Week 10

Sorry, I completely forgot to post this last week.

The best way to teach vocabulary at the grade level I am currently working in I believe would be to have students find words they don't know. This would provide some intrinsic motivation for students to allow them to learn words they want to know. So I would have students take notes of words as they read the chapter. Each student should find 5 words in each chapter. The students would then be responsible to first write a definition of what they believe the word means from the context and then write the dictionary definition for the words. Finally words that are unique and not chosen by others students so one list of each individual word could be written on a projector or the board and discussed.

New Literacies

When the project first began it admittedly started a little slow. It has been hard to first find podcast to collect. Since then things have started to progress quite nicely. We have began to find some nice podcasts that are very informational and interesting.

What I have begun to learn is technology is very fun. It is interesting and a blast to work with, however there always seems to be an initial scare with a new technology. This new literacies project and podcasting in general were particularly hard. Also Megan and I had some initial problems uploading podcast, but google reader has worked nicely and efficently for us now.

new literacies

I have loved learning my new technology.  I have been working on a scrapblog.  It is an online scrapbook.  You make pages with photos and stickers and text and all kinds of things.  It is so fun because each page you can try something new and use your creative juices.  

When I first started I thought that there would be new things to learn and figure out but I would be able to do it no problem.  But I did run into a few challenges.  It took me a little while to figure out how to get the photos and the stickers and all of that stuff actually onto my pages.  I tried clicking things, double clicking things, and so on.  Eventually I realized that you have to drag and drop what you want onto your page.  I actually had my sister play around with it and she figured it out for me.

Another challenge that I had was patience.  There are so many graphics and details on the scrapblog that it takes a little while for the action you want to be completed.  I would get really antsy waiting for new backgrounds or stickers to load.  It took me a while to just relax and not push the button 100 times before it loaded.

The last challenge I faced was actually publishing and viewing my scrapblog.  They gave me a link once it was published.  I viewed it but once I closed it I realized I didn't know the link.  I tried for so long to find the link to by blog.  After some time I thought it would just be easier to republish and save the link then.  

But overall, scrapblog is really user friendly.  There are really no tricks or hard things to do.  The website has done a really good job making things easy to figure out so that even children can make these.  They have everything you need right off to the side so that you do not need to fish through tons of menus to find what you want.  

So I finished my scrapblog and thought I should share my hard work with as many people as possible.  I decided to make a scrapblog about where I am from.  I took my I am from poem and turned it into a scrapblog.  

http://www.scrapblog.com/viewer/vw_full.aspx?sbid=1497652

week 10

I think that vocab is taught in book clubs by exposing students to new words and then having them find out what they mean.  We learn so many new words from reading.  For a lesson I would have students create a spot, either a piece of paper or a spot in a notebook.  While reading if they come upon a word that they do not know they will write it in the book along with the sentence that they found it in.  Then they will look it up and write the definition.  Then during book club they can all share the words they came across so that each student learns that word.  This will teach students to not be afraid of new words and it will help them expand their vocabulary.  

Week 9

This past week was a crazy experience. I began to substitute teach so I spent a great deal of time in the classroom over break. The week began a little rough as I taught in downtown to junior and seniors. It really made me realize classroom management skills. My approach had to be completely different to those students than the ones I normally work with at 5th grade in Okemos. However, I also got to see the other end of the spectrum at kindergarten on Friday. The students were awesome to work with and so excited to learn. After this week I really realize why I want to be a teacher. But, enough with this what I really want to mention is a few of the classroom ideas I saw.

The biggest thing I noticed as a substitute and as future teachers I believe we should realize is our own disciplinary procedures importance to a sub. It takes a great deal of time to become familiar with each teachers procedures before using them effectively. So what I suggest is as much explanation for procedure as can be offered. It nearly needs its own lesson plan. With effective procedures laid out, especially at the higher grade levels for you even if they are not necessary, a sub can be much more effective. Lesson plans are great and nice to teach. But you will always have the student trying to act out and who needs to be treated accordingly, setting the tone for the rest of the day.

Week 9

I think word walls are really good for students word identification. You can see exactly what words students do and don’t know. I also think running records are a good way to assess a students fluency because you can see what words or sounds give students the biggest trouble.

For a mini lesson for my book club I would have my group take turns reading paragraphs in the book. I would do a type of running record but disguise it by making them go around and read part by part. Then I would mark any words they had trouble with. I would use just one chapter, maybe even the first chapter because it is a good length.

Week 7

I just finished leading a small group book club in my class. Each week I would give them a section of the book to read and things to look for and come back with to talk about the next week. I was really worried that the students would not read or they wouldn’t want to really talk but I had such the opposite turnout. They always read and they always came back with material they wanted to talk about or questions they had. And the questions were really good. They were really thinking deep about why the author did certain things. I think the students really used their comprehension skills to understand what they were reading and then make connections.

Week 7

The Gibbons chapter was very interesting. I have seen things like the introduction where you read with missing pieces. However, I did find one thing. In paragraph form I could read the material, yet I struggled to comprehend the first to paragraphs. I was spending so much energy decoding the words that it was rather difficult to comprehend the first time I read the passage.

When reading this it also reminded me of the funds of knowledge article for the math portion of class which talked about how some student environments promote learning comprehension before phonics and other word and letter related things. Which would also need to be taken into account. I do really appreciate this chapter and will reference the ideas presented with things I encounter in the future. It is especially important that books don't go to far in assuming cultural things that can't be connected to by ELLs.