Obama on Education

The Evergreen School

Blahging

Blahging! That is what I thought about blogging in the past. Don't people have better things to do than sit in front of a screen and write about what time they fed their cat or what they bought at the grocery store? For heavens sake! When I was your age we played outside and .......blah, blah, blah.......Oh never mind! I just realized thats what I was about to continue to say about my thoughts on blogging is so boring that I dont't even want to read what I have to say. OMG! I hate it when I realize that I might be wrong....perhaps I'll just say unaware.   Hmmpphh!  I can't believe what a fuddy duddy I am about this!  I would never have believed that could be possible for me, but after reading what I just wrote, I guess it is. So.....I guess I'd better change directions.

One benefit of learning about technology and blogging has been my heightened awareness that attitude and confidence play important roles in successful learning. My fearful attitude (and true ignorance of almost everything having to do with technology) got in the way of my learning. I usually have an open mind and eager attitude for learning, but in this case, getting up to speed with current technology has been a long, discouraging road. I now see how fear of failure can turn into fear of even trying to learn. I see this in my dyad and main placement classrooms and now I have a new way of looking at students who struggle. Students who act out in class might just be trying to divert others' attention from seeing that they do not understand what they think the rest of the class does. I now see them as students who need extra attention and I need to figure out how to reach them. Their learning struggles are my responsiblity.

My own learning struggles have helped me become a better student and will hep me become a better teacher. As a fairly secure adult, I find that sometimes I am still sensetive to the idea that others might think I'm not so smart and it is terrible and truly gets in the way of active learning. My point is that for struggling children, this feeling must be debilitating and now I will be better able to identify this and help disruptive students deal with their real issues, not the behaviors they are showing to the class. 
Signed, The Newly Blissful Blogger

Quick Images in Math

I've always loved math, but what is math? There are so many ways that it comes into our lives. I find it challenging to describe my thinking about it in terms of solving problems. Now that I need to relflect on it and its relevance in education, I am beginning to understand how to relate to elementary school math learners. In order to better understand how elementary students think about math, we participated in a few math games in class. It was enlightening to see how ohers think about math. I have been suprised at the differences I have seen in all of our thought processes.
During the "Quick Images" activity in our own class, I discovered new ways and strategies for solving math problems. I agree with math teachers who say that understanding students' approaches to solving problems is key in helping them move forward in understanding math. Learning how to ask the right questions in order to elicit valuable responses from students about their thinking is tricky. It takes practice and reflection. It has been helpful to watch students' for learning new methods come from situations where they need to become more efficient thinkers.When we did Quick Images in our own class , as well as with elementary studends in their classes, I ovserved how the pressure of time has a positive impact on my own and students' problem solving thinking because of the need for efficiency. In Quick Images, we only had three seconds in which to count the number of objects in an image.  This required us to "group" items, rather than count each one to come up with more accurate answers. Necessity, as is often the case, seems to be the mother of invention.

Writing Conferences

Writing conferences are an excellent way to teach and assess writing. My dyad teacher loves them and uses them often. Chapter 9 in Routman was helpful in blending my understanding of of this concept, what I have observed so far and how I will apply it for the benefit of students. The more I learn about assessing, the more concerned I become about having the time to do it well. The benefits of using Whole Class Share as a Venue in Which to Teach really caught my attention because it can address so many things at once. The whole-class share, where one student reads what he/she has written and the rest of the class listens for various elements as instructed by the teacher, keeps everyone's attention because they all have roles. The teacher can assess the audience by their contributions, while assessing the reader's writing at the same time. Another advantage is that everyone gets to learn from each others' comments about others' writing. Their input also keeps students involved which is great for classroom management. I think the Whole Class Share for writing should be used in every grade. It relates to the real world where employers want people to collaborate with each other to improve the quality of the end-product. I am sure it also helps with interpersonal relationships. I look forward to trying it.

Phonological Awareness

I believe my kindergarten buddy is in the partial alphabetic stage of word learning. She knew the names and sounds of a little over half of the letters. I think she knows the concept of a sentence, but not the word for sentence. She called it a line. She had some rhyming awareness and some, but not as much awareness of beginnning sounds. Repetition really helped her in this area. I thought it was interesting to read and discuss in class  that re-reading is the single best strategy for improved reading skills. 

