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!!!
Friday, February 19, 2010
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...
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