Reflections

            And here I am…at the mid-way point in my senior year of college.  Today was the last day of classes and next week is finals.  I cannot believe how fast time has gone by.  Anyways, with this milestone reached, it is now time to prep for what is to come!  STUDENT TEACHING!!!!!  Well, first I want to reflect on my methods course, and then I want to talk about my student teaching placements.

            Methods, well, was actually a lot of fun!  I truly did learn a lot from this class.  Granted, if I would have received one more R in that class, I would have probably exploded in pure anguish and defeat!  I do know though that without Dr. Shannon pushing all of us so hard, we would not be as prepped for teaching as we are.  Let’s see…through methods, I wrote an entire unit, worked on LFS items, learned about common core, did more observations, and numerous other things.  I now have these items to use when I am a teacher.  Methods was so helpful, but I don’t know if anything can prep someone for student teaching.

            Student teaching is something that I have been looking forward to ever since I was a freshman in college.  This is the step right before you become a teacher!  All of the work we have done up to this point has been the theory.  Now it is time to put that theory to work.  We started this year by doing, yet again, observation hours.  I had the pleasure of going to East Penn High School and Central Dauphin Middle School.  I had great placements at both of those schools and learned a lot working with my cooperating teachers.  For student teaching, I will be returning to Central Dauphin Middle School with my seventh graders and for my high school, I will be going to Central Dauphin East High School to work with senior students.  I am really looking forward to both of these placements and hope they will be fun.  I think that these two placements fit me really well, but it still does not calm my nerves any.

            Like I said, I have been super excited to start my student teaching BUT now that it is here, I am excited and SCARED!  I hope the students will appreciate my teaching style and I hope that my coop teachers can help me to their fullest!  I think it is going to be fine, and I plan on keeping up this blog (if I can and have time) during my student teaching.  I am signing off for now to go study for final exams…because now I get to give them instead of take them after this point! AHH!!!

The Teaching of Grammar

The end of the semester is always a really busy time!  It has been really hectic in my life and I know that when I become a teacher, things are not going to slow down any.  I know it has been awhile since I have posted last.  Last time, I talked about teaching writing.  Well, this time, I want to focus on teaching grammar.  This area is always difficult to teach and is different for every level of teaching.  We talk all the time in our Methods class about how we would teach certain things in English.  Well, I think that grammar is a hard thing to even think about teaching.  Some teachers in the field now are afraid to teach grammar and they do it by one thing.  They open up the textbook the school has decided to use and he or she does exactly what the book says.

 Now, that is ONE way of teaching grammar, BUT is it the best way for the students to learn?  I would say no.  Some students might learn really well this way, but reading from the textbook and teaching what the book says and only what the book says is not right.  The teacher is there to ENRICH the students’ learning.  Enriching student learning also does not mean give them a worksheet.  Sure, worksheets have their place in any classroom, but not every single time you teach something.  I have been out in the field observing student learning for four years now and it is amazing that every single teacher I have observed or worked with has a different way of teaching.

As a student in the education field, I am required to do so many hours in a high school classroom setting and so many hours in a middle school setting.  Both of these settings, like I expected, were totally different.  While in my high school settings, I have seen five different teachers.  Every single teacher is different and every single teacher I observed taught grammar.  I have yet to see someone teach grammar the way I am planning on teaching (which I will get to at the end of the post :-P).  I have one specific instance that I would like to speak to though.  While I was in a tenth grade honors classroom, the teacher I was observing was stressed out.  Going into the observation, I knew the teacher was stressed because he or she was re-teaching grammar elements that should have been taught the year prior.  Now, as I was sitting in this classroom, I was thinking about these tenth grade students.  The teacher was standing in front of the class using the SMART board.  His or her notes were in size ten font in a word document.  He or she would teach a little bit, and then ask questions about what was just taught.  The students were unable to take notes and were lost about what the teacher was teaching.  As the teacher was asking questions, he or she was also getting really frustrated with the students.  It finally got to the point where the teacher shut down, passed out worksheets (15 to be exact) and told the students to complete them.  I was in shock!  I could not believe what was going on in front of me.  Then the teacher came back to me and asked me if what she was doing was so complicated to understand.  To be honest, I DID NOT EVEN UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT!  I know grammar and would consider myself acceptable at grammar, but I had no clue what she was trying to teach them.  I felt so bad for those students and I do not want my students to feel that way too.

