Final Blog

I think that it is important to point out that all three of use have a kindergarten classroom that we have been working with and although we have separate CT's they share many of the same teaching qualities. For example, when it comes to literacy in the classroom, all three of them integrate literacy into other subjects outside of just literacy. For all of our classrooms literacy seems to be a top priority as it is taught throughout the entire day in many different ways. Ever since I have wrote about my classroom and literacy I have found that my CT has began to incorporate more controversial topics into her literacy lessons plans, including topics such as race and color. Another thing that we all agreed on was how we feel it is important to have meaningful, student based conversations about stories or texts that are read in class. We all felt like conversations are a great way for you as a teacher to understand what the student is thinking after they have heard a book. From what I have looked over we didn't seem to disagree with each other on any part of our readings or classroom and how they incorporate literacy. I think this goes to show that we all show respect for our CT's and how they have went about teaching literacy in their classrooms.

Through our jigsaw articles we were able to use each others thinking to help guide ourselves through the readings. This was very helpful when doing all of the readings as I did not have to pay as close of attention to the articles the other two were going to read and post about because I knew that I was going to be able to compare what I have read with what they have wrote. Many times I was able to pick up on new things that I would probably have never picked up on without reading the blog posts. We were also able to see where we agreed with each other, this was also a good way to see if we were on the right track or not. On the other hand I do feel that many of the readings we did this semester were repetitive to what we have already learned in other classes. I feel like we had a lot of readings to do that were very difficult to get through not only because the context was boring but that we have already learned that material, it just may have been written by a different author. I am not saying this is the case for all of the readings, just for some of them, such as the articles on ELL's. This is a topic we have covered multiple times and there is only so much reading you can do on one sub-topic. One way we could have improved our blogs for future references would be to possibly ask each other a question or a concern we had about the jigsaw article they had to read. This would promote more conversation between the blog groups, since our group tended to focus more on our own classrooms and thoughts instead of the other group members.

I would give myself a 9 our of 10 for the noteblogs, I found this hard to grade because we had only a limited amount of entries for the second half of the semester.

New Literacy

Throughout this class and this project, my conceptual understanding up literacy has broadened greatly. Beginning the class, I though of literacy as the ability to read, write and comprehend written text. I now understand it to encompass much more of the communicating world. Literacy can involve using technologies to communicate thoughts and ideas, oral words to communicate emotions and feelings, social literacy, environmental literacy, and still more. Literacy is more an understanding than an ability. My research on emotional literacy has informed my view because it is very different from my original idea of what literacy is. I have discovered that emotional literacy is the ability to communicate ones feelings and emotions in a safe and natural way. This is nothing like the ability to read and write. Building a website also informed my thinking because I had to go about it in an entirely different way than I would writing a paper. I needed to think about how people would read it, what people would read it, how easy it is to navigate, where people would look first, etc. This involved an entirely different set of skills than writing a paper.

The growing world around us requires a great deal of skill in new literacies in order to participate. We need the ability to communicate in various different forms, technologies, circumstances, and places, whereas the more traditional definition of literacy involves only the skills of reading and writing.

Effective literacy instruction involves integrating literacy into every field of instruction, be it using emotional literacy techniques when solving classroom disputes, or teaching visual literacy when creating classroom rules, or environmental literacy when addressing recess. It is also necessary to incorporate technology into instruction where it is possible. These students are growing up in a time when technology is vital to professional existence. For example, I would use digital storytelling to teach students about emotional literacy by examining the emotions and communication of characters in a story that we would read.

In order to teach students about new technologies, I would use the following,

Target area and rationale: Parts of a narrative using a website. I would want to teach the students how to create a website because it is now expected that young professionals have a personal website and yet few people know how to create one. This is a skill that the students will use throughout their lives.

Objectives: students will create a basic website with a separate page for each of the following

· exposition

· rising action

· climax

· falling action

Materials needed

· Children’s text

· Computers with internet access

· Weebly.com

Key events

Read a narrative

· I will create a webpage as an example

o I will show the students how to create a web address, page design, and create pages

· I will discuss each part of the narrative

o After each part, the students will create a page for the book that we read.

Assessment:

I will review the students’ webpages both for content and for creation.

