Student choice

Allowing students to choose their own reading material or how they want to present information can bring to mind images of a chaotic classroom. However, in Chapter 18, written by Richard L. Allington from the book, Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise Into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert E. Probst and Linda Rief; allowing students to choose from a set list provides greater student interest in the material.
Having a list of material from a student to choose from, or a list of ways in which to present information narrows the field of options for the student and creates some uniformity in the classroom. Students get the benefit of choosing material they are interested in and the teacher enjoys more engaged students and less chaos than if everyone just chose something they liked form an endless array of choices. Also, by having a list of choices, the teacher ensures that students have an opportunity to control what they are reading and the teacher knows that no matter what they pick, they will be learning the same content as the other students.
Allowing students to pick from a variety of materials to read or use in class is an excellent way to jigsaw information. There might be interesting and important aspects in every piece of literature on the list, but it would be difficult to read them all in a class. This allows students to become experts on their material and learn from other students what other texts had to offer. Choice is important in the classroom so that students feel that they are collaborating with the teacher as a team of learners. This is also a method of culturally responsive teaching, each student can choose something that is relevant to their lives and that they are interested in. The selections may also allow them to demonstrate their prior knowledge or a skill that they might have.

Nonstop writing

Nonstop writing is a simple idea. Ask students to write for a given amount of time without stopping, keep the ink flowing! I came across this idea for writing in the classroom in Chapter 4 of the book, Content-Area Writing Every Teacher's Guide, by Harvey Daniels, Steven Zemelman and Nancy Steineke. I like this approach to pre-writing because there is no right or wrong answer. There is no set amount a student should write and it doesn't even have to make sense to the reader. The teacher gives a prompt and students write about whatever comes to mind when they think of that word, then connections to that word, until time is up. Usually, the final thoughts are pretty distant from the initial prompt word, but that is the idea in nonstop writing. Get all the thoughts down on paper.
I recall doing this activity a few times in grade school and high school. I did not see much value in it because we never did anything with it. It would have been interesting to see where other people went with the prompt or to take an idea from the nonstop write and explore it futher. It is important to use the product of a writing strategy in the classroom so that students do not see it as simply an exercise in releasing ink from their pens.

Podcast for Reader's Writer's Project

http://dethom00.podomatic.com/entry/et/2007-07-04T19_02_45-07_00

This is a link to the podcast I made for students entering a Spanish I class.

Writing Storyboard

In Chapter 13 written by Linda Rief, of the book, Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert E. Probst and Linda Rief; I found an instructional tool that would not only help me, but be of use to students as well.
One of the more frustrating aspects of writing for me is the order in which ideas should be presented in a piece. This often leads to many pieces of paper crumbled on the floor next to my desk until I find the order that fits the thesis best. In Chapter 13, it suggests the use of a "tellingboard" to draft a story. This is a wonderful way to be able to get ideas down onto paper without the permanence of words. Pictures often convey more meaning than words, additionally, it is easier to move a picture than a paragraph on a piece of paper.
I think that this idea may be of use to students because they are able to change their writing around without having to worry about changing sentences to fit the new thought arrangement. I think this idea also has some implications for visual learners as they are able to see what their story will look like, and use pictures to guide their writing. Being able to pick and choose what to move around before writing is easy because it allows for fast revising and deletion. Similarly, if more detail or another part of a story is necessary, ideas can be added with a picture on a piece of paper which can easily be moved to fit the piece.
This strategy could easily be augmented through the use of ToonDoo. This site allows students to quickly create cartoon images that could be used in a "tellingboard." The benefit of a tool such as this is that students do not have to worry about artistic ability and can add words as necessary. Cells can be printed and moved around on a tellingboard or easily deleted and changed within ToonDoo.

I believe....

