PLT…Blogging…What is all this?
As a new Graduate School student in January, I sat in EDUC 662 excited and nervous at the same time. The course was one that interested me and I was excited to learn about the different assignments we were going to do in the class. As Julie talked about PLT’s, I was excited because it would give me the chance to meet new people since I did not know anyone in the class. I often remind my students that our class is like a family and that we need to stick together and support one another throughout the learning process. As I began my PLT for this class I felt like we were a “family”, there to support one another, get advice from one another, and give advice to one another. Not only did we get all of this from our PLT’s, we also got this from other students in the class through blogging. I can remember sitting there as Julie talked about blogging with the most confused look on my face. I knew what blogging was…but only on myspace and facebook, but not when it came to education. I was excited to get home and get my blogging site going so I could see what I had been missing. Each week I posted about what I had read. I liked this opportunity because there was no right or wrong answer to your blogging. I was able to write how I felt about what I had read, watched, heard in class, etc. I enjoyed including personal experiences in my blogging because I felt like that helped me to make it more personal. I enjoyed reading the blogs left from people in my PLT as well as from everyone in the class. This gave me a chance to not only read about personal opinions and experiences of my PLT’s, but also from many other professionals. Another thing that we did in our PLT groups was a group facilitation where we talked about something that we were having difficulties with either with our kidwatching kid or with another kid in our class. This gave us a chance to get opinions and suggestions from several different people. As we finished a facilitation or group assignment we talked about many different experiences we were having in our classroom. I enjoyed hearing stories about my group members experiences, getting advice and giving advice. I have to say that all aspects of this class have been a great learning experience for me. It has given me the chance to learn about literacy in a variety of ways and given me the chance to meet so many other great professionals.
Which program works best?
I think this is a question that any teacher that teaches reading asks themself. I think the answer to this question depends so much on the group of children you have at any particular time. The reading program that works the best is so much like you seating arrangement, schedule, groups, etc. What worked well with one group of students may not work well with the next group of children. What worked well with a group of students this year may not work well with the same group next year. In the county in which I work, all EC teachers are required to use reading mastery. I thought this was a great idea my first year teaching because it worked so well with my group of students but it has not worked well at all the past several years.
Chapter 9 talks about the Anna Plan reading Program. This is a program that sounds particularly interesting to me and something I think would work well. I like how it is a 4 day plan and they work with the group of children for 4 consecutive days, leaving the 5th day for planning. I feel like the structure is great and the children know what to expect each day. It is great that the programs covers several aspects of literacy such as reading, vocabulary, and writing.
What is causing the failure?
The video talks about how so many people blame failure on the child’s homelife. As a teacher, I see so many teachers, administrators, etc. blaming a child’s failure on the parent. I feel that as teachers, we need to look past pointing fingers at any certain person when it comes to failure. Fingers can be pointed at a variety of people/reasons such as race, economic status, disability, parent, teacher, religion, culture, language barrier, social differences, etc. As a special education teacher, where all of my students are delayed in all areas of achievement, I can honestly say that all of my parents value education and want to see their children succeed in school and be successful. They do what they can do as a parent to help their child be successful, but many of them are also delayed, so they need the extra help from us as teachers. This is where congruence comes into part and where educators, parents, administrators, community members, etc. need to work together to help the child be successful. One of the ladies in the video says, “I expect parents to know what we are doing in school”. I think it is important for parents to know what is going on in the classroom. Coimmunication is the key to this. Mnay teachers communicate through a website which is a wonderful way to communicate, but it is also important to remember that not all parents have access to the internet. Another important concept is to remember that just because parents know what is going on in the classroom does not mean that the parent understands what is going on.
EC or LEP?
I found the article, Teaching Reading to Early Language Learners, particularly interesting. The article talks about how research suggests that we can tell the difference between a learning disability and limited Enlish Profiiciency at an early age. As an exceptional education teacher, I have seen the difficulty in determining the difference betweent he 2 way to many times. Studies show that you can tell the difference even when children’s oral language skills are still developing. I would like to research these studies more to find more information about this because there have been lots of children that were sent on with the label of LEP and ended up huting in the later years because they actually had a learning disability.
What did she just say?
As a Chatham County teacher, where a large majority of our students speak spanish, I find myself sayign this quite often. Knowing very little spanish, I find it very hard to communicate with my students and parents that speak very little english. The video reinforces that as educators it is important that we allow and encourage the children’s native language. I have found having my ELL students that are bilingual help me communicate with the children that are not very helpful. This helps me with my spanish skills and the ELL students with there english skills. One way that we respect and acknowledge the spanish language in my classroom is having the ELL students take turns teaching our class a new spanish work eash day. This brings their culture into our classroom and the other students love it. They talk about the evaluation process in the video and how it can sometimes be hard to differentiate between a language barrier and a disability. As a middle school teacher that gives EOG’s, I have found it very disturbing that we require these ELL students to take a standardized test in the english language instead of their native language. How can we accurately measure what they know if they are not assessed in their native language? When this is done, may of these students recieve a 1 or 2 which is considered “failing”, but would they have made a 3 or 4 if they had been tested in their native language?
