Starting Anew

I am hoping to keep pushing on with this blog, even though my classes are through. Therefore, "EDTP 620 Class Blog" has been renamed. I intend to use this blog as a place to reflect on my reading, as well as experiences in and outside of the classroom relevant to teaching. This will hopefully promote self-reflection and best practice.

What makes us and our teaching effective?

While Richard Allington's "Effective Teachers, Effective Instruction," I decided I was going to respond about "managed choice" (p. 278) and the importance of self-reflection (p. 279, #1), but then I read the following line as I finished up the essay:
"We can continue to craft curricular plans that will ensure some students will have to struggle. Or we can craft curricular plans that reduce the struggle for almost all students." (p. 287)

This brought - unsurprisingly - the differentiated instruction conference to mind. This is what good teaching is about. As teachers of our students, we must recognize that they all come into our classrooms at different places, and that they have different prior knowledge and different abilities. We need to find out where they are and who they are in order to figure all this out. We can't teach toward the middle and hope everyone does okay or teach toward the top and say that our high expectations will win out. We need to have the same expectations for all (everyone can and will be able to know, understand, and do x, y, and z), but we need to scaffold them up from wherever they are. Give everyone an equitable fighting chance - they all deserve it.

However, I have to say that I disagree with Allington's wording here. Struggle in the classroom is not an innately bad thing - students can engage more with a topic and learn more about it if they have to struggle with the issues and their depths in order to gain an understanding. However, we must ensure that they have the tools, the abilities, the motivation, and the encouragement to make them capable of winning; we must ensure that they have the self-efficacy to know that they can win the struggle and also have the desire to do so. It's hard to find a balance - when is it too easy? when is it too hard? - when we are trying to differentiate for our different students, but I think that it is vitally necessary.

Writing Strategies

I thought that pairing the writing strategies from Content Area Writing: Every Teacher's Guide with new technology tools was a really effective way to encompass these important issues. All the new things that I've been learning have become rather overwhelming - differentiated instruction at the ASCD conference, technology from EDTP 504 and EDTP 620, reading/writing from EDTP 620, etc. It's so much new and exciting information that a girl can have a little trouble juggling it all.

Recognizing that we can pair these new (to us) strategies and tools together makes utilizing them a lot more feasible; it allows us to start small (the best way to make effective change) and still start off with more than one new idea. Additionally, it allows us to show our kids that these areas can be paired together, that reading and writing go hand-in-hand with technology, that they can go hand-in-hand and make what we do more successful than if we approached them separately.

I think that book trailers work in a similar way. They make a connection between technology and reading, and in this case technology does heighten the reading as it promotes it and can also send a message about reading itself. It opens people's eyes to let them see that we can respond to reading via technology - whether it's through blogging, podcasts, book trailers, you tube reviews, or anything else. The two (reading and technology) are in no way separate.

Minomo and Brainstorming

Identify Tool: Mindomo

Identify Strategy: Brainstorming “is an excellent way to get kids started on a new topic by tapping into their prior knowledge.” (45)

Identify Content: Limiting Factors

Value-Added:
Easy to organize and reorganize as discuss (just pull it where you want)
Can save (don’t need to worry about erasing board)
Can easily make copies for all students
Can return to them and revise/add
Can insert pictures and diagrams into the map
Can look at from home/anywhere with internet access

Differentiating Instruction Conference

I had all these images of posting from the conference about the many, many, many things I learned. But conference sessions and school bonding got in the way a bit. There were so many connections to be made between our class and differentiation, and I was able to make some new mental connections as well as have some "a-ha" moments. For example, 2 other teachers at my school and the principal went to a session just on RAFTs, and I was able to say that I already knew what they were. The same with many of the technology applications - the LA teacher on the other team was much impressed with my and Kristin's book trailer.

But beyond these a-ha moments, I was able to make those new connections. I hadn't realized how easily so much of what we learned about reading, writing, and technology strategies could lead so easily into differentiated instruction. Different products allowed, different processes (allowing them to use different strategies), different ways of starting off. I really think that what we've learned in this class has just opened my eyes to the many possibilities that there are for me to use in teaching. I am really excited to implement them all as I piece together the way that reading, writing, technology, differentiated instruction, classroom climate/management, and my content all fit together - teaching for me and hopefully learning for my students will be a lot more interesting and successful next year.

Reading, Writing, and Science

I came to the conclusion today while reading about great strategies to improve the performance of underachieving adolescents* that I have some sort of block in my brain surrounding science and literacy. We have learned about so many great strategies in this class this month, and I am really excited about the possibilities of using them in my classroom. I want to make my science students better readers/writers in general, as well as better science readers/writers. And yet... Every time I read about something in the texts or hear about something in class, my first thought is: what a great idea for reading enrichment class. Not for my 4 sections of science, but for my lone reading enrichment class.

I'm not really sure what it is. I know that these strategies would work great for my kids in science, but I can never quite grasp how to utilize it. I believe this is the same for many science and math teachers. With all the content we need to teach, the basing of our testing around so many facts, and the way that we've been taught to learn science, we just can't make that final step to where we need to be in this world of 21st century literacy. I could say that writers need to include more examples from science and math classes (and I think they do), but in part it's me - us - just being stuck in how we were socialized to learn and teach our content.

The question I'm left with then is: how do I break free? Because I need to, and at the moment I just can't figure out how.

*(Yvette Jackson & Eric J. Cooper, "Building Academic Success with Underachieving Adolescents")

Podcast: Chew on This

Come view the podcast for The Science People on Chew on This.

Belated thoughts on podcasting below:

I really was impressed by what podcasting allows you to do. I really liked the idea of using it not necessarily to record the entire discussion but instead as a means for us to bring together our thoughts into one coherent whole and put them forth along with our ideas on "what now" for teachers and the book. I definitely think that - with my new (to me) classroom computers this year - I will be using podcasting as a means for my students to do what we did with our literature circle on Chew on This.

Of course, there are lots of other ways to use podcasting as well. Radio shows, audio newsletters, lab narratives, lecture notes for students who missed class, songs written by students about the material - the list goes on and on. I don't know that I'll get to all of them this year - trying to right off the bat would just be way too overwhelming - but I am excited and intrigued by all the possibilities.

Also, in EDTP 504 we made a podcast about podcasting - we brainstormed about some great ideas...and it is also quite humorous.