Learning Letter

   Reflect on how you think your participation in this course has influenced your thinking about yourself as a teacher

This quarter has been challenging for both personal and professional reasons.  I have had a LOT of different responsibilities pulling me into directions that may not have been in-line with others.  This class has had a huge influence on me and my ability to manage my time while working on different fronts.

The hardest challenge was to try and complete the unit plan.  While I had plenty of warning of when to start, I did not heed them as well as I should have and really put myself under the gun.  While I needed an extra weekend to finish the project, I feel as if I did a good job.  It was extremely difficult to think about a whole three weeks ahead and plan for that, but that is something teachers must do all the time and I am glad for the experience.  

The book talks and mini-lessons were fun because we were able to see MANY different ways to teach English in different settings.  Coming into the classroom, I was quite nervous about my ability to impact learning into my students, but I now have a number of different tools to back me up.  It was great to get the TPA's from my classmates and take those home with me.

The concepts we went over early in the quarter were fantastic to learn about.  I went outside of the classroom and downloaded a couple of "iTunes U" podcasts talking more about Paulo Friere's theories.  Tovani's book is going to be a great resource for me to go back and review to make sure my students are understanding the books and materials I bring into the classroom, whether that's a history or English classroom.

The participation of everyone in the class was quite useful.  From our discussions about Friere and Tovani, and then into the mini-lessons, everyone was great in giving constructive feedback and creating meaningful discussions because we were all engaged in the materials.

Overall, I learned a lot this quarter.  I was extremely nervous about my abilities in an English classroom but now feel much more confident.  The TPA's are tough, but I am glad we have been given the opportunity to practice them while still learning from our classmates.

American Born Chinese - Yang

This book got me out of my normal comfort zone and I really appreciated it.  I haven't read a comic book since I was a teenager.  The story was a bit confusing at first, three seemingly disparate stories that interweave struggles that many students go through.  While this may have been written with immigrants and the like in mind, I feel that many kids can relate to the feelings of not fitting in and embarrassed of their home-lives.

There can be much done with the book.  The pictures can be analyzed to develop meaning, obviously.  I think a much more fun activity would be to have students create their own kung-fu master animal and have them make a comic book.  Within this book, characters have great personalities and would be a rich vein of lesson planning.

As I said before, I rather enjoyed this book, it is a bit different from what I have read but still has a lot of great qualities to it.

Night

I can see how this would be a hard text for students to read. The writing is not very complicated. And the author did not use a lot of foul language. But there is a lot of graphic, visually and emotionally exhausting scenes. Students could have trouble really understanding what is going on because they have never experienced something as horrible as the Holocaust in their own lives. It's hard to look at the Holocaust because there is so much hate and violence.
I would use Night in a Social Studies or humanities classroom as a text to supplement out historical study of World War II and the Holocaust. We would have at home reading assignments every night and  could place the events in the book and characters (Hitler, Himmler, Mengele) with those that we are studying in class. We would also use their textbooks to teach the students about the history. Finally, students would look at themes like hate crimes and government directives as they created the Holocaust.

Romeo & Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is one of those seminole pieces of literature.  It is something that has been studied for centuries.  I love there is so much that can be taken from this play.  There are love scenes, fight scenes, humor, tragedy, and all the while the main characters are 16 and 13 - ages at which our readers are at.  The play can be read with so many different levels to it, advanced readers can analyze the poetry while those not quite there can read for the themes of romance and tragedy.

Because the book has been read and re-read so many times, there are a TON of resources to help teachers find a quality lesson plan that would work for their classrooms.

The story itself I find a bit irritating at times.  I just want to shake these characters and tell them to stop being so stupid and vain - just wait until things have settled down a bit.  Your families want to help but there is just such a lack communication between everyone that it is SO frustrating I can't stand it sometimes.  It may be a literary device used by Shakespeare to move the plot along, but I still don't like it.

This is a classic story but because it has been done SO many times, I'm not entirely sure I would use it in my classroom.

Things Fall Apart - response

I just finished Things Fall Apart and I was a bit astounded by the ending, but it does go along with much of what I felt while reading this book.

