April 12th Class

Today we worked and discussed an invitation project that we're going to present next week. My group is doing a project over pollution in the ocean dealing with oil drilling specifically. I've noticed a real stress in invitation lessons from my teachers this semester. I think they are another great way to get your students interested in your lessons! Just like the MGRP. Half of the trouble with teaching is just getting students interested in your lesson. So what my group did was we provided them with four different examples of activities they can do to further their knowledge on pollution caused by oil drilling. Our activities are as follows...

Activity 1

Still Image Poem

Take a look at the different pictures of animals

Pick one that you connect with

Now write a poem about how you think the animal feels or what they would say

In the end we will share our poems with each other

Activity 2

Debate

Pick if you are for or against oil drilling

Now take a few minutes to come up with the pros or cons of the situation (oil drilling)

You can use the handout to aid you in coming with some ideas

Now have a debate with the rest of your classmates defending your position for two minutes on whether or not you are for or against oil drilling

Activity 3

Current Event Connections

Search the internet for a recent current event dealing with oil drilling

Read the current event to yourself

As you read through the article make notes right next to what you read and make a connection to or your thoughts on each passage, sentence, or word

For example: Article says: “11 people are missing after a recent oil rig explosion”

Note: I remember when the twin towers in New York fell and a lot of people were missing too

Activity 4

Picture of oceans

Take a sheet of blank paper

Draw two pictures side by side.
One picture should be a picture of what you think an ocean would be like without pollution and the other picture should be what you think an ocean looks like with pollution.


Overall I think through all of these different types of invitations the students are sure to connect with one of them and enjoy producing one of them, so all in all...our mission as teachers is once again accomplished!

April 5th Class

Today was an interesting class. We were given these McDonalds toys and we were told to make a movie using them. Wow! Being 21, you would think this would be an easy task, but oh no! It was actually challenging! Haha. Trying to make a giant bird, and some kind of other animal look like they are alive using only a video camera and your new knowledge of what makes a good video is a lot tougher than it sounds like. However, I found this to be so much fun and I think it would be a great idea to use with students. Using technology is always a great way to get students interested in your lesson in the first place, just because it's something they're familiar with and it's not just the normal pen and paper type of lesson. Dont get me wrong though, those can be meaningful too, but sometimes getting to their level works out pretty well too. I would also like to reilliterate what Cassy said in her blog when she said "Growing up in a technology generation I think were going to be teaching kids that are even more advanced with technology then we are. Keeping up to date on all the stuff is important because you will need to be able to teach them new things that they don’t already know. Also this activity isn’t to advanced that students with little technology background could still participate without any trouble." I believe this is so true, because of the fact (that I hate to admit) but I one day as a teacher will be 'out of the loop' so to say. So as teachers we really do need to keep up with the latest trends of technology even as crazy as the new technology may become!

MGRP Reflection...

Woohoo! It's done! What a great experience. I was so worried about presenting my project to the class, however the way it was handled was fabulous! Instead of getting up one by one in a long drawn out presentation of countless well....presentations, a group of students set up their posters around the room, and the students that were not presenting made their way around the room listening to the presentations of all the other students. What I liked about this technique was the fact that 1.) it took away some of the stress of having to be in front of the entire class 2.) I feel like I really grasped the material I was presenting because I had to keep saying it over and over again and 3.) when I was listening to someone else's presentation I feel I was more in tune with what they were saying because it was more like a one on one conversation rather than just another student in front of the class blabbing again and me wondering when they were going to be done and we can move on to the next one. Overall, this was a great experience and I would recommend this type of research paper to all other teachers out there!

Chapter 5 and 7 of MGRP

Chapter 5 discussed ways to help students in creating subjects for writing that truly come to life. One example of doing so included a way of "showing, not telling". I remember my teachers ALWAYS telling me this! Cera you need to show me, not tell me. And believe me now I do! Tons of my papers begin with an approach I like to call the Cera method. I think of something in my life that correlates with what I am writing about, and I either make up a story, or I use one of my own. I do this just so the reader is not bored by the first paragraph so I can really draw them into my writing. I mean...how many papers do teachers read that the first paragraph is just a bunch of facts?! Would you be interested in reading the rest of it? No? Me either! This is why creating a fun story in the beginning or at least a story that is relateable is a great way to draw in the readers. Also, by showing and not just stating the facts, it makes the story easier to understand.
I feel like in a lot of these chapters, they're pretty much plain and simple information, but I feel like they're so plain and simple, that as a future teacher I tend to forget these simple instruction techniques.

Allen-Chapter 4

I believe Allen is right on point when he said to have children bring in their favorite songs to work with poetry. Btw...I love writing poetry! Haha. Music has been the center of my life since I was old enough to communicate. My parents had me enrolled in piano, violin, and flute lessons. Dance class, acting class, and vocal lessons. I can never get enough music in my life! Everyone has a favorite song...even if they do not like music. Music can produce emotions that other things can not. And as teachers using the lyrics of their favorite song we can show them that songs are just like poetry in a sense. In Dr. Compano's class we have went through poetry a few times, and what I really am going to remember from that lesson is that he would read the poem to us out loud, then we would disect the poem so we had a good understand of it, then he would tell us to write our own poem. But the kicker is that there was no requirements or structure for the poem. It was just a poem about say...a time you did something you knew you shouldn't of done. This is wonderful!!! I remember being in school and we would learn what a haiku was, then we had to create one, no ideas were given, it was just, "ok class" now write a haiku the way we just learned it. That is so limiting to your students, well...I know it was to me, and I enjoyed poetry...except when it was done in this manner.

Multigenre Research Paper

WOW!!! I have never had to do something like this kind of paper before! I have never even heard of one until now, while I am a little overwhelmed by the amount of work that is required to complete this project I can say it is a great tool getting your students to dig deeper into their research! By implementing these different types of genres into the research it has helped me to really take a different view on the topic. When I am creating the different genres I have had to think like a student who has dyslexia, take the opinion of a teacher who has a student that is dyslexic, and think/feel how a parent of a dyslexic child would feel. I would have never had these opportunities to really gain this emotional connection to my research have these requirements been made. I also really like the fact that it is up to student to decide which genres that they feel best suit the project they are working on. I am definately going to keep this in mind if/when I ever do a research paper in my future class.

Research Paper...

This week I started doing my research for multi-genre research paper. My topic is whether or not dyslexia is a literacy disorder or a disease. In my opinion at this current moment I think it is a disorder just because the word disease reminds me of something like cancer or leukemia. I am having a little bit of trouble finding information from teacher journals right now during my search, because of lot of the information I am finding is dealing with doctoral journals. By doing this research I hope to not only solve my initial question of disease vs disorder, but I also hope to gain some knowledge on how to deal with students that I might have in the future that have dyslexia. I feel this would be a great help to me in my future seeing that I am not in the teaching all learners program here at IU, so I really will not have a lot of exposure to learning strategies on how to best work with students who have this type of learning disorder....or maybe disease I should say?