So this is the end...a little late, but this is it! I have truly enjoyed my student teaching and I feel like I have gotten a lot out of it. I had a great host teacher who gave me a good amount of material to start my first year off with. She gave me some really great advice and helped to prepare me for my first year by myself. I think that I learned a lot myself as a teacher and I feel that I grew as a professional. At first I did not feel very confident in my content area but now I feel extremely confident in my content. I am also more confident in dealing with discipline issues and handling other problems as well.
Now, I am focusing my energy on finishing up all this paperwork! Ugh...I can see the light though---its close!! Now its just off to get a job! ;)
Monday, April 12, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Blog 6
Overall, I really am enjoying the student teaching. I have one class that is a little harder, but I still am trying to find ways to reach them. Finding ways to incorporate literacy into my classroom has not been very difficult, the difficult task is finding literacy that is engaging to the students! However, I did find a really interesting article that we used in class last week and the students seemed to respond well to it. I believe that they are so used to History just being a note class or a lecture class that they are rarely exposed to primary documents and other interesting articles anymore. I try to bring in articles for the students to read, just to give them exposure, but I work a lot with vocabulary.
In my opinion, vocabulary is something that my students-and most history students, struggle with. There is so much vocabulary for every section/part of history that it is hard to keep up. This is what I decided to tackle. For my first unit I gave all the vocabulary terms-including people,places, and events, that the students were responsible for. Then, after 3 days of time to work on these terms, we played a game in class called HISTO. (like BINGO). This really helped to reinforce the terms into the students memory, and it was fun. We also discussed the terms DAILY in class discussion or through the notes that I gave out. I felt that by giving the vocabulary to the students before I started the unit gave them a chance to see the terms first, then we talked about them. This way, we were able to address prior knowledge as well as any prior misconceptions. I also believe that going over the terms multiple times helped the students retain the information. This may sound small or trivial, but these students were not grasping events such as the Red Scare or ideas like isolationism. Therefore, I broke these terms down for them and we talked about them daily! Now, I really feel that they have a true understanding for the terminology and when we read an article hardly any of the students were interrupted by misunderstanding words. I really felt proud of this and I plan on doing this for every unit- at least with this group of students.
READICIDE: Preventing Readicide seems like a great idea, but in the end I really don't know if its possible...I wish that every student could be passionate about great "classics" but even without overteaching the books, I really believe that these students are different and truly preventing readicide will take a lot more effort than one person. I believe that preventing readicide would take effort on behalf of the student and the teacher, and with what I'm seeing in the schools now--the effort of the students is lacking. We have 25 minute study hall on Thursday's in which the students can do something productive and very few of them read, most sleep. I feel that the schools, if they really want to prevent readicide, need to offer reading time and offer great books and book clubs. Instead, students are surrounded with everything but these things....=less and less reading, or reading for enjoyment = Readicide
That's it for now!! Have a great week!
In my opinion, vocabulary is something that my students-and most history students, struggle with. There is so much vocabulary for every section/part of history that it is hard to keep up. This is what I decided to tackle. For my first unit I gave all the vocabulary terms-including people,places, and events, that the students were responsible for. Then, after 3 days of time to work on these terms, we played a game in class called HISTO. (like BINGO). This really helped to reinforce the terms into the students memory, and it was fun. We also discussed the terms DAILY in class discussion or through the notes that I gave out. I felt that by giving the vocabulary to the students before I started the unit gave them a chance to see the terms first, then we talked about them. This way, we were able to address prior knowledge as well as any prior misconceptions. I also believe that going over the terms multiple times helped the students retain the information. This may sound small or trivial, but these students were not grasping events such as the Red Scare or ideas like isolationism. Therefore, I broke these terms down for them and we talked about them daily! Now, I really feel that they have a true understanding for the terminology and when we read an article hardly any of the students were interrupted by misunderstanding words. I really felt proud of this and I plan on doing this for every unit- at least with this group of students.
READICIDE: Preventing Readicide seems like a great idea, but in the end I really don't know if its possible...I wish that every student could be passionate about great "classics" but even without overteaching the books, I really believe that these students are different and truly preventing readicide will take a lot more effort than one person. I believe that preventing readicide would take effort on behalf of the student and the teacher, and with what I'm seeing in the schools now--the effort of the students is lacking. We have 25 minute study hall on Thursday's in which the students can do something productive and very few of them read, most sleep. I feel that the schools, if they really want to prevent readicide, need to offer reading time and offer great books and book clubs. Instead, students are surrounded with everything but these things....=less and less reading, or reading for enjoyment = Readicide
That's it for now!! Have a great week!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Blog 5
Prompt: Field experiences relating to content literacy- observations, interactions, and questions. Response to Readicide. Suggestions for seminar topics on 2/22, inquiry project progress
I LOVE MY STUDENT TEACHING!!! To be fair, I have only been there for one week, since we had this week off, but still I LOVE IT! My teacher does a lot with content literacy which really took me by surprise. I have 4 World History classes and 1 U.S. History along with 1 Comparative Religions class. I plan on taking over all these except the C.R. class. She has taught me a lot in the few days that I have spent with her. I love her teaching style and she has great classroom management!
