Talk can be personal

I liked the idea of having a chalk talk and I plan to use this in my classroom one day. It gives students the opportunity to express themselves and allows every student in the class to participate. I had the opportunity to hear a group of students and professionals talk about the achievement gap between people of color and whites on Friday. It was a very good discussion and it made me think of the clip we had seen in class. While listening to the presenters speak it reminded me of my high school that I attended. I was always labeled the smart child and everyone expected a lot out of my friends and me. It was frustrating at times because I felt that other students got away with a lot because they were the students’ teachers labeled the trouble maker. I also felt that some people looked down upon our school because we were known for gang violence and teenage pregnancies. We were on the news and on the front of the newspaper almost every day for something. I felt that they always reported the bad but never the good that comes from the school. I felt that people labeled us but didn’t even know who we were because they had never been into my school they just know what they say on the news. I feel that teachers nowadays are losing their will to want to teach those who they think don’t want to learn. I believe that we need more teachers like that of the character Hilary Swank played. Students should be given the right to change and they need someone to believe in them. You don’t want your students to go through life experiencing learned helplessness. Every student is different and you may have to modify things so that they can learn to the best of their ability. As a future educator I want to make sure that all students are receiving the best possible practices there are. And if we don’t stand up for them then who will?

Field experience

I am so sad that my field experience is over because I really enjoyed being in the classroom. The children were great and the teacher was very helpful. I really enjoyed seeing what we were learning about in class being practiced in my field experience classroom. The students were just getting comfortable with me helping them and they were way more talkative. I hate that I have to stop going right after the children start to get use to me. I enjoyed being in this classroom because the students had great imaginations and they loved to learn. My favorite time would have to be when the students were working on tree maps and they had to read a book and write down the main idea and three supporting details. After they did this they had to meet with the teacher and discuss what they had put down with other students who had read the same book. The students were discussing the book and giving each other ideas about what they should write. I thought that this was so amazing that these students could sit down and talk about these books the way that they did. Some of them also gave some connections to their lives that resembled people or things in the book. My teacher also gave fun ideas that I would like to do in my classroom some day. She also gave me advice on how to handle certain things that come up in the classroom. I truly enjoyed my time at Northwood and I have learned a lot from the teacher and her students.

Music to my ears

I was exposed to a lot of different books in my children’s literature class but I came across one that became on all time favorite. It is called My Family Plays Music by: Judy Cox. I will definitely use this book in my classroom because it is very educational in a number of ways. It allows the teacher to integrate a number of curriculum ideas together. It is an awesome book that teaches musical instruments, genres of music, and different individuals in a family such as mom, dad, aunt and uncle. I could use this book to teach the sounds of the different instruments and maybe collaborate with the music teacher to see if we could do a joint activity where the children make instruments of their won. I could also make a game of sound bingo where the children match the different sounds with the instruments which are good for phonemic awareness and sensory skills. You can also relate sound to science and do a couple of science exercises. I could use this book to teach family structures as a unit of social studies and have the children write about their families or make a family tree. This could be a thematic lesson that could be broken down into many parts and the children would enjoy it because these activities would be hands on.

South Africa

I have always wanted to study abroad because I feel that it is a great opportunity to expand on my knowledge of different cultures. I am truly excited to have this privilege of studying abroad because I feel that it would be a great experience for me to get away from home and to experience a world that is totally different from my everyday life. I believe that this trip will allow me to understand different aspects of education and welfare in another country. I am so excited to be doing to South Africa this summer for five weeks. I will be staying in Cape Town while learning about the culture and volunteering with young children. I feel that this is a great opportunity to explore different practices on working with children.

Writing

When I was in middle school I loved to write poetry and stories. When I got to high school I had the privilege of being in a creative writing class where we published a book with all of the writings from each student in the class. At first I didn’t really like the idea of having a blog it was just one more thing to add to my agenda of things to do throughout the week. I did feel as if it was a chore but my idea of it has changed because I feel that it is helping me to strengthen my writing skills and expand on topics we have talked about in class. It is also a great resource to have for the classroom if student’s parents wanted to interact with you through a different source of communication. I feel that my idea of writing has changed because at first I was wondered about how I was going to teach students to write when I am not the best writer in the world. Also I feel that this class had broken down the steps in a way that I can remember and has given me the opportunity to see different examples of how to teach language arts through observations.

As far as the book I didn’t have any idea what I was going to write about. Then I decided to write about something that is dear to me and that is friendship. My story will cover adjusting to parenthood and how life can change in the blink of an eye. It was also cover how friendship can change over a course of time because you both are growing up into adults.

How Reading and Writing Can Affect One's Social Life

When dealing with a disability or delay in either reading or writing a person could feel left out or unworthy because they don’t know how to communicate with others. Socially this could hurt someone very bad because in the world we live in now you need to know how to do both. Children and adults could get picked on because they cannot read or write. Children love to read books and discuss them and if you can’t do either of these children will not want to participate in different activities causing them to withdraw themselves from the people in the classroom. I have found that students get frustrated with teachers when asked to read something out loud or write something on the board if they are unable to do so. When I was in the first grade my teacher had me and some other students write our journal entries on the board. I felt really bad for doing this because all the students in the class were going to see our journal entries. I wasn’t the best speller and I wasn’t that good at grammar either. She then asked the students what was wrong with the journal entries. She wrote in grammatical errors that we had done and I felt so bad because I felt that this was a journal that we wrote in as a leisure thing and it was only for her to see. After that incident I was discouraged from sharing any type of writing in my classroom.

