Response to Stasis and Change

This article really made me think and I found it extremely fitting for where I am at in my educational career. The article really made me think about what I was going to need to do to change school and the way English is taught today. It blew my mind when the author talked about how the way English is taught in schools today hasn't changed since the of WWII. To me that is ridiculous and unnecessary. The world is constantly changing and progressing, education should be doing the same. I also found it very interesting when the author is discussing how many teachers, parents, administrators, politicians and so many other people who have stake in schools and determine what happens there don't vital and important things about language and literacy and what it takes to teach those.  I think it so very true but I applaud the fact that he was strong and secure enough to actually state this and acknowledge that truth in his article.

I got all kinds of warm fuzzies at the beginning of his article when he talks about how teaching ultimately comes down to the interaction between student and teacher. I have always said that my relationship with my students will always mean more to me than the curriculum that I am teaching. Not to say the curriculum isn't important but the relationships I build will always be most important. Going right along with that topic I think are the two questions he asked at the end, the "what we need to know" questions.

The first question is "What kinds of communities do we wish to create and inhabit?" I think this plays such a huge role in the relationships we build with our students as well as how we can prepare and shape them for the emerging global culture. We as teachers have so much power to instill within our students positive, loving, adventurous and creative individuals who challenge and explore the world. Are we doing that? Are the relationships we make with our students building and filling them up to know all they are capable of?

The second question "How do writing and reading shape our understanding of ourselves as beings in the world?" Again in think this can have huge correlation with what we instill in our students as a result of the relationships that we build with them.

Teaching a Prep Class on Wednesday 12-2-15

The second day of teaching did not go as well as the first day. Student's were very nervous and anxious and didn't really want to go up in front of the class to preform the commercials they made. To try and help calm their nerves, my co-teacher and I created a model of a commercial script and acted it out in front of the class using as much inflection and enthusiasm as possible. 
We gave the student's some time at the beginning of the class to make some revisions and add to their commercials before we went over ad explained peer review and our expectations for that. I feel that we really needed to take more time than we did on going over peer review. We were able to get all the necessities or peer review in as well as what good and bad feedback looked liked but it was very brief and I think our students would have benefited from more time on that subject. After we we gave them time to peer review, we gave them time to look over their feedback they received and make changes accordingly. It was funny to see responses from groups once they got their feedback, some groups were upset, others were excited to make their commercials better and others were just yup, the feedback was accurate. My co-teacher and I then circulated and helped groups with corrections and answered an last minute questions before groups presented. We picked the order of the groups ahead of time so that their wouldn't be too much time wasted.....or so we thought.The first three groups were stoked to go first while the next couple dragged their feet to come up.Many groups wrote the script correctly but didn't perform with much enthusiasm. One group made a rap to go along with thier commercial and another made a dance. Overall the groups worked hard and did a great job with the format and persuasion aspect to this project.

Monday 11-30-15 Teaching a Prep Class

The first day of teaching I was very nervous. I wasn't nervous because of the content or the grade or anything like that, I think it was just because they were student's I had never met before and I didn't know how they would perceive me or respond to me. I also knew that this was a prep class and that all the student's had IEP's and I wasn't sure what levels or disabilities I would be presented with.

 

Once the students started to arrive and I was able to greet them and see faces, I started to feel much more at ease. As we started to teach the lesson, I could still see my partner was a little nervous so I tried to talk as much as possible and make sure our expectations were clear etc. The students enjoyed watching the commercial and most of them seemed excited about the overall assignment of script/persuasive writing. We showed them examples of a script and discussed aspects such as punctuation and format of a script. We also touched on purpose and audience so students would be thinking about why they were writing the script as well as who they were writing too. We then broke students up into groups of three and had one person from each group blindly reach into the bag and pick out a random toy to base their commercial on. Some students had a really hard time starting and thinking of a particular setting for their toy but once we started circulating the room and throwing out ideas for students, we could see it became much easier for them. With the exception of one group students did a great job of staying on task and working on their commercials/scripts for the remainder of the hour. Overall the first day went well and I felt the students really got a lot out of the day.

Response to Chapter 4 of Mechanically Inclined

First I love this quote:Wall charts are more than decoration; they’re brain magic. Very well put and so true. It's even better when the student's have created the "Brain Magic" that the room is decorated with. The students then can record the things that they need specifically to help them remember rules and guidelines within their writing. It also makes it much more special and meaningful for students to have their own creations and work surrounding them in the classroom.

I did however love these questions that he asked himself before he made "Brain Magic" to put on the walls:

• What do my students need in order to communicate their thinking?
•   What effects are they trying to create as writers? •
• What craft would help students more fully express themselves in writing? 
• What are the “big-ticket” items? (The grammar and mechanics rules that mean the most—have the highest payoff.) 
•  How much context can I include and still have the poster be visible from a distance? Since the brain searches for patterns, it is the English teacher’s job 

You can really see that he is putting a lot of thought and care into what would be beneficial for his students to see and have as reminders. I think even taking a poll of what students forget or struggle with most and then creating the appropriate material to put on the walls that fits that would also be cool. 