I believe that writing in the classroom is empowering. Students who are given the opportunity to write about something that is important to them are given an outlet with which to voice their beliefs. This can be empowering for students as they are able to find out what matters to them and tell others through their writing. This is also an opportunity for students who do not feel comfortable speaking out in class to express their ideas.
Writing is important to practice. It is not something that comes naturally to most people and like all other skills, such as soccer or clogging, it must be practiced. Writing is multifaceted. For this reason it is important to try many types of writing and practice them as more than one type of writing will be used throughout one's life. Learning to write in many ways is augmented by reading different types of texts. As readers become more confident with understanding and taking apart texts to uncover meaning, they are also finding ideas and styles that they might want to try in their own writing.
Writing gives students a voice. This voice needs to be explored through reading and writing and writing and writing. It is in the process that students learn what is important to them and they find a style that suits them. Writing can evolve as the student grows and finds that other styles suit them better, this is found through practicing writing. Being able to grow as a writer is empowering because it is evidence of having discovered one's voice as it changes over time. I believe that writing in the classroom is empowering because it gives students the opportunity to learn something about themselves and it is an outlet for their ideas.

Writing

When I think of the writing assignments I completed in high school and even college, most of them had something in common. The main goal of the writing was not to explore an idea, but to learn the process of writing. This process was painfully slow for me. It took a long time to learn how to write clear cohesive papers in the correct format. While learning how to do this, I wrote a lot of papers answering boring questions and making comparisons between foils in a book.
In Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise Into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert E. Probst and Linda Rief; Chapter 12, written by Donald M. Murray talks about writing assignments and writing in general. One of the points made is that students are asked to write about things that do not relate to their lives and that they are not interested in. This is directly responsible for the quality of writing that students produce. When students are interested and engaged in a writing topic, the quality of writing increases. Similarly, when students are asked to write about something in which they have little interest, this is too is reflected in the writing. This is good to keep in mind as I think about writing assignments for students. Keeping the topics interesting, fresh and relevant will yield more interesting writing as students write because they are engaged instead of simply required.

House On Mango Street book trailer

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=2001877134014909447&hl=en

I had no idea that making a book trailer with MovieMaker would be so easy! I think this is a great replacement for the more traditional book report. The students would enjoy it more and I think they would get just as much out of a book trailer as a book report. Although, there would have to be more structure as to what to include in the trailer. For a foreign language classroom, this would be an interesting way to do a report on a country. It could be used for a video tour of the country or a city, instead of a more traditional brochure. Additionally, I think that by posting work on the Internet, the quality of work is increased. Students who know that others may see and comment on their work may be more enthusiastic about a project and do their best work if they know it may be viewed by anyone on the planet!
The most challenging part of the whole experience was downloading the video to the Internet and subsequently creating the link in my blog. I thought that the book trailer could be copied and pasted into the blog; evidently, this is not how it works. I did not realize how many movies were on sites such as video.google.com or youtube.com. What an interesting resource to use. There is plenty of educational material that can be found on both of those sites and many students are probably already familiar with those sites and the video making and downloading process.

Assessments

I understand that if one is teaching students how to think critically and interpret material they are given, that students will be able to perform well on high stakes tests and other standardized tests. I never took high stakes tests in high school and therefore do not have a clear understanding of what it is like for a teacher or student to have to work toward a single examination at the end of the year. However, I am concerned that multiple choice test and open response questions are not fully evaluating what a student can do. These skills are perhaps more easily taught and graded than other skills and that is why they are chosen, but many students may not perform well on these types of assessments because they are assessed on skills that they are not as good at. This is not to say that one cannot improve at taking multiple choice tests. Is this really a skill that is useful?
Time and energy in the classroom could be better spent in understanding rich content and technology than in learning how to take a test. Yes, there needs to be some sort of standard against which students can be measured. However, instead of punishing students, perhaps the curriculum needs to be reviewed. Maybe teaching out of a box isn't the best way to teach and organic lessons with real world applications would not only be more engaging, but also more rewarding for both student and teacher.

Culture Clash

After reading Chapter 16, "Building Academic Success with Underachieving Students", written by Yvette Jackson and Eric J. Cooper, from the book, Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert E. Probst and Linda Rief; I was struck by how simple the premise of the chapter is. The authors are driven to help all students know success in school and do not let stereotypes or a student's past academic career determine what a student can do. The goal of a teacher should be to get students to care about a subject by seeing how it fits into their lives. How can a teacher do this without getting to know her or her students?
Students who have teachers who care about students and have high expectations for them, are more likely to do well in class. If a teacher does not take the time to find what interests students or teach in a way that draws students in, how can the student find motivation to study the material? It is important that teachers learn what their students are motivated by and find ways to integrate their interests into the classroom. When students find that they share a link with the material, the classroom is more exciting and students experience success.