Out of the high school setting, I got to teach middle school students proper noun and pronoun usage.  I had so much fun planning and executing my lessons that my time with them seemed to fly by.  So, you are probably asking yourself, what does he do with grammar lessons.  Well, I have fun!  I teach the base concept to the students, so proper noun usage for example, and then have an activity or something fun for the students to get into.  I also try to relate it to pop culture and ideas from today’s society.  In the middle school class, I did a “painting” activity with my students to help them with nouns.  Now, it wasn’t real paint of course, it was highlight strips.  They had to come to the board and highlight a word.  Then I would ask the students questions about the word.  The students had a lot of fun with it and the teacher still contacts me asking me for ideas.

I hope that what I have here makes sense.  I have noticed that my blogging and some of my writings kind of go into stream of consciousness like Holden C in Catcher in the Rye.  I try not to do that, but I think it is the right thing to do for blog posts.  So, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.  I would love to answer them!

Teaching Writing and the Tenets

This week, I want to focus on teaching writing.  For this week, I want to look at two different books that have information pertaining to this and I want to talk about my experiences these past couple of weeks.  I have a lot of information pertaining to this topic, so I will try to hit on the important information. J

            First, I want to look at Peter Smagorinsky’s view on student writing.  In his book Teaching English by Design, he has an entire section devoted to student writing.  In the beginning of this section, he talks about many different types of student writing; extended definitions, literary analysis, argumentations, research reports, portfolios, journals, and many many more.  It would take a very long time to go through all of them.  I want to look at a few that I have used or I found interesting.  First, I want to look at journals. 

Journals are a key in my classroom environment.  When I am teaching, I think personal reflection is important.  Also, just writing out what you are feeling that day or to get something off of your chest is important.  Any time a student is writing, that is a step in the “write” direction. J (You see what I did there) Writing is, in my opinion, one of the most important skills a student can learn.  Everything in life revolves around writing.  Personal reflection is something easy to do, does not take long, and is something that can be done every single day.  It also builds student writing without them even known.  A huge step from journaling is the all “important” research paper.

Growing up and going through high school, the research paper was the “most important writing piece you will do”.  I disagree.  I think that it is important, but not the most important writing piece.  The research writing piece is important because it teaches students how to research a topic or an issue, how to appropriately cite or give credit to a person, and again work on writing skills.  One of the biggest things that Smagorinsky thinks, and I agree with, that you should not just grade a paper or writing piece and then move on.  It should be handed in and then the student should be given at least another chance to redo the work; to fix the mistakes that he or she made.  Beside Smagorinsky is Gallagher. 

Kelly Gallagher has had a huge influence on me as a teacher.  I have read two of his books so far and hope to continue reading his work.  In Gallagher’s work Teaching Adolescent Writers, he has a list of “ten tenets of teaching editing skills”.  These are 1) determine editing needs and address them as they arise 2) teach less to the whole class; teach more in conferences 3) instead of using grammar books, make them 4) keep the focus narrow 5) teach the big eight (dealing with commas, fragments, intervening phrases, irregular verbs, and so on) 6) don’t drown the paper in corrections 7) whole-class peer editing is an ineffective strategy 8) make students track their spelling demons 9) discussion vs. written comments and 10) Occasional failing of at not constantly following these tenets is allowed.  Through reading all of Gallagher’s tenets, I have decided to come up with my own tenets.  I am focusing on writing in general and not just editing.  So… my ten tenets are as follow.

1)      Model with my students.  I think it is important to do the work right alongside the students (even if you do not like to do the project).

