last blog

Ch. 11

This chapter spent some time talking about subjective and objective Test, the effect of homework, and then spent a lot of time going over tons of studying strategies. It was fitting for me to read this chapter after having discussed developing new study strategies with my girlfriend. She has mentioned how she needs to learn the art of studying better to help improve her grades because it is something she never had to take serious until college. After this chapter, I have tons of strategies to discuss with her.

From SQ3R to several graphic organizers, I learned that there is some kind of strategy out there that can be adapted no matter the situation. It is funny to me that so many strategies have to have some little name or catch phrase to go along with it. Sometimes I felt like I was reading the next big diet gimmick they wanted me to try out with their fun name like INSERT (Interactive Notating System for Effective Reading and Thinking). At least in this situation they have good intentions. The more strategies the better since there are so many different situations to apply them and so many different people to utilize them.

I have learned how to use chapter mapping and other variations before along with some of the other note taking strategies. The structured note taking was VERY structured. I honesty feel I would get bogged down in the process of the strategy trying to implement something like this, which would be counterproductive.

I have used matrixes several times in my life and they can come in handy. This can really help you understand the relationship behind topics and can turn a lot of random information into some nice organization. Ending with Internet search strategies was a bit random. It did not fit the rest, but I guess it is necessary by todays standard. It is also odd to me that this idea has to be developed since I grew up as the Internet grew. This is a skill that has to be taught to the students of today.

Ch. 12

This last chapter explains the need for literacy and reading in all content areas. Although the chapter goes on to share in all the different ways each and every type of literature and such can be incorporated in the classroom, I feel like the first section of the chapter did the best in summarizing the book while validating itself. The list of 7 benefits of using literature in content areas did a good job of convincing the reader of their point to the book while backing it with several sources. This also sums up what I feel like our teacher hopes for us to get out of this class. Literacy is extremely important across the board and is at the core of education. This book has explained how that is true, why it matters in every content area, and how to incorporate it into each content area.

As the book concludes on all of these notes, I feel like the rest of the chapter just becomes a rehashing of earlier parts of the book. I feel like I am not covering any new ground at this point. I do feel this last chapter was better fit as a summarizing chapter to the ideas presented within the book. They did give some specific information relating to certain topics, but I still feel the overall ideas had been covered.

They did cover some new ground at the very end when dealing with multicultural literature. I do understand that this has become ever more important to incorporate in education today, and I do understand it is a topic you may have to be careful when approaching. I do think that the author sourced a good reference on this topic. I like the guidelines given at the very end on choosing the correct book.

I would leave this book and this class agreeing with the last chapter summary. I believe that books are wonderful things. I agree that they can be much more beneficial than just textbooks. Also, have the opportunity to read good books will definitely help students prepare to be lifelong readers.

Chapter 10

Chapter 10 blog

Writing across the curriculum

I am all about unique ways to incorporate writing in the classroom. Last semester in our EDMS class, each teacher set up a mock lesson for one of the four core subject areas. Hilary taught the English class, and her lesson plan and activity focused on finding all the creative ways to bring writing into the classroom in a fresh way. I am not big on writing at all, but her method really engaged me on this topic in a way I haven’t been in a long time.

            The technology tip in this chapter related to this way of finding new ways to incorporate writing. We even used wikispaces in our last EMAT project to help us get away from traditional ways of relaying information through writing. These ideas along with blogs, wordless, podcasts, and more are all ideas that I would be more than willing to try in my classroom. Since I am not big on writing myself, I know I will be finding every way in the world to bring new light to this topic for students who are like me.

            I also feel like writing has also been taught to me in such a boring and monotonous way and I want to help it be more engaging for the students when writing is necessary in my class. It has been taught as such a straight forward and linear way with so much structure. I understand the necessity for that when initially teaching a concept, but I was never given the opportunity to relay my ideas in any other fashion and by any other process. Using these alternative ways keeps you away from this step-by-step process and allows you to be more creative. I can foresee ideas being better received when they are conveyed through many different styles.

            If I even put my teacher hat on, I believe I would feel the same way about writing. I would much rather grade tons of assignments that were each unique in the way the information and ideas were presented. I would much rather watch some podcasts, read some blogs, explore some wikis, and read some papers instead of just reading a stack of papers. I do not envy English teachers that have to read countless essays and papers.

            I enjoyed the list of effective writing recommendations the author listed from Graham and Perin. This could be very helpful in the classroom one day. RAFT could be fun to implement in the classroom one day too. I could see students putting more effort in this kind of assignment, and it also fits under the umbrella of alternative writing assignments.

            I definitely look forward to incorporating journals in my science classroom one day. Doing assignments in a journal somehow seems less monotonous than just writing for the sake of writing. It is something the students can have some creativity with and take ownership of. One of our TA’s in our ESCI class used this idea of journals in the science classroom as her research for her degree. She taught us a bit about them and helped me decide that it was a very valuable tool in the middle school science classroom.