Vocabulary

Wow! I just finished listening to some of the pod casts on the Voice of Vocab website. I had never thought of using vocab in that way before. The students were using the vocabulary in original sentences and conversations that might actually occur on a daily basis. They had evidently written a script for the podcast, but were using the words in sentences that pertained to them and their life. A definition and part of speech is given for each word, this clarifies why the speaker is using the word in a given context.
This is a dynamic way to think about using vocabulary. Students are not simply handed a list of words at the beginning of the week and expected to have them memorized by rote on Friday. They are given an opportunity to use the words and make them important in their life by using them in real world contexts. Also, this is an interesting approach to teaching vocab because it does not necessarily take up more time during class, but it allows auditory learners to benefit from hearing the word multiple times with the definition and a sentence while they are studying. I think this is a great use of not only pod casting, but also of vocabulary words. This would be interesting to implement in a Spanish classroom where students may want to hear a Spanish speaker pronounce their vocabulary words and use them in sentences. The possibilities are endless.

Read alouds

I am not sure what to think about using read alouds in the classroom. I remember when I was a student, anytime a teacher read to me I would either read ahead or stop paying attention and wonder why I could not read the text to myself. Perhaps this strategy is more usefully employed by reading a text to students that students do not have in front of them. This way students are interested in what you are reading aloud as they cannot read ahead at their desk. I think this strategy is a useful way to bring text other than the textbook into the classroom. By reading an article or picture book that supports the content of the class, the teacher also demonstrates that what they are learning in the classroom is important outside of the classroom.
I am curious to see what kinds of texts are available for foreign languages that would relate to the content of the classroom. These texts would have to do with the culture of a given place or the vocabulary that is studied in a given unit. Also, what kinds of texts would be appropriate in a secondary classroom? Children's books are available in Spanish, but are there texts available that deal with the vocabulary being taught or the content of a unit? I would like to be able to use some Spanish language children's literature in the classroom, but I think it would be more effective if small groups each read a book instead of me reading a book aloud. This way they could pause over vocabulary that might be unfamiliar.

Podcast

http://spanishartgroup.podomatic.com/rss2.xml

This is the podcast from our group discussion of, Chew On This, written by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson.
I had never participated in any sort of podcasting or any other form of audio recording for use in an academic or global forum. I think this is an interesting form of technology that will be useful in the classroom. As students understand podcasting and might find it useful to create their own for use while studying later.
The use of socratic seminars, Kiva and literary circles are important tools for discussion. It does not matter which tool is used, but rather how much is prepared before the discussion. The class needs to have read, observed and listened to a variety of resources before starting a discussion. This will give each individual more information to use in the discussion and will be useful in supporting view points. It is important to have someone moderate the discussion so that it is moving forward, and not focusing on one point for the entire discussion. It is important that all students be given the opportunity to speak during a discussion. This might best be achieved by having several small group discussions occur simultaneously, or by having a few students in the discussion, while other students observe, pose question and take notes on the discussion.

Magic Realism

While reading Chapter 6 by Teri S. Lesesne, from the book Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert Probst and Linda Rief; I was interested to find the topic of magic realism. I had encountered this type of writing in Spanish literature and movies that I had watched in college and was excited to read about the use of it in young adult literature. Magic realism is common in Spanish literature, but I had never heard of it's employment in literature from the US. Will young adult readers be confused when a story suddenly takes an unexpected and logically improbably turn? Or, will they be excited to find literature that makes the impossible seem real? One of the more interesting features of magic realism is that it requires the reader to pay close attention to details as the story unfolds. If one lets their mind wander while reading they may not understand why various events are happening that would not happen outside of the text. Another facet of magic realism is that it leaves a lot of interpretation up to the reader. Symbolism is an important part of magic realism which requires interpretation; however, there is no one way to correctly do this. Each reader, therefore, may take something different away from the text as a result.