2)      To go with that last comment, do writing projects that are enjoyable to both you and the students. 

3)      Give at least two chances for the students to achieve greatness.  Do not let their grades be a once and done thing.

4)      Give ample time for students to write in the classroom environment.

5)      Give many many many examples of good AND bad writing.  In the classroom, I have seen good writing, but not examples of bad.

6)      Unlike Gallagher, I want to use peer editing.  I think it is a good tool, but they need the scaffolding to do it correctly.

7)      I agree with the grammar book idea.  Do NOT give the students the stuff right out of a book, come up with it yourself.

8)      Written comments are good, but don’t go overboard. 

9)      Conference with students about their writing.

10)   Get the parents involved in the student’s writing as well.

All of these are important to me, but I am sure they will change over time.  Well, I have rambled long enough.  I will call it quits for now.  Look for another post soon about my observations!

 

(Side note: it won't let me add pictures this week. :-( I am very upset about this!  Hopefully next week it works!)

            For my text satellite, I chose to use the book Don Quixote.  This book has many themes that would be great to use in the classroom.  Some of them include friendship, loyalty, and sanity.  With this novel, we will look at the Broadway show Man of La Mancha.  We will also look at the film version of Don Quixote.  To go along with the novel, we are also going to listen to music from the Broadway show and some Spanish theme music to get into the mind set for the novel.  Also, to go along with this novel, I chose a short story by Edgar Allen Poe and some images/art to tie into the theme of sanity.   We will then move into our nonfiction part.  We will look at the life of Silvia Plath.  While looking at her, we will read The Bell Jar and follow that with some poetry by Silvia Plath.  Again, this is to tie in sanity.  Last, we will watch the movie 50 First Dates to tie in loyalty and friendship.  I think all of these pieces tie well together and would make a very interesting unit!

For my text satellite, I chose to use the book Don Quixote. This book has many themes that would be great to use in the classroom. Some of them include friendship, loyalty, and sanity. With this novel, we will look at the Broadway show Man of La Mancha. We will also look at the film version of Don Quixote. To go along with the novel, we are also going to listen to music from the Broadway show and some Spanish theme music to get into the mind set for the novel. Also, to go along with this novel, I chose a short story by Edgar Allen Poe and some images/art to tie into the theme of sanity. We will then move into our nonfiction part. We will look at the life of Silvia Plath. While looking at her, we will read The Bell Jar and follow that with some poetry by Silvia Plath. Again, this is to tie in sanity. Last, we will watch the movie 50 First Dates to tie in loyalty and friendship. I think all of these pieces tie well together and would make a very interesting unit!

http://prezi.com/gxy6x9kgqavx/don-quixote-de-la-mancha/

Assessing the Assessments that Assess Our Students

In what time period did Of Mice and Men take place?

 

Who is the main character in Of Mice and Men?

Describe the character of Lenny.

How does Lenny die at the end of the novel?

How do you feel about these questions?  I think these questions are ones that I see on assessments all the time, and I really do not like them.  I see the point behind them sometimes, but an entire assessment should NOT be made up of these types of questions.  Do you think you, as a teacher, would use these questions on an exam?  Well, to be honest, I might use questions like these for quick review quizzes at the beginning of class or maybe use them in a discussion setting to get the discussions started, but I would not ask questions like this on a big exam or assessment.  Have you, as a student, ever had questions like these before?  YES!  I sit down to take exams and do assessments all the time with questions like this on it.  It is unfair to me really.  I may have read the entire novel, but how do you expect me to remember little tiny details like “what color dress was Carrie wearing when she went to the theater for the first time?” or “What was the address of the building that the main character lived in?” or “On this page, there are a list of quotes.  From this list, choose seven and tell me the following.  What play it is from, who said it, where he or she was when he or she said it, what time period the play was written and set in, and who this was said to” (and yes, I have been asked those questions on exams I have taken) My response to those questions was either “ WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?” or “What does that have to do with my understanding of the story?  Many times, teachers may not be aware of the bad test questions, but sometimes it is just pure laziness!  I am guilty of this as well.  I have made and administered exams before with questions like this.  Well, many people do not realize the amount of work that goes into a proper assessment and that included me up to this past week. 