            I also enjoyed the biopoem we did at the beginning of class. There would be a lot of room for creativity with this assignment both on the students’ and the teacher’s part.

Articles

Poems:

            That was a brilliant way to incorporate writing, and especially poems, in the math classroom. I can’t say I would have ever thought about that. I am storing that idea away in my little toolbox. Maybe I will get to use it one day. I wonder what other math ideas would make for good poetry.

Technology:

This was a reminder of how science still requires a lot of reading and writing and comprehension. Using the graphic organizer to structure the order of the sentence and paragraph reminds me of a twist on the old reading comprehension that would be found on standardized tests and such. Teaching the students to understand the author’s main ideas and intentions becomes very important as students later do their own research or start reading the research of other scientist. This example was just one of the countless ways to include math, technology, and reading together. I can only imagine I could find plenty more with a little research.

Writing in Math:

Well, I agree with what is being communicated in this article. I ultimately feel that I have heard everything it had to say at this point. I understand the importance of writing well, I have heard of how to incorporate this, and I have heard their general ideas on how to accomplish this task. Maybe I have just read too much at this time or I am missing out, but this article did not really shed any new light.

Writing to Learn Across the Curriculum:

Even as it is in the title, I feel this article is a supplement to what I just read in this last chapter. I could view it as a bit of a summary, but it did have some different examples and activities. Some of the strategies mentioned and used sounded interesting to me, but some did not really have enough on them. They were all referenced well though, and it might be beneficial to read up on their references. I think this article would have been more interesting had I read it first instead of after the chapter and after the other articles. I think it would benefit me to reread it with fresh eyes another day. I did enjoy the writing style more than that of our textbook and I feel I would actually get more out of this article than I did the chapter if I spent some more time with it later. That is my plan right now.

Chapter 9

Reflecting on reading.

I feel like I remember a lot of whole-class discussions when I was going through school. A lot of my schooling we either focused completely on the teacher as they taught, we focused by ourselves and we worked independently, or we focused as a class when we discussed. I did not get a chance for a lot of small group discussions. I feel they can be the most beneficial too, so that is a bit sad to think I missed out on that. I will take advantage of that as a teacher one day though. I do understand that small group work takes a bit more to keep the students on task without direct supervision, but it has to be more beneficial for the students overall. I know that I was one of the students who was not afraid to speak out and who was always called on. Looking back I can see how intimidating that is for those who may have something to say but are afraid to speak up. I know it is not fair for them and that teachers will also start neglecting those students sometimes. I am all for small group discussions, especially when it comes to discussing something the class has read. I also know how much harder it is to speak out in a math classroom, which I hope to one day teach. No one wants to look stupid in front of the whole class.

            I like the ownership that comes along with peer-led circles. It still can be hard to incorporate everyone and leaders will start to rise up. This can be turned into a positive experience for everyone when monitored and led correctly.

            Reaction guides were used in my 9^th grade honor’s lit class from what I remember. She definitely challenged our understanding of the stories through her use of them. They can also be used as a great guide for later discussion as a model for the conversation.

            Being a very visual person and a math person, I really like graphs and charts. They can really help me organize ideas and thoughts. I would definitely use the discussion web whenever I saw a topic would allow for this type of organizational discussion.

            I am nervous of how to deal with actual debates in a middle school classroom, but I would love to work on it. I am a big fan of having debates. It would be fun to teach students to come up with valid arguments based on reading or research to have an organized discussion/debate on the topic. I like the guidelines for the argument found in this chapter. I would love to combine that with the idea of putting on different “hats” depending on the situation. Students could learn to utilize these skills based on the “hat” they were wearing. This could help them choose sides and debate based on their “hat” and what they bring to the table based on their experience.

            Any way that I could find to engage students at any level on what they are reading I would consider. Several approaches were discussed in this chapter and I would like to give them all a try one day to see what works best for me. This could also change depending on the students or the reading as well though.

Week 8

            This semester has really helped me open my eyes to the world of literacy. It has also helped me broaden my idea of literacy as well as my definition of literacy. Literacy seems to be a field that is ever progressing and changing. What I found so interesting was how literacy, much like so many other things, had to fight to keep up with technology in our every progressing world. Technology has also helped expand the definition of literacy and created its’ own field of literacy.

            The idea of literacy outside the area of English was foreign to me before this semester. I understood it to be reading and writing. Even when I threw in the idea of comprehension, literacy was still a concept related to reading and writing within an English classroom. I now understand that reading, writing, and comprehension can be related to so many subjects, concepts, and ideas outside of the English classroom or traditional classroom in general. An example would actual be computers. I may throw around terms such as java, C++, HTML5, hexadecimal, encryption, and other computer jargon to someone who is not computer literate, which would make someone say, “It’s all Greek to me.” I may understand computer talk, but I would not understand two doctors or lawyers talking to each other in their “language.”

