• p.68 "It is crucially important to be aware that students from diverse cultural backgrounds bring different ways of knowing, different styles or questioning, and different patterns of interaction to school."
• Every student is different, as a teacher you need to be open to the fact that students might now have the same ideas and values that you do.
• Chapter 4 - Assessing Students and Texts
• p.99 "For students who struggle academically, high-stakes testing can diminish both their self-efficacy for learning and motivation."  
• When students don't succeed on this one high stakes test, they aren't motivated to want to keep doing well because there is so much pressure put on them, even though they might be making personal progress. 
• p.101 "NCLB unfairly penalized schools and actually lowered standards as states adjust their proficiency requirements downward to preserve federal funding, thus giving an illusion of progress when test scores increased."  
• Creating an illusion is not helping the teachers and administrator pinpoint what the students need to know in order to be successful in the working world.
• Dennis, D.V. (2009). "I'm not stupid!": How assessment drives (in)appropriate reading instruction. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(4), p. 283-290
• Standardized test scores tend to limit students into a broad category. They could then become labeled into exceeding proficiency, proficient, or below proficiency.  All this tells the teacher is that the students are below level and not specifically what that student needs help with.  As teachers we need to focus on these specifics when grouping students because they each have individual learning needs.  It doesn't make sense to waste time teaching and practicing something they already know.  Also, when teaching content it is important that we are giving the students opportunities to read text at their own level.  If they are reading something harder they are going to get frustrated and de-motivated to learn.