Jami's Post-Participation Week 4

Because I left class early due to being sick; I did not participate in the reading of the poems-so I am not able to write about that.

Emergent literacy begins at birth for all children and continues throughout their preschool years. Children are constantly interacting with print: books, papers, magazines, signs, etc. everyday of their lives. This helps them to learn and understand that they need to use language to express their ideas, thoughts and feelings. It helps chidlren early on in their development of speech and language and most importantly literacy. Teachers can prepare an environment to support literacy development by putting name tags on things in the classroom. They can learn the d-o-o-r spells door and they physically see what a door is. This helps them to relate words to actual objects that they come in contact with everyday. This is especially important for ELL’s. They are new to the English language and do not understand what words go with certain objects. It is also important to talk things through. When you are holding an item in your hand you should repeat what it is a couple of times and have the students repeat the words with you. This helps them again to visualize what a compass is. They hear and see it.As noted in the readings picture sequencing is important. It is an activity in which students can put pictures in order to tell a story. This again helps students to see the story, while not having to put specific words with it. There are many things that we as teachrs can do to promote emergent literacy of young children. Repitation of words, sticky notes with words or phrases, signs, posters, etc..

Jami’s Post on Discussions Week 3

While reading Janice Almasi’s article A New View of Discussion, I found that she made many wonderful points that I fully agree with and have never even thought of. She discusses the difference between a discussion and a recitation, and how much more beneficial a discussion can be. “Thus discussion supposes cognitive engagement to the extent that the participants are actively involved in a dialogic conversation with one another rather than passively reciting answers to questions that may not be personally meaningful” (31). This is so very true. In field I have noticed that when children are asked questions they give simple one word answers. This does not promote thinking between the students. They just rattle off answers and if they are incorrect than it doesn’t really matter. I think in the classroom we need to get students involved in questioning things on their own and formulating their own discussions between themselves with little help from the teacher. Students are constantly wondering about things so why not prompt them to discuss it among themselves. I have found that my CT does not prompt much discussion between the students. In fact, I have never seen the children have a discussion in the classroom. They are in second grade and should be able to come up with their own ideas and not have to sit in a recitation type setting all the time. Discussion will get the students thinking for themselves and interact with each other. They will begin to see that they can have meaningful conversations with each other. It will give them a chance to act as the teacher in a way by assuming the role as the facilitator, inquisitor, or evaluator. As I have observed children love to play the teacher role and I think my classroom would really enjoy having a discussion with each other about a book or something else they are working on in class.

Veronica's comment: I think you made a very good point that 2nd. graders can carry a discussion. With a little guidance from your CT, they can do it. It would also be important for them to set ground rules on how the discussion should go and what are appropriate behaviors for the discussion. Given the opportunity, 2nd. graders would love to share their opinions with others!

Susan: Learning Goals

I am minoring in both mathematics and history. I really do not enjoy reading and writing. One goal that I have for this semester is to find some parts of Language Arts that I can be enthusiastic about, and, in turn, teach LA in an enthusiastic way to my future students. I also want to expand my ideas about what LA is. Right now I feel that it is students reading and writing stories. However, this is what turned me off from LA in the first place. I want to discover new ways to teach these subjects.



Jami's Comment:
I totally agree with you on expanding ideas about what Language Arts is. There is so much that goes along with it. It is not just strictly reading and writing, but it is hard to understand what exactly it is and how we need to apply it and teach it to our students. For me I loved writing stories when I was a child which is why I decided to focus on Language Arts. A great deal of it is reading and writing-but we also need to know how to get our students to do so correctly and teach them the correct ways to read and write if they don't know how when they enter our classrooms.

Veronica's Comment:
I think it would also be very interesting to learn ways to make students enthusiastic about Language Arts. Everyday, my field placement class does a D.O.L (daily oral language) assignment; it usually includes a story problem that incorporates both Math and Language Arts. They also do an exercise where they have to make different words from a word given by the teacher. Last week, a word they had to use was inauguration. They have a lot of fun making words since they like to get as many different words as possible than their classmate did. When I was in second grade, I remember having to write in a journal every day. We could pick topics of our own or our teacher would select topics for us. This was a fun way to incorporate writing since it also gave us choice.

Goals for learning

Veronica- As I have spent time in the classroom either for TE classes or while I have subbed in classrooms, I felt like I wanted to do more for students in the aspect of spelling. I would like to learn what is nessary for students to feel that they can sound out letters to spell a word. Many students struggle at time. With a growing technology of spell check on computers or quick text on cell phones, our future students may struggle even more with spelling skills.

First Post: Goals for Learning

Jami-
My concentration is Language Arts. I really do not feel as though I am prepared to teach it, at least not yet. My goals for this course are to first learn to teach students how to read, write, comprehend and ask questions. I feel this is one of the most challenging parts of teaching. If you have a student who can not read or write you will face a whole new challenge. I want to make sure I know how to do this effectively. Another goal of mine is to learn how to question readings and take what they are saying and implement them into my own teaching. When I read some piece of information I usually just believe it to be true because it is in print. I dont know how to look at it from another perspective and question it. One of my largest goals is learning how to teach ELLs without having to teach two seperate lessons to my students. I want them to be fully included in what is going on and be able to keep up with the rest of the students. I really just want to walk out of this semester and have a better understanding of how students learn to read and write and what types of strategies I can implement into my classroom. I want to be able to accomidate all of my students without taking too much time away from learning.

COMMENTS
Susan; Response: On the topic of ELLs, I feel extremely unprepared to teach to that group of students. I also hope we get some info on how to teach to them.. and also how to find out or gauge the amount of knowledge these students have in the world of LA.

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