Language Barrier

After reading Chapter 7, Mastering the Art of Effective Vocabulary Instruction, by Janet Allen, from the book, Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert Probst and Linda Rief; I found a connection to readers who did not understand the words that were on the page in front of them. This is not because I had read about them and now understood their plight of not being able to understand the main point of an essay because they did not reconize the vocabulary. I recognized a similarity with readers who do not understand the words on a page and myself because when I was learning Spanish, I rarely knew very many of the Spanish words on a given page. I struggled with comprehension initially, and did what I thought was required of me to read the text, I sounded words out and looked for words that I knew that could help decode the sentence. Thankfully, there were many tools employed by teachers that helped all of us struggling Spanish speakers to learn the vocabulary and the definitions each word had in different contexts. I eventually learned more and more about the language and root words and feel confident listening, speaking, writing and reading in Spanish, although there are always new words to be learned! I think that it is most important to give students an opportunity to discuss words in class and help them see the difference between using a good word and a great word.
Also in this chapter were various techniques for assessing a students' understanding of vocabulary. The idea of Concept Circles found in this chapter, is a creative way to understand relationships between words. Spanish teachers could easily incorporate this into vocabulary instruction as a tool for comparisons between similar words and a way for students to group words from a particular chapter. This has to be more engaging and useful than rote memorization of a list of Spanish words with the English translation next to them. As students learn a new language or new words in a language they already speak, it is important to have a schema in which they can place the word and hopefully be able to use it in the future.

Engaging the Learner

Chapters 4 and 15 were relevant to a class I took in the Spring, Developing Cross Cultural Competence. In this class we spent a lot of time thinking about our own cultures and how those affect our teaching. Additionally, we spent time talking about the view points our students will have and how to be sensitive to their cultures so that all cultures are celebrated and included. These two chapters illustrated cultural sensitivity without addressing it as such. I noticed the use of discussion replacing the typical teacher driven lecture, use of multiple types of texts and encouragment of indvidual interest exploration. All of these practices are consistent with methods that are used by culturally responsive teachers. I imagine that the classrooms of Ellin Oliver Keene, author of chapter 4 and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Michael W. Smith authors of chapter 15 all have diverse classrooms where all cultures are celebrated and supported through the methods used to teach them. Students feel alienated when they cannot connect with the literature of a class or the discussion of a class. The first step toward understanding is engaging in a topic.

Professional careers as an extension of school

As a result of reading chapter 10 by Jim Burke of the book, Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert Probst and Linda Rief; I was able to think back to what I thought about life after school.
I thought that after college I would be done with school, learning and writing. This was quickly dispelled. The same habits that make a good student also make a good professional. These habits need to be polished, but more than likely, a student is laying the foundation for their professional career when they are in elementary school. Learning does not end with formal schooling. This chapter served as a reminder that one cannot rest on their laurels of having attained a place at the front of the classroom with the textbook that has all the answers in the back. This is place to delve more deeply into content with students and show, that like them, you too are learning. This type of deep thinking/learning is difficult to do by oneself and is augmented by the research and input from others. This makes the idea of group projects much more important as a tool for preparing for the future. As students learn how to work with different people, they are gaining valuable experience for future use. Although students may no longer be studying for a test at the end of the month; they will be studying for a much greater purpose, job security. Those employees that are most like students in their consumption of information and research of ideas are those that are going to have the greatest value to their organization.

Chapter 1

The first chapter of the book, Adolescent Literacy Turning Promise into Practice, written by Kylene Beers and edited by Kylene Beers, Robert Probst and Linda Reif, addressed many of the concerns I have about the future of education. I quickly found that I am not alone in thinking that it is important to address underlying societal issues while working to increase the literacy of young people.
This chapter made me think about what is going to happen to the students who graduate from high school and have learned how to choose the correct answer on a test. Will these students have the necessary skills to survive in a climate that expects them to know how to answer open-ended questions? What about the students who do not graduate from high school? Where were they failed? I think an interesting study would be to interview people who chose not to complete high school. what could have been done differently to encourage them to stay in school? The answers to this question would surely yield useful insight into the needs of students today and would possibly allow changes to be made to reduce the high school dropout rate. I am thankful that all citizens have access to free K-12 education and that it is worthwhile to find ways to engage all students in school.