            This all being said, I found it very interesting to start thinking about what this all means to the greater idea of literacy around us and what it would mean to me as a teacher in a middle school classroom. Something I have learned from class, reading, and some videos I have watched is that it all starts with language and comes down to these words. A student must be introduced to necessary vocabulary and taught the words meaning in order to start applying it to the subject and start comprehending the material based on this vocabulary. I also took this idea from my teacher interview. She mentioned how introduction lessons in units end up being heavy vocabulary days. The students must first learn this vocabulary before they can start applying it to the problems. We even start using this vocabulary intuitively later on with the assumption that students have learned it earlier in education. An algebra teacher would be confident to start throwing around works like variable, equation, slope and other concepts that should have been introduced in the previous course. We sometimes take this for granted. Sometimes students do not have a great grasp on these words, which affects their further learning of new material. It would be like walking into an English class that was already diagramming sentences and you were not even really sure how to define a subject and a verb.

            My book used for the book review and lesson plan furthered this idea. I have just continually seen where vocabulary can be a hindrance to learning if time is not spent to develop it. This seems to be common in any area that contains some level of literacy. It would be true in any of the above examples I mentioned and certainly in every academic subject. This was not a topic that was necessarily covered as a core concept in class, but it has been continually brought to my attention through readings, videos, and personal experience. I do feel that it is something that is important and something to take in consideration when planning new material for a class. The bottom line is that vocabulary is foundational to any form of literacy and should be an area of high focus.

No Chapter this time...

...just articles

Rosenblatt:

            First of all, this article has a ton of high vocabulary. It was not an easy read at parts. I have been fighting being sick the past several days too, and we all know how much harder it is to think and comprehend when your mind is foggy. I feel this way this week, so this was bad timing for this reading. I feel like I had a few quotes along the way that helped me get at the writers point I think.

            “At any point during the reading, we have already noted, awareness includes also reactions, emotional and intellectual, to the very ideas, events, characters, situations being experienced as the evocation. During a reading event, there can be a certain back-and-forth fluctuation of stances.”

            Notice that this quote does not have tons of SAT words. That may be why I could use this sentence as a summary for a section. It reminds me that there are a lot of different ways a reader can approach a text and that this approach even shifts during the reading. Different parts of text can trigger the reader to flow from one way of thinking to another way of thinking. This next quote I feel helped make more sense of that concept and made more sense to me than a lot of what I had read so far.

            “The reading process, then, should be thought of as encompassing a flow of fluid states of mind emerging into the focus of attention, shaped by reader, text, and context—a series of momentary changing, synthesized patterns, organized as the evocation that is constituted for the memory as that work and that is accompanied throughout by concurrent strands of thought and feeling.”

            I know the author was saying a lot more than this during this long 30 plus page article, but I am quoting and discussing what I got out of it. I am sure I would get more out of it if my mind was not so foggy. Much like the other article, it reminds me that reading, comprehending, and responding is far from a simple, linear concept. There is so much going on between the author, the text, the reader, and the context. There are many ways a reader can approach and deal with a text. There are many external and internal variables that affect the way readers experience text. When you put all of this information together, it seems there are truly countless ways that can affect and alter readers responses to text.

Sipe:

This article focused on four areas of interest surrounding children’s literary responses. The author of this article has done their research. There were two plus pages of references. They discussed so many different authors research on this topic along with their personal experience and research. There was a lot in this article that I am not sure I have ever thought about. There is just so much to think about when it comes to a student dealing with literature. It can seem overwhelming to think about it all.

            The author just touched on every topic that they discussed, but they touched on every topic. They explained the research that has been done and seemed to end by saying they hope research would continue on this topic. Responding to literature is not a simple task even for young readers. So many different variables are a play when a student takes on a piece of literature. All of these variables need to be remembered when assigning a reading individually or to a class. Just as the author of the text brings so much to the table that explains their writing, readers bring so much to the table that explains their responses.

            I think the culture and gender discussions were the most interesting to me. I would love to know how much of the gender response is truly instinctual and how much of it is learned from our surroundings. I also found the culture discussion interesting because I have worked in the inner city with a lot of African American and I know that if I were to teach back in my hometown that I would be dealing with a lot of Hispanics. It would be interesting to see how their take on certain pieces of literature various from that of a White student. I even thought pop culture was an interesting discussion point. I feel like children these days are surrounded by this cultural phenomenon so much that we should find ways to use it to our advantage in the classroom. I feel the same way about technology. Why not meet students where they are. I would have fun incorporating pop culture into literature if I were ever given the change. This article was again a reminder that there is so much to think about when being a teacher and dealing with students. This allows me once again to feel a little overwhelmed at the task of teaching that is before me.

Chapter 7

Questioning seems to be a tried and try way of engaging students as they read. They can be asked at any time before, during, or after the reading. I remember teachers doing this with me when I was a student. Much like the anticipation guide, pre-reading questions can help student prepare for the material they are about to read. This allows them to know what to expect.