But, back to content literacy--she does this thing that she calls "story-time." I was really excited to learn about this considering we experienced our own story-times in our class in January, I wanted to see how she incorporated it into a high school classroom. Well, she uses her powerpoint and puts up all the main characters of the story for the students to write down, take notes about, and follow through her story. Then, she makes them put their pencils down, the lights go down, and the powerpoint is turned off. My host teacher goes into full character and begins telling the story to the class, in a character mode. For example she does the story of Rasputin during the Russian Revolution, which really grabs their attention. Anyway, I thought this was really interesting because listening to her I was even intrigued. It reminded me of what our text says about the Paul Revere ride and how the teacher introduces that to the class by encompassing the character and changing the whole "tone" of the class to meet the set up and storyline. I plan on implementing storytime when I take over teaching next week. I thought this idea was really cool, and the students love it as well!!
As far as Readicide goes, I still feel the same. Gallagher is making some really interesting points, and in some ways I agree and others I am sort of on the fence about. I really like his opinion however about standardized testing and the standards in school. I truly feel that we are overwhelmed coming into this profession with immense standards thrown at us and no way to teach all of them, in depth! I am planning my own lessons now and seeing how difficult it really is to plan these fun lessons, yet only teaching by the standards. This is especially true for my 11th grade class who I teach the U.S. History too. They have so much content they have to know for the GHSGHT, EOCT and for basic knowledge. Yet, as teachers, we struggle to find the right balance of teaching just the standards and getting "just" the right amoung of information across, or going more in depth and possibly not covering everything. It is a very overwhelming situation!
For Monday--I really want to hear about everyone's teaching experiences so far! I really miss seeing everybody and getting the 411! I hope all is well with everyone and everybody is enjoying their teaching. I would also like to talk about our inquiry projects...
I believe that is all for now!! Have a great weekend!!!
I LOVE MY STUDENT TEACHING!!! To be fair, I have only been there for one week, since we had this week off, but still I LOVE IT! My teacher does a lot with content literacy which really took me by surprise. I have 4 World History classes and 1 U.S. History along with 1 Comparative Religions class. I plan on taking over all these except the C.R. class. She has taught me a lot in the few days that I have spent with her. I love her teaching style and she has great classroom management!
But, back to content literacy--she does this thing that she calls "story-time." I was really excited to learn about this considering we experienced our own story-times in our class in January, I wanted to see how she incorporated it into a high school classroom. Well, she uses her powerpoint and puts up all the main characters of the story for the students to write down, take notes about, and follow through her story. Then, she makes them put their pencils down, the lights go down, and the powerpoint is turned off. My host teacher goes into full character and begins telling the story to the class, in a character mode. For example she does the story of Rasputin during the Russian Revolution, which really grabs their attention. Anyway, I thought this was really interesting because listening to her I was even intrigued. It reminded me of what our text says about the Paul Revere ride and how the teacher introduces that to the class by encompassing the character and changing the whole "tone" of the class to meet the set up and storyline. I plan on implementing storytime when I take over teaching next week. I thought this idea was really cool, and the students love it as well!!
As far as Readicide goes, I still feel the same. Gallagher is making some really interesting points, and in some ways I agree and others I am sort of on the fence about. I really like his opinion however about standardized testing and the standards in school. I truly feel that we are overwhelmed coming into this profession with immense standards thrown at us and no way to teach all of them, in depth! I am planning my own lessons now and seeing how difficult it really is to plan these fun lessons, yet only teaching by the standards. This is especially true for my 11th grade class who I teach the U.S. History too. They have so much content they have to know for the GHSGHT, EOCT and for basic knowledge. Yet, as teachers, we struggle to find the right balance of teaching just the standards and getting "just" the right amoung of information across, or going more in depth and possibly not covering everything. It is a very overwhelming situation!
For Monday--I really want to hear about everyone's teaching experiences so far! I really miss seeing everybody and getting the 411! I hope all is well with everyone and everybody is enjoying their teaching. I would also like to talk about our inquiry projects...