First, let me talk a little bit about assessments.  When someone says assessment, what is the first thing that comes to mind?  That would be test or exam.  Well, that is not always the case.  Assessments can come in many forms and many times students do not even know they are being assessed.  Right now I am taking a course entitled assessing students with a disability.  This class has been very helpful and some of what we talked about in there also carries over to this topic.  Assessments fall into many categories.  The two main ones are formative assessments (ongoing during teaching and provides feedback) and summative assessments (takes place at the end of learning and shows how well students have learned/teachers have taught).  These two types of assessments, in my opinion, encompass all the other types of assessment.  So, with formative assessments, the teacher is doing progress monitoring.  This is a check for teachers to see what the students comprehend and what the teacher has to reteach or teach in a different style.  Summative assessments of course are the after teaching check; so, after administering all of the formative assessments, making the changes in the course work, re-teaching or teaching in a different way a concept or idea, and repeating if necessary, the summative assessment is administered to the students.  I feel like these two types of assessments have been drilled into your head now, so enough with that…time for my assessment!

What is a formative assessment?

What is a summative assessment?

Which type of assessment is this?

J

I asked the question earlier, what is the first thing that comes to mind with the word assessment?  The answer for most people would be test or exam.  This is not always true.  There are many types of assessments; tests, exams, and quizzes are not the only ones.  I have come up with many types of assessments in my course work here at Shippensburg.  These include papers, board games, acting scenes, comic strips, web-enger hunts, pictures, and many many more.  To assess, as defined by my good friends at Dictionary.com, is “to estimate or judge the value, character, etc., of; evaluate”.  This is simply saying that any type of evaluation counts as an assessment.  The teacher is constantly assessing a student; this is a constant ongoing process.

Many hours go into making an assessment.  This past week, each of us in my methods class had to make two assessments; one objective (an assessment that is focused directly on what is asked) and one authentic (an assessment where the student has more freedom in what he or she is doing but still fulfilling the teachers intended goal of what was being assessed).  For my assessments, I used Samuel Clemens’ (aka: Mark Twain) short story “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”.  This story was interesting to read at first because I had no idea what it was trying to convey.  Then I reread it, like a good English student, and found its purpose.  I don’t want to go too much into the story itself, just want to talk about the assessment portion.   

            

My objective assessment consisted of ten questions; five multiple choice, four short answer, and one essay.    This exam took me about three hours to make…IT WAS ONLY TEN QUESTIONS LONG!   I had to get up and leave the assessment at one point because I was so mentally drained!   This assessment still was not a “good” assessment in my opinion after talking about it in class on Tuesday.    Then I got to my authentic assessment.     I could have been much more creative, but I was still exhausted from my objective assessment that it ended up being a writing assignment with options.  I was not very happy with that assessment either because I am usually a lot more creative.  Doing these two different types of assessment really opened my eyes though.  I never knew how much work went into those projects and exams that are on the little piece of paper in front of you in class.

The next time you are making an assessment, ask yourself if the question is really asking what you are intending for it to ask.  Does it really have meaning or did you include it because you did not know what else to ask?  Most importantly, ask yourself WHY.  Why did I include this one here?  If you can justify your answer with something a little bit more than “I want to see if they read”, then you are on the right track!

Teaching Reading and Promoting Literacy

Read-i-cide: n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools.

For this week, our prompt or idea is teaching reading and promoting literacy.  These ideas are great to think about and it is a simple blog to write about.  These ideas can also take you in many different directions too.  So, to help me out, I am going to be looking at the book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher.  This book is a great read for anyone going into or already is a teacher of English at any level or any subject for that matter.