            I liked the “right there” and “putting it together” questions that were mentioned. These are great ways to see if students are actually reading and if they comprehend what they are reading. It is as if the “right there” questions were asking them surface level questions and the “putting it together” questions were asking them to dig a bit deeper than the surface.

            I can understand why even this simple QAR setup can be more complicated in practice. Reading comprehension is not like a math problem. It is not straightforward. There are so many levels of comprehension, and this can vary from reading to reading depending on the subject matter. It can also be hard to pick out what to ask questions about to discover students comprehension. A student may understand one aspect and not pick up on another. I know we talk a lot about “main ideas” when we measure comprehension, but that alone may not be enough to test student knowledge.

            I know one thing that helps is asking questions that involve your input or opinion. You have to understand the material to a certain level to give your opinion. This also helps students stay away from just scanning the test to find the simple answer to a question. It truly requires them to read and think.

            I can see how it makes a difference depending on the subject as to which approach you would take as a teacher. When reading math or science, it may be more important to understand the information at surface value. Students may need to know definitions or processes.  Questions that require questioning the author or giving your opinion would be left to literature class. You want to see that your students understand the text rather than the author’s take.

            I like the idea of having students question the teacher. I could see that being very beneficial. Students can feel that they have the power of the teacher for a minute. It will give them the chance to feel in power while asking the questions they are curious about, and this can lead to a learning opportunity. It requires the teacher be ready for anything and may make you feel more vulnerable.

            Graphic representations have always helped me. They help make science make so much more sense. When you are dealing with a process or a more abstract idea, it is a lot easier to see the whole picture when you break it down into a graphic organizer. It can help fill in the gaps with stories as well. You can start with a point and expand upon it.

            Compare and contrast always seemed like the easy way out to me. It was the lazy way to deal with a topic. It may make sense for something, but overall I do not particularly like it. It just seems like an easy way to approach a topic and leaves all the work to the students. It would be the method I would be least likely to use of all the ones mentioned.

Reading:

            Apparently Science teachers are facing a lot these days. We need to be more acquainted with our subject matter. Teachers are not familiar enough with their material. Teachers also have varied ideas on the nature of science. That can often create issues in the classroom. We need to be more familiar with how students learn and understand science too. If we do not, then we will never be successful in teaching our students. We also need to understand how to set up our classroom to be a productive environment and how to manage our class with this atmosphere. Professionalism is something that needs to be continually developing as a teacher. There are a lot of things to constantly be mindful as a teacher. This just reminds me of this fact. It almost feels overwhelming at times like these.

            I can agree with all of the “attitudinal differences” mentioned in the article. I am guilty of them myself prior to being in education classes. I can also imagine that a lot of my math/science teachers feel the same way. These do seem to be truths sadly. It is something that is not easy to change, and it is especially hard to change overnight. Math and science teachers do need to be more open when it comes to using other sources outside of the textbook. It could only enhance learning. You do have more chance to put in your opinion or argue something in an English or history class. We are taught more problem solving in math and science. We seek to find the answers. It was interesting that they made a math problem using and STD. Whatever works I guess. At least it is real world related. The physics problem using plate tectonics was interesting. It was a reminder of how heavily vocabulary is used in science and therefore literacy is necessary.

            This article showed me that science and math is as important as I always viewed it. We are not equipping students to get out there and join the work force. They need more skill in these areas and our schools sometimes do not focus on these areas enough. This leaves room for remediation down the road and for employers to train in areas they hoped employees would be efficient. This article also points out that we are losing quickly to China and India. I have always complained that we need to be preparing our students here to do the jobs of the future, otherwise there will be no jobs available and no one will be equipped to do any of the jobs that are available. The bottom line is that math and science is important, especially today in our world of technology. If we do not start treating them as important, we will soon be left behind.

            Education should be open to everyone and is essential for life today. It needs to be structured from the ground up. There is still much reform that needs to take place and we need to make sure there is opportunity for everyone. Education needs to be structured in a way that everyone has the chance to be equipped with the skill that will allow them to amount to great things. We still do a good job of tending to the privileged and leaving out the poor and less privileged in education today. This is something we need to continually work on in order to close the achievement gap. Grassroots movements like this can help us push in the right direction to see the reform and change that we still need in the classroom.

Chapter 6 and such

Chapter 6:

            I can definitely, from first hand experience, understand the importance of these strategies used to help students in their reading. It makes all the difference in the world if you are familiar with what you are reading or have been prepared for it. If you asked someone to dive into the middle of “The Lord of the Rings” without any knowledge of the characters, story, or world you would be lost. It would be a slow read to try and understand the world of Tolkien in this fashion. In fact, while I read through LOTR I read other companions to them to better visualize and understand what is going on in the books. This would be the same way I would use SparkNotes when reading literature for class. Also the same way I would use a dummy’s guide to enrich my knowledge of a topic. This is especially true when dealing with science. The science textbooks are written at such high levels that the students need something else to help guide their knowledge base when trying to comprehend a classroom science book.