I believe that is all for now!! Have a great weekend!!!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Blog 4: Readicide Chp. 2
As a political science content, it makes me sad to know that students graduating high school are unaware of who the sitting Vice President is and who al-Qaeda is. It is slightly ridiculous that the students who are old enough to vote (some who may have voted in the past election) cannot even say who they voted for. I remember asking my students (10th grade, so not quite old enough to vote) who the current Vice President was, because most of these students would actively talk about President Obama and wear t-shirts, or book bags with Obama on them. I wanted to know if they knew who his running mate was. None of them could answer me...Believe it or not, I was not surprised.
I thought that Gallagher brought up a good point that students coming from different backgrounds bring different experiences to reading. When he talked about the students from Wyoming and compared them to the students he taught in California their differences in upbringing affected what they knew about a word. Students prior knowledge on a subject truly does impact how they read something, I just was not aware of how much until I read this chapter.
I also found the statistics about adolescents reading for fun or just reading in general alarming. I agree that this generation of students prefer more instant gratification and would therefore prefer to read more "short" articles. However, I do not believe that schools and educators should be forced to take novels out of their classrooms. Reading and analyzing in depth novels are important and can be fun if implemented correctly.
As far as using reading in my content, I really like his idea of the article of the week. I believe that it is important for students to be aware of the world around them and know what they are going to be thrown into and responsible for. I mean, if they are clueless about who the VP is and what Congress does, then they've got a long way to go!
I thought that Gallagher brought up a good point that students coming from different backgrounds bring different experiences to reading. When he talked about the students from Wyoming and compared them to the students he taught in California their differences in upbringing affected what they knew about a word. Students prior knowledge on a subject truly does impact how they read something, I just was not aware of how much until I read this chapter.
I also found the statistics about adolescents reading for fun or just reading in general alarming. I agree that this generation of students prefer more instant gratification and would therefore prefer to read more "short" articles. However, I do not believe that schools and educators should be forced to take novels out of their classrooms. Reading and analyzing in depth novels are important and can be fun if implemented correctly.
As far as using reading in my content, I really like his idea of the article of the week. I believe that it is important for students to be aware of the world around them and know what they are going to be thrown into and responsible for. I mean, if they are clueless about who the VP is and what Congress does, then they've got a long way to go!
Monday, February 1, 2010
Readicide Blog
Prompt: Response to readicide. What is the message? What is your reaction? What are your connections to school experiences? What are ways you now understand will help students read more effectively in your discipline?
I thought that Readicide was really interesting. The facts that Kelly Gallagher presented about literacy in adolescents were overwhelming and depressing. Some facts I found really hard to believe, such as the statistic that only 16% of adult readers are "frequent" or "avid" readers. That is unbelieveable to me on so many levels. Plus, he doesn't even define what "frequent" or "avid" is.
I also agreed with what Gallagher said about "teaching to the test" but teaching to a test that is shallow and doesn't test effectively. I know that when I was in school it was all about test-preparation not about reading for content. Learning how to take a multiple choice test is important, but it is not the most important skill that we should be teaching our students. It is NOT the only skill that they will be using after graduation. They will however, need to know how to read for content and read for knowledge and "deep analysis of literary works." I believe that that is more important than knowing how to guess intelligently. In my opinion, the opinion of an awful test taker, standardized tests are horrible measures of student knowledge.
I also agree with Gallagher's opinion and the opinion of several other teachers that educators are overwhelmed with standards and frameworks to teach our students. I also agree that knowing what is expected of good teaching is important to know, but being expected to teach a million standards in one year does lead to "shallow" teaching. There is just no way that we can possibly cover in depth all the standards that are required of us.
As far as my experiences, as a history/poli sci content most teachers skim the surface of the material and do not go in depth on any one topic. However, I can't blame the teachers for this, I in turn blame the states for placing an enormous amount of impossible standards upon the teachers.
I do not have much experience in teaching right now, so I do not know really anyways how to improve reading in my content...let's hope this gets clearer as the student teaching progresses! :)
that's all for now...
I thought that Readicide was really interesting. The facts that Kelly Gallagher presented about literacy in adolescents were overwhelming and depressing. Some facts I found really hard to believe, such as the statistic that only 16% of adult readers are "frequent" or "avid" readers. That is unbelieveable to me on so many levels. Plus, he doesn't even define what "frequent" or "avid" is.
I also agreed with what Gallagher said about "teaching to the test" but teaching to a test that is shallow and doesn't test effectively. I know that when I was in school it was all about test-preparation not about reading for content. Learning how to take a multiple choice test is important, but it is not the most important skill that we should be teaching our students. It is NOT the only skill that they will be using after graduation. They will however, need to know how to read for content and read for knowledge and "deep analysis of literary works." I believe that that is more important than knowing how to guess intelligently. In my opinion, the opinion of an awful test taker, standardized tests are horrible measures of student knowledge.