A What?
I can remember the confusion on my face and the confusion in my mind the first time one of my fellow teachers from asked me a question about a running record. I just said to her, “what in the world is a running record”? She then went into a long spill about how important they were in the younger grades and how it really helped her to assess the individual children. After talking to her about this, I decided that this may be something I may want to use with my middle school special education students. I borrowed one of her assessment packets to complete individual running records on my students and came to love them. I feel that it is a great way to see what level each of my individual students is on and what I should be focusing on with that individual child. It has helped me in my lesson planning and teaching in general.
Adding excitement to reading
In the reading, Repeated interactive read-alouds in preschool and kindergarten, they state that the most effective read-alouds are the ones in which the child is actively involved. Actively involved doesn’t mean just reading a book to the child, but involving them in the reading. This article is talking about how children understand vocabulary and comprehend the story or book more if they are actively involved versus just being read to. The article is focusing on preschoolers and kindergarteners, but i think this is somehting that is true for anyone. I remember my teacher reading novels to us in middle and highschool and her stopping after every chapter to discuss it and do a hands on project about the chapter. I always enjoyed this and it always helped me to comprehend what had been read to me better. From my experience, young children get excited when they are asked questions about what has happened in the book or asked to predict what is going to happen. Another thing that I find beneficial is talking about what they different words mean and then what they really mean and how they apply to their life. This article also talks about the benefits of repeated read alouds. It talks about different things that should be incorporated into each read aloud. I think the ideas suggested are something that really benefit a child, but you have to adapt them for your individual class and students. Some students may need day 1 to be broken up into 2 or 3 days so it would not be so overwhelming for them.
The love of writing as a class
The article, Using LEA with process writing talks about how learning to write compliments learning to read. It talks about how important individual and group writing instruction are. As a 5-8 special education teacher, I can guarantee that I am going to hear my students groan at least one time a day when I ask them to get their journals out. They always watch every step I make in order to know if we are going to do individual or group writing instruction. They enjoy putting their ideas together and dictating a story as a class, but hate putting the same ideas together and writing it individually. I like how the article suggests combining methods. In order to meet the middle school standard course of study and in order to prepare my students for the writing test I would have to make some adjustments to this strategy, but I feel that it is one that I will definitely try and use in my class. I think my students could benefit if they knew that they were going to write individually on a topic one day and then come back the next day and put everyones ideas together as one journal entry. My students struggle so much in spelling, so I tell them we are not worried about spelling when we write in our journal. We later go back and use the dictionary to check some of the words. Every year we spend several months putting together a book for the Young Author’s Book Competition and it is the one thing that my students look so forward to and really use their imagination to write this book.
Computers in a preachool classroom…are you crazy?
This is the questions I often get when teaching educational technology at the community college. I like how Barone, Mallette, and Xu state that the first step in getting children more actively engaged was to expose the children to Microsoft Word. I find this to be a very easy program and it introduces the children to the basics of a computer. Children can learn through play with Microsoft Word and it helps with letter and number recognitions, writing and reading words, sentences, and stories, using the drawing pad to draw pictures, and so many other basic skills. Once the child has become comfortablw with the computer then you can start introducing them to different software programs. Its ok if the words are spelled wrong or the sentences don’t make sense because they are getting the concept of print. I encourage my college students to just let the children play around on the computer and become familiar with it. I feel that the internet can be a wonderful resource for students. You can guide them through the process of finding information that you are learning about in your classroom such as the life cycle or a butterfly, plants, animals, etc. I do think ti is very importnat that the children are suppervised, but also allow them to do the research.
Teachers bringing recontextualixation to life
Aukerman man many vauable comments in the CALP article. I really liked his suggestions on bringing recontextualization to life. I find this section to be so valuable for me because I live and teach in a county that is very diverse and much of the population is spanish speaking children. The first suggestion is the one that jumps out to me the most. Being a special education teacher, I have to make sure that I learn all I can about each individual child and their disability. I often struggle with my 2 spanish speaking children because I find it easy to focus on their disability, but harder to focus on their language difference. I like the advise about listening slosely and asking questions. I have found it helpful that my 2 spanish speaking students take turns teaching my stusents, my assistant and I a new spanish word at least 3 times a week. This also gives us an opportunity to ask questions and listen to their comments. The one comment that I struggle with the most and will continue to work on is understanding the child. Even though both of mine know alot of english and I usually know what they are saying, I still don’t always understand what they are telling or asking me. Any suggestions on how to better understand what the child is saying or asking?