            I had either heard of or had experience with some of these strategies. I learned about K-W-L last semester. I really like the setup of this strategy. I imagine it could be used in all areas, although it probably works better in some. I can think of several ways to use it for science teaching. Any time a new topic is introduces, this could be beneficial for students in preparation of the material. From experience, anything would be better than going in blindsided. There were some others I had never used before. I liked the anticipation guide. It was extra helpful for me because I observed in a 7^th grade math class last semester and had to help teach integers. They had a great example of how this concept was applied to integers. If only I would have read this before last semester. It could have been helpful to my teaching and planning.

            Prior knowledge is something that I have learned to think a lot about since this class. It is something we take for granted or forget sometimes. As I mentioned earlier, this is something that applies to areas outside of teaching as well. It is such a novel idea when you think about it though. New knowledge is best built from a present knowledge base.  I also liked reading for reading. It sounds funny to think about, but it is very true. This is more of an example of using dummy’s guides or something along those lines. Reading some material on a subject that will make other readings on this subject easier to comprehend. This chapter did have some good ideas. I am sure I will try them all out one day and figure out which is my favorite. Maybe I can learn the pros and cons of each and when to utilize them.

The Nation’s Report Card:

            This was a bit hard to get through. It was a LOT of information and statistics. What was crazy about the information was how true it was compared to everything I have ever thought or heard. All it did was convince me that everything I had heard was more fact than rumor or false information. It also all adds up to my personal experience. Everything just seemed to line up. Males slightly outperforming females, whites outperforming everyone, higher income levels outperforming, inner city underperforming, etc. This was all information I have heard at some point in my life. I now have seen the statistics to back it up. I am no exception to this rule. As we mentioned earlier too, it is partly because the curriculum and tests were designed by people like me for people like me. I am a middle class white male and this country is catered to me. That is clearly not a good thing. It is definitely not a fair thing. Now, all I know to do is ask myself what we are going to do about it. Thankfully the gap has been closing a bit compared to the past. Sadly, the gap still has a ways to go.

            I have worked in the homeless sector for the past several years. I also worked in inner city schools for a year after college. They have both taught me so much. I learned working in the homeless sector exactly how deep rooted and complicated this issue has come to be in our country. It will not be solved overnight. In fact, it may never be solved. Since Biblical times there have been homeless people. There will continue to be homeless people. We are humans and far from perfect, so we will never be able to develop a perfect system that will eliminate homelessness. I sadly feel more and more this way towards education. Even though both of these issues may never be resolved, I do plan on doing my part in helping the issue. I have done that for a while in the homeless sector and plan on devoting my life to this cause in education. I just wish, like so many others, that I had answers. All I know to do is pull my weight in being a good teacher. I look forward to this chance in the near future.

Chapter 5

“You might think of tests as being like snapshots: Some may be flattering, and some may be downright dreadful. Your friends or family might like a photo you think makes you look goofy, whereas you might prefer one that makes you look sleek, athletic, or intellectual, even though others say it looks nothing like you. No photo, not even a portrait by a talented photographer, is the real you. It is at best an image of you at a particular time that, by skill or accident, may communicate something of your essence.” This was the first quote that really hit me when I was reading this chapter. It was so interesting. It seemed to stand out as something so true about test and helped me think about them in a way I do not believe I had ever viewed them. This was a reminder of why it is important to have as many grades as possible, especially as varied assessments as possible. This will help the student’s grade be a more accurate representation of their knowledge and understanding of a subject or topic.

I can actually use this statement as an example of why I hate both AP and CRCT. I will go on a little rant here for a moment. In my AP Bio class in high school, I was probably third or fourth in my class. I had 106 in the class by the end of the school year. I had studied an AP Bio test book to prepare myself and had taken 3 or 4 practice AP test. I scored upper 4’s and lower 5’s on these test. This helped me be very confident because I only needed a 3 for the college I was going to attend to get credit. My teacher said that should be a joke for me. Well, the big test day comes and I was sick and on antibiotics. Clearly not feeling well or thinking clearly. This did not help my test taking abilities. The AP test is given across the country at the same time for each subject. It was then or…next May. How crazy. Well, I got my scores back and had made a 2. I was devastated and forever disowned the program. I am the same way about CRCT. My grades in AP Biology said that I knew my stuff. I had taken several other practice AP test that were made by the same people who make the actual test that counts. I knew my stuff on that test, but when it came down to the only test that mattered I failed. The AP board would just say that I did not know my stuff, but I can assure you that I did. Having an entire year (2 semesters) work come down to 1 test is insane. This test is clearly not a good representation of my knowledge of the material. I feel this works the same way with CRCT. I could not imagine having an A all year and then failing the one test that matters and that trumping an entire years worth of work.