Achebe has a great way of blending words and images to create a beautiful picture of the village and the people in it.  It was interesting reading, not only in how he describes the places/people but his style of writing.  I felt lost sometimes as I was reading with how stop - start his writing became.  The images he used were powerful at times, but I didn't understand some of them because of the vast cultural differences.  I did like how long he took to set the scene because it gave a lot of background into the life of Okwenko and his tribesman.  This did help a lot when the white man came and showed how quickly things had changed around our characters.

Okwenko's life was full of trials and tribulations from the time he was born.  A father who he viewed as unworthy did not leave him the traditional compound and farm.  He had to earn things for himself from the start.  He was a great fighter and known throughout all his tribe as a man not to be trifled with.  This does not mean he was unloved by his wives and children, as they understood him to be a strong man with incorruptible principles.  His passion for hard-work and perseverance was tried mightily through his walk with Ikemefuna, his unintentional shooting of a clansman and 7 year exile, the betrayal of his son, and influence of the white man and church on his home land.  It is a lot for a man to deal with, and he felt very alone.  His loneliness led him to his final decision at the end, he could not stand to be part of his tribe any longer.

Okwenko wanted so badly to e a man of importance.  He tried to lead his people but none would follow and so he viewed everyone else as a coward.

This whole book is an interesting look into African culture and the influence European culture has had onto the planet as a whole.  As I finished the last few chapters, I could only think of what I know of the Native Americans and their similar struggles to cope and eventual capitulation to the white culture.

TPA response

The TPA lesson format is a great learning tool.  Tedious and repetitive, it is a fantastic way to allow teacher-candidates a way to think completely about the lesson plans we create.  It is not my favorite thing to do, and writing 15 of them for the unit plan is going to take more time than it could really be worth.  I just take it as a learning tool and way to practice my way of forming lesson plans that will be most effective in the classroom. 

I have been familiarized with the TPA since my inception into the education program.  The first quarter in, our final project was really just one TPA – now with practice I am able to write them out in a much more timely manner.  I like thinking about how I  am going to reach each student and what I need to do differently in between the class periods. 

The TPA is a bit difficult to quickly adjust, and that may be where the most difficulties come from.  What do you do if things don’t go according to plan, but it’s working?  Are you still able to assess the same things?  What if the class is not getting the lesson?  How can it be changed on the fly?  If the TPA is viewed as a tool to get to the whole classroom, then it is worthwhile.  If it’s viewed as a hard and fast program, it’s going to be a rough class.

I think it’s great to get teacher-candidates to think about what they are creating.  I don’t foresee myself using them much once I am completely in the classroom on my own.

Differentiated Instruction for English Language Learners as "variations on a theme"

This article, written by 4 teachers for the Middle School Journal, talks a lot about how to reach ELL students.  They start out with a stat provided by the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisistion that by 2025 1 out of 4 students will be an ELL student.  But the surprising note there is that most of them are going to be native-born, multi-generational US citizens.

As teacher-candidates, we all know we must differentiate instruction.  What I really enjoyed about this article is that differentiation does not mean "dumbing down".  They do make a distinction between 'sheltering' and 'differentiation'.  Sheltering is used in a whole-class setting, making it easier to connect with students where they are but differentiation is used to tailor to specific sub-groups of students.

The main point between the two is that differentiation and sheltering work to provide more opportunities to become more focused on language development within the CONTENT lesson.

They come up with a list of 10 principles that should be applied when working to differentiate a lesson: (keep in mind, this is an article geared towards ELL's and not the general population)

1: Know your students! - Get to know where the student's are at and don't be fooled by oral proficiency

2: Set common content objectives but differentiate the language objective - they should be working towards the same goal in content, but need new roads to reach it!

3: Make it manageable for teacher - a base activity w/ small variations for individuals make it easier to assess their learning

4: Make learning manageable for students - don't water down the objectives! just be aware of their language capabilities

5: Identify a base for higher-level students and tier downward: This allows for differentiation to happen and allows to all students to be challenged; always move towards same goal though!

6: Allow similar groups to work together - they will help each other out

7: Be flexible in grouping though!  Break it up at times to allow ELLs and HL learners to interact

8: Offer a choice of activities to students

9: Know language proficiency is related to cognitive complexity: if they don't know the words - they can't tell you!

10: Allow same number of minutes for differentiated tasks!