D&Z ch. 5 &7

          I think these two chapters have certainly been the most useful thus far and helpful. The authors make a great point that we want our students to be great readers and writers, but we often forget to tell them how to be good readers. Or as secondary education teachers we often leave it for elementary school but most of the time our students have forgotten. In chapter 5 there are tools for thinking and reading strategies. It is broken down to before, during, and after activities of things students can do to be actively reading. I remember doing some of this myself when I was in school and it helped, it made me remember until today! By having students doing something before, during, or after they read a text its helping them engage with their text and remember what they just read. Reading a chapter and answering questions its at the lower level of bloom at knowledge and comprehension. They might remember what they read the next day and the questions they read, but a week later they're not going to remember.
            When I was reading the section that went through the 'during' and how a good reader is active, visualizes what's happening in the story/text, makes connections and can distinguish important ideas, I just thought how great would this look on a poster in your classroom. And the other piece of this is what reading skills are important across curriculum. On p. 101 there are tons of before, during and after activities you can do for all different content areas that involve reading strategies. One of my favorites was the exit slips (p.124) and the mapping (p.126) The mapping is great in social studies classes when you're trying to break down main ideas.
              Chapter 7 is especially crucial for new teachers. I couldn't agree more with the authors because I have seen it myself. Being a substitute teacher I have seen classrooms where the students don't respect the teacher or don't feel comfortable and there's no classroom management or willingness to be in the classroom. It's essential to have a community of learners the authors stress and to build community in your classroom. The authors give examples of how a teacher could build community and I think the best time to do so is at the beginning of the school year. In my future classroom I would like to spend the first couple days of school just getting to know my students, no content, just playing ice breakers, getting to know each other. Something I found really important about this section was that if you don't know 10 things about your students you don't know them very well. In these first few days I think the rules and expectations should be laid out for the year. Often we just hand out the year syllabus and run with content but then the whole idea of purpose, having someone to talk and connect with just goes away.

Microteaching I

Please post comments and suggestions here! Thanks!

Use or don't use the textbooks?

 The chapters in our textbook and the Strong chapter gives you a lot to think about when thinking about how you would use the textbook. The authors of our textbook certainly has a negative attitude towards textbooks. They say they're over used, hard to read, badly designed, and often inaccurate. A valid point the authors make is that textbooks aren't going away, they're a part of our educational system. However how we use them is up to us, the teacher/curriculum presented by our school. I absolutely agree that textbooks are jammed back with tons of information that teachers most likely won't get to cover in a school year. I think textbooks are needed as a guide for teachers and students.You can pick and choose the information you want to teach and the parts you want to leave out. I think the best thing about textbooks, in particular science and social studies books, the vocabulary is in plain site and the main ideas are laid out. I think the hook, what's going to make kids interested and remember what they learned is definitely not going to come from a textbook but rather something fun and interesting. something they had to do, not just reading and answering questions at the end of a chapter.

English Language Learners

             The InfoBrief on ELLs is definitely informational however the topic is a bit controversial.  It talks about how educators have two challenges on their hands. Not only do they have the challenge of  giving students an educational experience that includs content and English language instruction.  Another challenge was assessing the ELL students because how can you tell if the student really knows the material if their not being assessed in their own language. They talk a great deal about differentiating your classroom. Working in groups or changing the way you teach something will help the students. They talk about making information to the point and clear. Using pictures and visuals to describe things and make the content comprehensible and not only using verbal explanation.They bring up ideas of assessing students in their language but then that would mean the content teacher would have to be bilingual or even multilingual.
             Nowadays most college-aged students take another language anyways. I think it would beneficial for teachers to be bilingual because it will just enrich you as a person. If you are a teacher on the East Coast, Spanish and Portuguese will certainly benefit you as a teacher. Even traveling to Europe learning Spanish or Portuguese will help because if you go to any of the Latin rooted countries like Italy, France, Portugal or Spain it is true that you will understand some pieces of each if you know at least one of the romantic languages.  I think something that happens too much is teachers consider their profession as being just a job. They might even see it as being their career, but they don't have passion for it. So in terms of how they do their job, they have an education degree and a content area degree so a question they must ask is 'why should I have to go learn another language, I'm done with school?". And I think the key to what I hear all the time, is you are a teacher, you're never done learning! Teachers are in fact life long learners so if it will make you a better teacher to take another course or to take another another content area like learning a language I think a teacher should. I also think school departments should and most likely already do help pay for further education for teachers.

Ch. 4 Balance Diet of Reading

          Chapter 4 gave me a lot to think about because it jogs my memory of what I went through when I was in school.  I remember certain teachers focusing heavily on the textbook as if it were their Bible. They followed every section, gave every quiz and test from the textbook. But then I also had the teachers so vocally said how much they hated textbooks and were going to use their own reading materials for the class. Something I remember from the reading was then they mentioned the fact that there are tons of textbooks that try to explain something, but we can't really say we understand them (p51). It is true because if the content is engaging and the students are doing something to enforce their learning, the student will remember and they will understand by physically doing. That's why I think it is important for a teacher to mix it up a bit in their teaching methods. I do think textbooks are a great guide especially for beginning teachers. But I think with early planning, a teacher could have her students read sections of the book, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789) to enforce learning about the slave trade. This is an important part of our history and sometimes its often given a week's unit and that's it. In high school I remember spending a long time learning about the Atlantic slave trade and it's involvement with not only the U.S but Europe too.