Prompt: After reading the course syllabus and the assigned readings, write about goals for your learning in the course. In what type of school and community context do you hope to teach? How can this course help you prepare for that context or other contexts where you might find yourself teaching? What do you want to learn about literacy instruction?
My main goal, like most people, is to do my best in the course. In the past, I feel like I have short changed myself by not doing the readings in my TE courses. Essentially, by skipping my readings, I am missing out on information that is going to help me becoming a better educator and an advocate for my future students and parents. So one goal of mine is to not miss more than two readings per this section in the course.
Another course goal of mine is to really hone in on teaching strategies that will benefit different types of learners in my class. I am a firm believer in the idea that every student can learn, just in a different way. I am looking forward to learning about new technologies that will help my students become better speakers, writers, and readers!
I hope to teach in an urban community, preferably in failing schools. There are so many opportunities that failing schools within urban environments offer. There are opportunities to make a difference and help students realize their potential despite what the media or other areas of society say. The teaching strategies I learn in the course will help me to assist the various learning styles and struggles that exist within failing schools. I will use these strategies to help students get to where they need to be academically. A new perspective on standard based teaching will help me develop creative lesson plans that will make learning engaging and enjoyable for my students.
As far as literacy instruction, I hope to learn how to better teach students who speak English as a second language.
My goals for this course are to learn how to effectively teach language arts to my students. Language arts is my concentration and so it's important for me to teach my students the importance of literacy. I would like to make language arts as interesting and fun for my students as I can. Because reading is such a difficult task for students I would like to at least make it fun and engaging for them. I plan on teaching inane urban area and I'm kinda excited for that. Hopefully this course will teach me the tools I need to teach language arts and how to make it interesting for students.
ReplyDeleteIn my classroom, I have noticed the use of text talk, book talk, and response-centered talk. For example, on Fridays, my mentor teacher facilitates a discussion on a topic in the Scholastic News, which is a magazine that discusses topics in social studies, but integrates language arts and science. Last week, the magazine was about Groundhog Day. My MT would read the article and ask/answer questions throughout. At the end, she would ask some comprehension questions in the form of a game (i.e. boys versus girls) to check for understanding. This can be considered an instructional conversation as well as response-centered talk because the teacher prompts questions and the students respond and ask questions about things that they are curious about.
ReplyDeleteIn order for response-centered talk to take place, the teacher has to ask open-ended questions. As far as the students who do not participate actively, it is useful when my mentor teacher uses popsicle sticks with each student’s name on them to pull and get a response from every student at random. This way, students don't feel as much pressure to raise their hand since everyone has to respond and no one is singled out. Are there other techniques that you or your mentor teacher uses to get some of the non-active students to participate?