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?

Chapters 10, 11, and 12

In these few chapters I'd like to point out one concept that I really feel passionate about. When it talked about conferencing with a writer one on one, I saw the point of letting the child know one thing they did well. A couple of the phrases that can be used are "One strength I notice about your writing is, or so one thing I notice that you do well as a writer is..." I feel so strong about beginning with a positive in a conference with a teacher, because as a child I can hardly recall moments where my teacher did this. Conferences began with the problem and how to fix that problem. After these types of meetings there really was no way you could come out of them feeling positive about yourself as a student in school. If you begin with the positive at least the child has something to remember, and maybe say...."well I need work on this, however the teacher did say that I was really excelled when it came to this." Next, when working on fixing a problem in writing, I also feel it's best to use the student's work as the example. If I were to use an example of something the student did wrong from an old paper I have in my records, I feel the instruction may be dismissed. But since the work and ideas flowed from this particular student, then they are more likely to understand and connect, and also see how to fix the area they are struggling with. I also agreed with the idea of group conferences which I believe I touched in a little in my previous blog. If the actual lesson was previously taught, and I as a teacher notice a few students who are still having trouble, say adding periods to the end of sentences. There is no need to teach the entire lesson again, but I see it would be more sufficient to conduct a group conference. So in a way I'm kind of killing two birds with one stone, I'm not taking valuable class time away from all students, and I'm still almost giving an individual lesson to a smaller group of students. Which allows for more one on one time.

Chapters 7, 8, & 9

Being a preservice teacher, I'm finding out more and more about teaching everyday. I've heard the term mini-lesson used lightly throughout my educational career, but I've not really had a 'lesson' on mini-lessons. After learning about them, I find them to be great! I remember the video we watched in class with the small group of students were not grasping the concept of using quotation marks in dialogue. While the class was working on individual work, the teacher took a small group of students aside with her, and presented a mini-lesson on using quotations in dialogue. This was a great example of using a mini lesson, because instead of either working one on one with students or reteaching an entire lesson on using quotation marks to the entire class which is time consuming, a short ten minute lesson can be useful to just tie up a few loose ends and adressing only the student's who are struggling. Also, I really liked the idea of using student writings as an example! What a great idea!!! When I have a conference with a student who is doing well in a specfic craft, I can create an overhead of his or her work and use it as an example to the class after I use the example I create. I believe this would be a great way to not only to boost the morale of that particular student, but maybe by using an example of another student it would be easier for the class to understand since it was created by a student of their level. Next, I feel that observations and conferences is one of the best ways to work and improve a student. I think a great example of using a conference would be when they complete an individual writing and there are a few words that are unclear to the teacher, then they can use the conference to maybe draw on what the student is doing to create these types of spellings or ideas etc..

Teaching More Descriptive Writing

After reading this chapter, I found it so interesting that there are so many techniques to teaching writing. Having taken so many writing courses, I guess all of the different techniques that I have developed to make my writing style my own has just become latent knowledge that I recall every once in a while when I'm writing. The one example that I really liked the most in this reading was the idea of using the five senses in creating better writing. First, it's a standard that children need to learn their five senses, so this is a great way to incorporate two different subjects into one over the same topic. I saw that using the topic of a beach is a great way to allow students to really explore all five senses. Their descriptions could range anywhere from the sound of seagulls, to the taste of the salty water, to the sight of the vast and never ending ocean, to the feel of the hot sand beneath their toes. The options are endless! Also, I found that with with just the small writing example that we were given in class that there were so many options on how to help this student in writing! However, I would have liked to know just exactly what order is best to use when presenting these ideas. I know that it would be too intense to just hand a student a list of all of these examples, or to present them into one lecture. So, this is why I would like to know is....After I examine the student's writing do I just pick which one I think they need to elaborate on more? Or is there a sequence to these different specific crafts that we have been presented with?

Coffee Shop Literacy Dig...

While I sat there for thirty minutes in the coffee shop I felt uneasy. I wondered if anyone knew that I was watching them. I do not believe I have ever just sat in a public place and deliberatly listened to someones conversation. Seeing that it was the first week of school, there were many college kids inside the coffee shop just talking. Very few were actually studying, with the exception of a few people on the outside. The noise level inside the facility was a lot louder than normal I thought. The time of day was later in the afternoon, which is one of the factors of the noise level I believed. Also, the fact that many students have almost none of very few studying to accomplish. The coffee shop atmosphere made you relax. There were giant, plush couches for one to sit upon. Which is where most of the people there that were talking about miscellanious topics, such as one girls wedding, professors, and class schedules, were sitting. However, there were actual tables with chairs spread throughout the coffee shop as well. Which allowed for a more formal meeting type setting or single tables with one chair that would allow for a studying or reading type setting. I feel that the coffee shop was set up this was to allow a place for everyone and their interests. However, I have not and still probably will not go their if I ever needed to study, due to the loud noises by the coffee shop's machienes and the closeness of the couches, tables, and chairs. Which for me personally would not allow me concentrate fully on my task at hand.

Developing Spelling Strategies...

CHIEKCSEROS?! (Circus) Wow!!! In my few years of student teaching I had never seen such an elaborate spelling before. I found this article enjoyable to read, due the fact that it addressed several points about spelling that I had never even thought of. Well to be honest, I had not heard of these techniques. I recall in my personal elementary school days, receiving a spelling list of twenty words a week, memorizing them, then being able to spit them back out on a piece of paper. If I missed more than the required amount, I had to take the test again on Friday, however, if I received a perfect score on the first test, I didn't have to take the next spelling test and was allowed to read a book while the Friday test was being given. What I found most interesting in this article was the dicussion on Alison and Erica. Being a pre-service teacher, I would have believed that it would have been unacceptable or maybe looked down upon is a better way to phrase it, for the girls to be asking each other how to spell words, because it is most likely that the words are going to be spelled incorrectly in the end. I would've thought that it would've been better to look the word up in a reliable source to see the correct spelling, but thanks to this article I see that yes, the spellings were still incorrect, but atleast the girls were collaborative in their spellings. Therefore, they both were learning and not doing as I had done as a student, which was just spitting the words back out from memory. Now they have a much deeper understanding of not only the words they are trying to spell, but a greater understanding of spelling as a whole!

That's Online Writing Article...

Well, after reading this article I could say that I have learned a lot. I guess you could call me old fashioned or at least that's the way that feel likenow, because I have never "blogged" nor heard of blogging in my life! But technology is always changing, and I can not become one of them stubborn people who refuse to try new things. So now the real focus of this blog should be the article...
"That's online writing, not boring school writing":Writing with blogs and the Talkback Project.
First, I found it very interesting that IU is using this technology to teach preservice teachers. I love this idea!! I find that the more I am around children and classrooms as a preservice teacher myself, the more I feel prepared for having my own classroom in the future. And with a busy class and extra curricular schedule it is sometimes difficult to get into a real classroom and work with students on a daily/weekly/ or even monthly schedule! Also, I would like to address the fact that my generation is reliant on technology and that pen and paper is becoming more and more old fashioned in a way. From personal experience, I know that when I am forced to write something on a sheet of paper I feel useless and uninspired, however if I am given a computer and say for instance, this new blog I'm working on, I find it much easier to write! I know that if I am this way, then the generation below me is even more reliant on technology, and a piece of paper and pencil is probably unknown to them! Therefore, if teachers of today and tomorrow make a valid effort to keep up with the changing technology that is popular to their student's, the words "take our your journals, it's time for another journal entry," then a loud groan from the pupils should never be heard again!!

Be339

This is my official first blog ever...
Testing 123