As a teacher I would try to address this issue by allowing the student to have one on one tutoring or communicate with the student through a journal to allow them to improve their skills in both. Our book stated that some students did well with journals and it helped them to express their feelings about different things going on with their lives. I believe that students feel more comfortable with writing things down. This allows you to get things off of your mind in a fast and convenient way.

My First Day at Northwood

I went to observe Mrs. Ruff’s third grade class on Friday. I had a great time because Mrs. Ruff was very nice and the students were very welcoming of me. The students were doing a lesson on similarities and differences of animals. When I arrived they were pre-reading a couple of books, that Mrs. Ruff had brought to the class, about different animals that they could read on their own. Mrs. Ruff asked them questions about the title, pictures in the book, and read some of the interesting facts out of the book. Before hand the students had the opportunity of selecting two animals in which they printed information off on them to compare and contrast. Mrs. Ruff demonstrated what she wanted them to do first by giving them an example on the board. The school is starting to use different types of graphic organizers. On this day the class was using a double bubble which is similar to a Venn diagram. The students were doing a very good job with coming up with differences of the animals but had a difficult time trying to find similarities. Some of the choices the students picked even stumped Mrs. Ruff and I. I also had the opportunity to walk around and help some of the students with their assignment.

Lauguage Learning

When I was younger I remember I learned language from my mother reading different books to me and by using nursery rhymes. I had a book with every single nursery rhyme you could think of in it. That was my favorite book and I still had it until a couple of years ago. I also used the popular program called Hooked on Phonics. I found it very easy to learn language from this device because you got to listen and visually see a word as you were practicing it over and over again. As I was going through school each week we got some spelling words and we would go over them in class once and then on Friday we would have a spelling test. I think that this was a horrible way to teach phonics and language in the classroom because we were not encouraged to learn the words or use them every day. Most students just memorized them for the test then after the test we couldn’t remember them because we were not taught to use the language.

As a future teacher I fell that you have to understand that every child learns differently and it is your job to come up with an array of activities for students to learn language.

The Reading Process

1. Discuss the difference in aesthetic reading and efferent reading. Do you have a preference for one or the other? Which do you employ the most? I feel that aesthetic reading is reading for pleasure and efferent reading is reading to gain or take away information from the text. I have a preference for aesthetic reading because I pay more attention to the details of the text while I am painting pictures in my mind of the different things that are going on the reading. I found that I enjoy reading better when I am reading aesthetically. But sometimes I do enjoy efferent reading when I am learning something that is interesting to me like certain statistics or something that I can relate to personally.
   
   2. Discuss the five stages of the reading process providing examples of each. Pre-reading is going through the text and looking at pictures or getting background information about the book. An example of this would be to have students look at the pictures and guess what they think the book would be about. Reading is going through the text and reading the book through shared, guided, independent, buddy, or reading aloud to the class. An example of this would be the teacher having a jumbo sized book on a chart board and reading the book to the class. Responding to the reading is having the students share their opinions and ideas about the book. An example of this would be having the students write in journal or a think, pair, share activity. Exploring the reading is the act of going back through the reading to get a deeper understanding of the work. An example of this would be going back through the book and finding new vocabulary words that the students might not understand. Applying refers to the student’s further building on their experience with the book. An example of this would be to have different centers set up geared toward students using knowledge from the book to complete different activities.
   
   3. What factors are important in developing capable readers? It is important that capable readers have a good sense of word definition, fluency when reading, broad range of vocabulary, and have a good understanding of the reading.
   
   4. Often, students participate in reading through different means. What ways are there to read and how could the students use the reading process in the classroom? There are a lot of different ways to read from aesthetic, efferent, buddy, shared, guided, independent, and reading aloud. The students can use the reading process in class to strengthen reading skills and to also practice reading. They can also use the reading process to strengthen comprehension abilities and writing skills.

What Do I Think

What surprised you about the 6 language arts?

What surprised me was the fact that listening and talking were included into the six language arts. I guess I am a typical teacher when it comes to the fact that I thought students would already know how to do these things. I would have never thought that you would have to teach the students how to do these two things. I also had never heard that there were six things that you teach in language arts or how students acquire knowledge from language arts.

Should viewing and visually representing really be a part of this list? If we add them to the list, aren't we as educators just condoning all of the digital and media influences on children's lives?

I feel that viewing and visually representing should be added to the list because we will be using something of the child’s interest to teach them the acquiring knowledge that they need from language arts by using these two strategies.

What are your personal experiences with any one or all of the 6 language arts? Meaning, does one of these stand out as more important in your academic career than the others? Have your language arts learning preferences changed over time? Do you expect them to always be the same?

Before taking this class I had never really thought about my personal experiences with the 6 language arts. I guess the ones that I have had more experience with is listening and reading. I believe that you acquire more knowledge from listening in school and I always hated when my teacher would call on me because I was one of the slower readers and I didn’t like to read out loud. So over the years I had begun one of those people who learned to listen very well to details. I also love to read independently because I feel that I learn better that way and I can comprehend the story better or if I listen to it I remember more of the details.

What was your initial reaction to Sahara Special? Can you relate to this story so far? Any predictions for what is to come?

Well when I first heard the title I didn’t know what to think and I had no clue what this story was going to be about. But I did like the story plot and the way the author wrote the book in so much dialogue but you can tell who was taking at each given moment. I can relate to the book because we all know that child who has to be put in special education but really don’t need it and they are only in it because the teacher can’t handle the child. I think that some teachers are just so quick to through students into special education then trying to see why the student is acting the way they are acting. It could be because they are bored and are not challenged enough in school. As of this moment I really don’t have any predictions for the story.