I am big on using both formative and summative assessment as much as possible. We have been learning about alternative assessments in our ESCI class. It has taught me that there are so many different ways to assess student learning out there. It has taught me to learn to utilize all of these different methods as well. I can completely understand how it helps get a better picture of what students actually know. I know so many people who are good learners and are knowledgeable but are bad test takers. My God-sister was that way and she is now a teacher. She has an ever better understanding of this concept since she was once in those shoes as a student. All students vary in the way they best obtain information and the way they best display the knowledge they have obtained through assessment.

This chapter reminded me of how the profession of teaching is ever evolving. Much like a computer program, we must stay up to date and keep with the times. A computer programmer cannot just take the information learned from their degree and rely on it the rest of their career. They will forever be learning new information to help them be the best at what they do. I feel the same way about teaching. When I walk into the classroom, I will just have to learn as I go. Only so much of my degree will equip me for what I will encounter as a teacher. Most of it will be continually learned each day, week, and year.

There are countless ways to assess student learning. I imagine new ways are being created by teachers everyday. There are just as many ways to teach the material to the students as there are to assess them on the material. It is not a straightforward concept with an equation to follow. I know every teacher will vary in some way. I hope I will pick up good aspects of my past teachers in able to combine them in my teaching style one day.

Chapter 3 and 4

Chapter 3

The beginning of this chapter was a continual reminder that you never know what teaching will bring. It was also a reminder that you can learn all the theory and such that you want, but ultimately you just have to dive right in and do it to learn how. It can be kind of nerve racking to think about that way, but this is why we have observing periods and student teaching.

The learning cycle was interesting. I can see more and more what they are talking about when referring to prior knowledge. I feel that is something else you have to continually account for in class. Every student comes into the class with a different set of prior knowledge, which is going to affect the way they learn the current material in your class. This just becomes another one of the thousand things we will have to keep in mind as teachers.

I thought the idea of “stolen knowledge” was interesting and funny. It seems to describe the world we live in today, especially considering the world of technology.

I am big on wanting to bridge the gap between formal and informal learning. I think this would help teaching be more fluid. The more you can connect with the daily life and real world, the easier it is to make that transition in and out of the formal and informal environment daily.

I can definitely vouch for the pros and cons of being in the gifted program. Everything was a pro to me, but looking back and talking to my friends and other students who were no part of it, I understand how some would have issues with it. I want to ultimately be a gifted teacher one day. I know that my experience would have been completely different had I not had this opportunity. I am thankful for the program and the effects it had on me.

I wish that group discussions had been a part of my early education. I remember being taught at by the teacher and figuring out things mostly on my own. This idea of letting the students teach and learn from each other was not around. I wonder how this part of my education could have changed my future education had it been different.

Word processors are powerful tools that are there for own convenience and disposal today. We should be teaching students the ends and outs of these programs early on and allow them to use them. In college and even the real world, we are able to utilize this technology, so why deprive students of it early on in their education?

“blogging; working on a webpage for school or for personal use; sharing original content such as artwork, photos, stories, and videos; and remixing online content to create new text – is central to the lives of youth growing up in a global society.” This is so, so true and a statement to why we should continue to utilize this technology in our daily teaching. This will help engage the students and allow us to meet them where they are.

I also appreciate the quote about word processing having all these positive aspects for children with learning disabilities. I am all for helping out those students who need help in any way that works to their benefit.

Chapter 4

I am glad that the author was mentioning all the factors that go into lesson planning. It gave me relief from all the frustration we all had over doing our last lesson plan for EMAT. I know it was frustrating for me to try to think of how everything would work out in theory with no actual classroom to base the lesson plan. I will point our teacher to this passage if he has too many problems with my lesson planning.

The discussion of the EQ (essential question) helped this concept make a lot more sense to me. It is something I never had growing up and have had to adopt for my lesson plans and teaching. I appreciate the concept and how it gives direction as well as a reminder of the exact point, concept, topic, etc that you want to over or accomplish that day.

I also liked the idea of basing lesson plans around the need to learn the writing skills necessary for that content area. I imagine it would have been beneficial for me as a student to have my science teacher help me strictly with vocabulary or lab report writing skills.

I want to stress again about how nervous I am to have ELL’s in my classroom. I just feel very ill equipped at this point and I know it will have to come with experience and practice. I found the instructional adaptations to be informative and I am sure they could help me one day. I can only imagine the kind of support they need on a daily basis. Considering I am looking to teach in Georgia and in particular the NE area, I wish I had taken a lot more Spanish.

The 6 ways that the Dept of Education has determined students should use technology seemed pretty exciting, but I feel like a lot of this list is just never gets accomplished in the classroom. Not yet anyway. I hope this inclusion of technology at this level will continue to exponentially increase and can be something for me to look forward to when I finally have a class of my own. I want to look up the teacher resources when I get a chance too. Hopefully there will be something there to excite me as well.