I really enjoyed chapter 2 of Fox, especially about the positive relationship between phonemic awareness and reading achievement.  Research has shown that this positive relationship is evident for children from economically advantaged households, children who are at-risk of reading difficulty, or who speak English as their second language. This knowledge of common ground gives teachers a place for focusing their energies. I am a little suprised at how much is involved in teaching literacy. It has been so long since I learned how to read and write and I haven't read much to children. Our class discussions, the readings and especially the emergent literacy work we are doing have really opened my eyes to how much is involved in teaching literacy. I realize too, that this is just the tip of the iceberg!

K-Buddy and Phonics

My new Kindergarten buddy is five years old. When my reading partner and I met her for the first time, she was extremely quiet and seemed shy. We talked with her a little before reading her a book called “Ella Sarah Gets Dressed.” She drew a picture for us with a house and two girls. She told us that one of the girls was her and the other was her sister. I was a little surprised at the effort it took to get her to talk with us. I haven’t read to very many children or spent much time trying to get to know kindergarteners. I am not sure why, but I thought she would be more talkative. Upon reflection, I can see how it could be intimidating to have a couple of adults whom she had never met, take her aside and start asking her questions.

Our Kindergarten buddy knew how to write some letters and a few small words. She has had this book read to her before. She knew the ending and other parts of the story. I am not sure if she could read some of the words or if she could figure things out because of the pictures and her familiarity with the story.  I will find out more about her abilities next week when we read with her and administer the Emergent Literacy Profile. 

The Fox readings were interesting and educational. They definitely helped me understand that children learn to read in specific stages and the extreme importance of phonics in learning to read. I did not know that the basic principal for phonics teachers is that learning to read happens in a predictable sequence before children ever pay attention to actual words in books. Knowing phonics is a critical basic skill for becoming fluent. Instant word recognition develops as children use phonics to read and learn new words.  It was amazing to me that by the end of first grade the good decoders will read twice as fast as the poor decoders. It follows that the good decoders will read twice as much in the same amount of time, and this will greatly enhances their fluency.

Studies show that high-fluency readers at the end of first grade will be high-fluency readers at the end of second grade. Low-fluency readers at the end of first grade will likely be low-fluency readers at the end of second grade.  Once this trajectory is set, it usually remains and the gap between reading fluency increases. Developing good phonics skills as a base for learning is critical in the very early years of literacy development. 

Kindergarten buddy

When contemplating a book selection for my first day at Juanita Elementary School, I realized that I had no clue as to where to begin. I asked my master teacher in my new dyad placement for guidance. She specializes in teaching literacy and art for sixth and eighth graders, but I thought she would certainly know more than me about read-aloud books for a child of any age. She has been teaching for over 20 years and recommended several books for reading out-loud to my soon-to-be kindergarten reading buddy.

Before deciding on one book, I read the three assigned articles for our Reading, Writing and Communication class and discovered that one book, “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes,” was out of the question. It had far too many words and not enough pictures. I realized that it would not be suitable for a child just beginning to learn about literacy. Through our classroom readings, I learned to notice the difference between reading books to entertain children, and books intended for interactive reading.  This might have been an okay bedtime story, but it would not have been helpful for developing literacy knowledge for an emergent reader. The words were too big for a child just learning to read. He or she would not have been able to get involved in the reading in a meaningful way. It was too complicated for a child to successfully predict what might happen, and there were not enough small words for the student to sound out and become engaged in the reading. One of the major characteristics of young children as literacy learners is that they learn through active engagement, constructing their understanding of how written language works.

The article called “Teaching for Equity and Justice” enlightened me about analyzing children’s books for racism and sexism. The ten guidelines to help detect such language, was helpful in determining the suitability of this book for young students. I only had to read until page two to find racist undertones such as “One day a little country-girl bunny with a brown skin and a little cotton-ball of a tail said…then all of the big white bunnies who lived in fine houses…laughed at the little cottontail and told her to go back to the country and eat a carrot… She grew up to be a young lady... by and by she had a husband ... then 21 babies...” This struck me as dated and condescending. There was no detailed biographical information about the author on the jacket flap except that the book was published in 1939.

My dyad teacher liked this book because it does deal with racial and gender stereotypes. The underdogs, which were brown, female, poor, country bunnies, win in the end but I wonder to myself if this is even worth reading to children. I can see a positive lesson in this story, but it seems to me that the children would be better off not even hearing such dated language. Since much of that language has been replaced in current children’s books that contain a more balanced mix of characters and story lines, I think we would be better off to just skip stories like this and avoid placing those old harmful stereotypes in the minds of young children. When they are older and able to analyze and discuss such language, the introduction to such books could provide a valuable place from which to learn. We do need to learn about the past to create a better present and future for our citizens, but I think old books like this one should not be read to young children.