Teaching reading in schools can be hard.  We have the kids who do not want to read for a slew of reasons (They forgot to read, they did not want to read, they did not understand it, they cannot read, etc.).  This hinders the learning experience in the classroom.  For most teachers, we like to teach all over Bloom’s Taxonomy; focusing not only on the knowledge and comprehension at the lower end but also synthesis and evaluation as well.  If the teacher is focusing on trying to get the students to show knowledge and comprehension of the book, it is almost impossible for them to get the whole way up to synthesis and evaluation.  Kelly Gallagher comments in his introduction about Readicide and how there are four main contributing factors:

·         Schools value the development of test-takers more than they value the development of readers

·         Schools are limiting authentic reading experiences

·         Teachers are over teaching book

·         Teachers are under teaching book



One interesting thing I see in this list, that goes against my thoughts above, is the idea of that it falls mainly on the school and the teacher.  I agree that some or most of the responsibility falls on the school and teacher.  We are there to promote the reading and learning about literature, but at the same time, we cannot teach to the students if they shut down on us.  This connection was brought up the other night in my Assessing Students with a Learning Disability class.  We said that teachers have been taught different methods of getting students to read ie: round robin, popcorn reading, etc. and this can hinder a student’s learning.  For example, if Jimmy who sits in the front row of my classroom is not a strong oral reader, but can comprehend and understand everything he reads silently to himself and I as the teacher call on him to read out loud, what is that going to do to him?  He is going to refuse or not do it or he does do it and he has a lot of trouble which causes the other kids to make fun of him.  All of these items hinder a child in their learning environment and we want to have an LRE (least restrictive environment) classroom.  This is going to cause Jimmy to shut down, not participate in class and the worst of all STOP reading all together.  If he knows he is going to be made fun of if he tries, then why would he even try?

Like I have been talking about, this blog is off of the book Readicide and I could sit here all day and talk about ever little aspect of it.  We focused on chapters one and two for this first post.  I think it would be best to post my questions in response to the first two chapters now instead of making so many other points about the book.



High stakes testing like a carrot on a stick

At one point in the first chapter, Kelly Gallagher talks about the Texas Miracle.  This was the “remarkable progress Texas schools made when educational ‘carrots and sticks’ were attached to high-stakes, multiple-choice reading exams” (Gallagher 19).  Well, here is where my question comes in.  It goes on to talk about how “school officials did not count many students who gave up and dropped out” and “at the height of the Texas Miracle, special education students were not counted in the test scores” (Gallagher 19).  Well, if these students were not held to the same standards as students today (EVERY child must be accounted for) how and why did the policy change?  They are basing their information off of something that should NOT be compared to students today.  That is not right and then the government wonders why student testing is not the same.  Any thoughts on this would be great!

Like building a skyscraper on quick sand

My next question has to deal with the idea of our schooling practices in general.  I have two quotes from chapter one that go along with this idea.  First, “…as their (the student’s) state scores were rising to impressive heights, ‘only about one third of Alsine’s graduates entering public colleges scored high enough on college readiness tests to avoid remedial classes’” (Gallagher 20).  This is simply stating that the students were scoring really high on these high-stakes tests, but were not doing well on the things that actually matter (college placement testing).  How horrible is that?  The second quote to go along with this is “Building a national education agenda on the Texas model was like building a skyscraper on quick sand” (Gallagher 21).  So, here is my question to this.  If we have all of this information about our way of schooling and we know high-stakes testing is a bad idea for the well-being of our students, WHY DO WE CONTINUE TO DO IT?  That is so wrong!

Those two questions are the two most important questions I found in the first two chapters.  Of course, I came up with many good ideas for my own classroom, but do not want to give them away until I have had the chance to work them out and refine them first.  I hope the questions I pose are not to strong or do not make sense.  I think Mr. Gallagher has written an outstanding book and again, if you have not had the chance to read it.  PLEASE do!  You will learn so much and it will open your eyes to something totally different in the world of education.

 

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy culture.  Just get people to stop reading them.”

                                                                                                            --- Ray Bradbury