The implementation of new literacies seems to be an exciting thing. I use my iPad every day in ways that I never imagined using technology only a few years ago. It allows me to read the news, catch up with people, keep up with school, play games, and so much more in a fashion that has never existed before its’ inception. The way we gather, share, and create is changing right before our eyes. I fully support education jumping on that bandwagon and hope to one day see it at the forefront rather than trying to play catch up.

Direct instruction is the method I am most familiar with at the moment. I feel that is how I have been taught most of my life and have now used it for my lesson planning as well. After reading, it appears there are so many ways that are potentially better ways to go about lesson planning. I will get the chance to use them next semester.

Digital Literacy

Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

I can understand where all sides are coming on this topic. I am a part of both sides myself. I do believe that the internet and our digital world is here to stay. I believe that it is becoming increasingly important to be competent at using the internet and all of the digital information available. It really does depend on what you are reading on line if it is helping or hurting. I can relate to the guy mentioned in the article. I use the internet to keep up to date on video games, technology, and politics. I also have an iPad that has made that increasingly easier to navigate. I use apps for sites like Mashable to follow tech news. I follow other sites such as TUAW (the unofficial apple weblog), gizmodo, engadge, macworld, tech crunch, all things digital etc. for tech news. I have a list just as long for sites that I follow for video game news, music news, and politics. Apps like Flipboard and Pulse news reader have helped streamline this process. I can take 30 minutes over lunch and catch up on all the realms of news that I follow. These are sites with trained journalist. They are also sites such as NYT and WSJ that demand a higher level of reading comprehension. All of these can be beneficial to literacy. I am reading sites that are trustworthy, validated, and have educated writers. This also allows me to spend much less of my day keeping up with all the news, and that leaves more time for other things in life.
I could see the flip side of this argument if you follow sites for fan fiction as the girl in the article. Constantly reading poorly written material with grammar issues could be harmful to readers. This may even allow them to become comfortable with these errors and make them in their own writing.
I do agree that nothing can ever take the place of a novel. I am a reader. I will also admit that my leisure reading has taken a hit more and more as I spend more free time doing other things on the internet. I believe that reading an actual book that follows a story will help readers become more fluent at reading in a way that reading in any other fashion cannot mimic. Reading books has helped me read faster, learn more vocabulary, and comprehend the subject matter of the text in a way that makes me think. I will always advocate for reading tradition books, especially during development. I just see that transition being made to digital with the Kindle, Nook, iPad and so on. I have already read a few books on my iPad. I will admit, even though I am a digital geek, I am also a book nerd who enjoys holding a physical book in my hand and having the book on my shelf as a trophy once I have read it. This also helps for good topics of conversation.

Watch and Learn

This is an example of doing whatever it takes and whatever works. This does bring reading into an otherwise potentially mindless medium. I do not see television as a whole mindless however. LOST is absolutely brilliant and requires much more out of its views than the average show. Anyway, this is definitely a way to bring reading into the picture. In situations like this in India, there are sometimes no better options available. The study shows that this has helped literacy and that is impressive. I also like the idea of subtitles for songs. We all know that we can memorize songs 10 times better than poetry and 100 times better than random dialog. I am impressed that they found something so cheap and accessible to help out their literacy problems. Maybe they can continue to develop it and help the citizens progress to the next level of literacy.



Why You Tube Matters

He made some points that I never really thought about. It is true that the written word took over memory so long ago. We still have the option to memorize anything, but most people choose not to if it is easily accessible in text. If we progressed to video as our median, then we would still have the option to read, but I bet a lot of people would opt out of that option. It does make sense that reading and writing is much less natural and much more difficult to attain and utilize. I can see it still staying in the context of education and of the intellectual circles. I believe that reading and writing is one of the components of being “educated” and will always be valued in that way. I consider myself educated and intelligent at least to some point. I am not sure that could be said if I did not know how to read. Also, given the option, I am not sure I would choose the easy way out and avoid learning to read. It would still be extremely limited. I would not have been able to read this article. I would not have been able to type this blog. I would have never been able to enjoy Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. I would have just had to wait for the movies and watch someone else’s imagination and interpretation at work. All of that would be lost without knowing how to read and I am not willing to give up that privilege.
I do agree that it is a form that can be much more widely accessible. I do agree that we can still use this median to cover most of the knowledge and material available in this world. I also think it is impressive that people have been able to use this tool in so many resourceful way, but I am not willing to give up on teaching students to read and write. I will always stress the level of importance to my students. This is a major component of education, which can be correlated with higher class jobs, higher pay, better economic status etc. We live in a world where being educated opens up so many doors of opportunity and I think not stressing that could be dangerous.