I thought it was really interesting when he was talking about brains and how they search for patterns and so even when students aren't paying attention to you and they may be staring off into space looking at the walls at least the content on the walls will still be education and can still stay in their brains. I then got thinking to posters and wall charts within the classrooms I am currently teaching at and I can think of some of what they say on them, even if some of them are clique. Crazy how that works.

I also thought it was really helpful when he distinguished between the wall charts and the posters. He talks about wall charts never being finished and how you can always add to them but posters are supposed to be concrete and already have the necessary information established on them. I had never really thought about that before or realized that their was a difference.

Response to Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing

I though this article was very...different. At time I didn't know whether to be refreshed or horrified.


I the very first quote used was so strange to me "Grammar is taught with the purpose of making clear to the students the orderly structure of their language, a picture of God's orderly plan for the world and for their lives". I don't really even know what to think of this. I think grammar does have the purpose of showing students the orderly structure of their language but to compare grammar to to God....something doesn't feel right with that.

I was blown away by the part that talked about research not really showing that formal grammar being taught in classrooms didn't really have an effect on students composition. This made me think that well maybe grammar is a waste of time. But then I thought well their has to rules and guidelines to written language or it would all be a mess and nobody would understand each other.
It has to be taught for people to effectively communicate with one another or you end up with situations like this:



It did get me thinking though, are there other ways to teach this without formally teaching it in the classroom. There must be otherwise formally teaching would have an effect one way or another on a student's composition. Student's must be learning it from somewhere.

I loved it when Weaver talked about the flaws of behaviorist theory and how if you make students practice practice practice good grammar they will understand and repeat good grammar but that's not the case. Like I always say practice makes permanent not perfect. Forming ones own theories, making assumptions, thinking critically and assessing ones knowledge on a particular subject or topic such as grammar is much better than repeated lower order thinking practice.

Response to Breakfast, Bumper Stickers and Beyond

How important is grammar really??  The first point made in this article tackles that question. Grammar is described as the 'rules' that make a sentence not a string of words, but a structure capable of communicating meaning" regardless of context.  This hits home for me. I am often one of those people who cares more about the content than the mechanics simply because I am going into special education. However I realize that if words are so poorly spelled and grammatical errors are so numerous it may be hard to understand the content. Thus I have resigned and decided to take up more stock in the importance and necessity of good grammar.

One thing I had not thought of before was the idea that piece of work had its own set of grammar and rules. Each one varied and each one is unique.Grammar in Facebook posts are going to be much different than the grammar used in a research paper. It is important to not only give students the eye to see this but to also teach them what type of grammar to use when. We don't teach this so that our students avoid error but to show them how rich and complex our language can be.

I loved the cereal box analogy in which each cereal box represented a different "goal" if you will. One was concerned about calories and fiber intake, while the other was more concerned with finding the toy inside and yet a third was the deliciousness of the overall cereal. This gave a great example for students to look at their writing in this way. Who s my audience? Whats my point? What am I trying to sell? These are all questions students should be asking themselves when they write. This is definitely an analogy I will use in my own classroom someday. It gives a real world  example of how this is actually used. It also gives students something to compare to and really think about how well they are doing with this.

Well I know this post was a little all over the place but I mainly wanted to highlight on what I enjoyed and learned from this article. I am also fighting a cold and my brain is also a little scrambled right now. 

Response to Romano CTW 9-11

I really enjoyed this reading simply because he gave so many great ideas and creative ways of teaching. He showed many examples of getting our students to think outside the box, dig deep into their own creativity and passions and write some really awesome works.

The beginning of this reading is very inspiring, it starts off with Romano teaching Sandburgs "Jazz Fantasia". His students aren't at all excited and the reasoning they give is that they don't like jazz, so Romano has his students make up their own "fantasia" poems but makes it center around their favorite type of music. I love this idea because it is creative and it allows students to relate to literature but also make it their own.

Also right after that activity he talks about having his students poems published in the local newspaper, how awesome is that?? It connects and builds up the community, it gives students an audience to write for and it allows them to be recognized for their hard work and creativity.

He also created this activity where students had mini "interviews if you will with other authors or had other authors have discussions together and narrate how that would go. I really liked how he really made it his goal to separate the gap between his students and the authors whose works they were studying. He really wanted them to understand and know the background of each other and put themselves in the authors shoes.

I also really appreciate the time he puts into making his students have confidence in themselves in terms of writing. He sees and appreciates the value in that, he knows the wonders it can do for students and their writing.