I also agree with Gallagher's opinion and the opinion of several other teachers that educators are overwhelmed with standards and frameworks to teach our students. I also agree that knowing what is expected of good teaching is important to know, but being expected to teach a million standards in one year does lead to "shallow" teaching. There is just no way that we can possibly cover in depth all the standards that are required of us.
As far as my experiences, as a history/poli sci content most teachers skim the surface of the material and do not go in depth on any one topic. However, I can't blame the teachers for this, I in turn blame the states for placing an enormous amount of impossible standards upon the teachers.
I do not have much experience in teaching right now, so I do not know really anyways how to improve reading in my content...let's hope this gets clearer as the student teaching progresses! :)
that's all for now...
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Blog 2: Inquiry Project
Alright...this is a little rough because I'm not exactly set on my inquiry project, but I'm trying to incorporate it into my teaching unit. Because I will be using group work throughout my teaching, I want to use various grouping strategies to see if it promotes reading comprehension. Also because my content requires so much reading-most of it extremely unappealing to adolescents- I want to also use read alouds with my students. I read that read alouds are becoming more popular in secondary classrooms. I would like to see if using activites such as the read alouds, think-pair-share, and reciprocal teaching increase students understanding of the text and also students motivation.
As far as my contribution to the inquiry project, I'm not really sure since I haven't really discussed with anyone else who might be interested in the same ideas...
As far as reading in my content, I still believe that it is absolutely necessary. My opinion has not really changed much. I still wish that more history/poli sci/ econ teachers would attempt to make reading in the content more accessible for students as well as more appealing, instead of just assigning the regular textbook to read. I also hope that I can figure out ways to make government/economics come alive for my students and find ways to relate readings that are interesting to them and enhance their desires to discover more about a topic. It is still my belief that students benefit from reading in every content area.
Through doing my research, I hope to learn more about reading in my content and seeing how to better incorporate effective literacy strategies in my own classroom.
As far as my contribution to the inquiry project, I'm not really sure since I haven't really discussed with anyone else who might be interested in the same ideas...
As far as reading in my content, I still believe that it is absolutely necessary. My opinion has not really changed much. I still wish that more history/poli sci/ econ teachers would attempt to make reading in the content more accessible for students as well as more appealing, instead of just assigning the regular textbook to read. I also hope that I can figure out ways to make government/economics come alive for my students and find ways to relate readings that are interesting to them and enhance their desires to discover more about a topic. It is still my belief that students benefit from reading in every content area.
Through doing my research, I hope to learn more about reading in my content and seeing how to better incorporate effective literacy strategies in my own classroom.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Content Literacy and the adolescent reader
Fortunately and unfortunately I will be teaching a subject that involves tons of reading! History, Government/Civics, and Economics just have so much reading involved. Most, however is embedded within the textbooks, and through my experience in High School and the teachers that I had, they never took the time to bring in other resources for us to look at or try and explore to gain our attention on the particular subject. Most students are incredibly bored with my content because of the fact that no other 'interesting' texts have been introduced. Maybe I'm a little bias because I absolutely LOVE to read any chance I get, but I have faith that there has to be interesting Government books out there that can be brought into the classroom.
In my opinion I don't think that adolescents are given enough exposure to content literacy, as with my own experience which then leads them to either dislike or just scim the surface of a topic or content area. It is my hope that I can introduce interesting and engaging material to my students that helps them further enjoy my class but also allows them to become more well-rounded individuals.
In working at Early College last semester, I wasn't necessarily in my content (not that any of us were) but I was exposed to adolescents and their reading capabilities or for some, reading incapability. We had one student who would read non-stop and we could barely get him to do his regular work. Then the majority of the class we had to force them to read anything, even a small paragraph! I just wish that adolescents were more exposed to reading in every subject, and not just boring textbook reading so that it would just become a part of their every day routines...
well, that's all I got for right now!
In my opinion I don't think that adolescents are given enough exposure to content literacy, as with my own experience which then leads them to either dislike or just scim the surface of a topic or content area. It is my hope that I can introduce interesting and engaging material to my students that helps them further enjoy my class but also allows them to become more well-rounded individuals.
In working at Early College last semester, I wasn't necessarily in my content (not that any of us were) but I was exposed to adolescents and their reading capabilities or for some, reading incapability. We had one student who would read non-stop and we could barely get him to do his regular work. Then the majority of the class we had to force them to read anything, even a small paragraph! I just wish that adolescents were more exposed to reading in every subject, and not just boring textbook reading so that it would just become a part of their every day routines...
well, that's all I got for right now!
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