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

I think it is interesting how they compare this with learning a new language. Scientist and, even those who have experienced it, can tell you how different it is to learn a language as you are developing early on rather than after your brain has become fully developed. I can see this in students I have dealt with in the classroom. They can so easily pick up on technology. They even make me feel dumb sometimes and I am a true techie. I never saw that coming. I also like his use of the word “accent” and the examples given. It is so true. My mom helped me edit my papers through high school and college. She always has to print them and edit them and then give me her edits on paper to go back and change on the computer. That is something I would never have to do. I can understand how hard that can be for older teacher who are just not tech savvy at all. I can definitely see the classroom changing a lot more as younger teachers who are more familiar start taking the place over older teachers who are true “immigrants.”
The idea of meeting the students where they are by using video games seems great to me. We have already explored this concept when teaching science in our ESCI class. I do see the classroom losing its relevance each and every day and will continue unless something is done about this. I hope this idea will continue to catch on as I work my way into the classroom as a teacher over the next few years.

Do They Really Think Differently?

I can further attest to this idea of video games again. Just as he mentioned in the article, kids do not have shortened attention spans necessarily, it is just they are choosing not to focus. I have worked with students after school and I currently work at a homeless shelter with a lot of kids. If I try to sit and work on homework with them, it will not last more than a few minutes. If I pull up a fun and challenging game on my iPad, they are glued for hours if possible. I can also attest to the fact that video games can be very engaging and challenging. Both the video games Portals and Braid have been big hits lately in the area of story and having very challenging puzzles to solve. Portals 2 is coming out this Spring as well. There are other games, especially RPGs (role-playing games) and especially the Final Fantasy games that deal with very deep, engaging narratives. These games are able to use video games as a landscape for telling stories that are at the level of a good novel. Until resent voice overs, a lot of the story had to be driven through text. The vocabulary level was impressive enough to teach me new words much like a good book as well. I have spent my life defending video games to those around me. Proving them as an art form has been a heated discussion lately too with the creation of cinematic games with deep stories and well developed characters that would impress Martin Scorsese. That is a discussion for another time. Anyway, I agree with him that video games can be used as learning tools if developed by the right hands and taught in the right way. That is something that will also come easier with time as more and more younger teachers come into the schools.

Chapter 1 and readings

I liked the idea of having statements at the beginning of the chapter to see where we stand on the topic of literacy. I tried to be honest based on my current knowledge and stance. I will say that our first class was enough to open my mind and change my stance some even before I began reading.
This chapter taught me how important our prior knowledge can be when comprehending a passage. It is something I do not think about when I dive into reading. The exercises in the book that had me read without a title really brought that to light. I could not figure out what the first passage was about until they title of washing clothes was revealed. The next passage was just as successful when viewing from the angle of a prisoner and of a wrestler. I showed both of those passages to my girlfriend to see what she thought. I am now more intrigued by this topic.
I also never thought about the difficulty of reading in science and math. It can be even more difficult than reading in an English/LA class. This reading and comprehension can be enough to discourage students and create more hurdles to their learning.
I almost felt as if this first chapter was a very condensed overview of so many concepts that will be further covered in this book. It was a lot to take in initially. I highlighted a lot and plan on going back through several of the sections to get a better idea of all the styles of reading. I am still not sure where I fall myself in terms of the style of reader.
This chapter also opened my mind to a much broader definition of literacy as well. The exercise we did in class along with this chapter showed me that I have a very narrow idea of what it means to be literate. The definition has opened up so many over the last few decades and has come to mean much more than I have ever envisioned. I am curious as to what kind of definition of literacy I will have by the end of this class.
After reading the article on ELL students, I tend to agree with their stance. I have had limited experience in this field so far. I was observing in a math class with a Chinese student last semester. She was stunted by her lack of English. She was gifted in math, but was not put in a gifted class because of her barrier. From my understanding, no one had the time to help her in any of the classes, so she was stuck making little progress. I believe that it should be a cooperative effort to help these students. Every academic class should provide some means to help a student in this situation. It is not fair for them to be left behind. I imagine a lot of times teachers put all the weight on the LA teachers to help these students develop their English and do no see this as their duty or responsibility. I have come to learn this last semester that it is the collective duty of every teacher to enhance the learning and literacy experience of each and every student. This is all necessary to allow the students to become productive citizens and employers in the future.
I am curious about a number of the books listed in the "Have you read?" article. I like the idea of focusing on phonics as they do in "Looking Closely." I am more interested in the idea of math being the subject that is left behind. "Read any good math lately?" seems like it has a good take on developing language in the math classroom. I can see why it is more left behind in math class. On the surface, math appears to be about numbers and symbols rather than works and reading comprehension. It has its own language and level of comprehension needed to be successful. I definitely want to learn how to one day incorporate that to the best of my ability if I am a math teacher. It is interesting how fiction has been so heavily used in teaching. Now there is a new wave of using nonfiction to teach it seems. I can see why it is the easier way out when teaching initial literacy and comprehension. I understand the argument for incorporating more nonfiction as a student develops and teaching them how to read and comprehend them accordingly.
The poem at the end reminded me of what it felt like to be in elementary school and learning to read. This was a process I felt I went through every time a read a book. It is something I still have to do even now at times. It is a process that should be bred into students as they are learning to read. It will help them take ownership and help their level of understanding.