New Lit response

When I hear the word literacy, I go straight to the terms reading, writing, and listening. This class has showed me that literacy can be formed in many new ways. The use of technology in this class has provided lots of new information for me. I have never used a blog before, or even a wiki. Not to mention Jake and I did our new lit project on a website call a flicker ten minutes before we did it, either of us had never heard of it before. It helps me become more aware of what is out there to teach and make use of it. Experimenting in class with these new technologies has helped me set outside my boundaries. Not going to lie I have already messed up using the blog and the wiki, but as I continue to use them I become more familiar with them both. Having literacy be involved with technology helps make it become more interesting and creates more of a network. Would I say paste a whole book to read online, no but I would say post interesting books that might help increase more knowledge. Traditional literacy will always be apart of school settings, and I believe all children need to have the experience of learning to read a book from front to cover.

Jake and I created a project that was meant to be represented in early childhood classes. As I continue to think about this, it can help ELS students or students that have trouble reading. Picture walks can help them visualize the steps in a process. It is not only a good process for washing hands it can be helpful for science projects and other educational instructions. Not only do the pictures help to follow directions it also makes it a fun process. The descriptions can be interesting and funny to read. Motivation is the key process in learning and looking at colors or even seeing your own teacher trying the experiment can help motivate the children.

· Target area and rationale: Why/how would this area be needed for your learners to learn to use the technology to teach peers about the new literacy?

o The picture walk can be an assignment in the beginging but after that I want them posted in the classroom for the children to be reminded of the actions everyday.

• List your objective(s)
• Children will be expected to learn to recycle, wash hands, and use the right clothing for the correct weather.
• List the materials and supplies needed
• Soap towels
• Things to recycle
• A recycling box
• The correct clothing to go outside
• Outline of key events (use bullets)
• After using the bathroom (wash hands)
• Getting ready to go outside (clothing)
• A child has a job each day (recycling)
• Closing summary
• These are everyday situations. This should be an ongoing process in all classrooms. The environment is important to our lives, and it is key to understand it.
• Ongoing assessment
• Singing the song Snowpants, boots, coat, hat, and mittens, now were ready to go outside.
• A new student each day will have the opportunity to recycle one item.
• Children will be expected to wash their hands in the classroom

New Literacy Project - Self Review

When I first came to this class I new little about what literacy actually was. When I first came to this class I thought of literacy as only reading and writing. I quickly learned that there was much more to it than that. I am now aware that literacy also deals with talking, listening, and visualizing. I chose to focus on environmental and visual literacy as I felt they fit well together. I found that by combining different literacy's you are doing nothing but making the lesson more interesting for your students. For example, with my NLP we were able to take a few pieces from environmental literacy and convey them through visual literacy. I am now aware that there are many ways to teach literacy and the more that you use the more interested your students will be and the more they will want to learn. I have always known that literacy is important to all students but you can never stress how important it actually is. If you are illiterate you are putting yourself at a disadvantage to all of those who are literate. I think that you must be literate in order to participate fully in our society.

To provide effective literacy instruction to diverse learners means to provide the students with all the possible ways that they could use literacy. These include cultural, emotional, environmental, social, visual, and political literacy. For the literacy instruction to be effective though you need to do more then just present them with all of the possibilities. First, you as a teacher needs to be a master at what literacy is and be able to answer all questions your students ask of you. Next, I think it is important to allow students to learn about one anothers background. This can be done easily through literacy. It is also important to see where your students are at, if they need help with basic literacy principles then you should help them with that, don't just assume they are at the level of their grade. It is also important to be constantly assessing students to see how their literacy levels are growing and making sure that they are progressing. The last but if feel the most important is the teachers enthusiasm towards literacy. If the students see that the teacher is excited about learning then that will ware off on the students.

After working on the NLP I have realized how many options there are for helping to teach literacy. I think that as a teacher in this era you need to be technologically advanced and willing to use multiple new literacy technologies. Our students are growing up in an era of technology and it shows no sign of slowing down, so why not introduce it to them from the beginning. I think it is also important that you test out new technologies but you should realize when one is not working for you and your students. Not all technologies are good, but if you find one that works you should use it.

When I started to think about what I wanted to do my NLP on I thought about what my students would benefit from in my placement. I thought that a digital picture walk would be a great idea to get the point across to the students. I haven't seen my CT use this strategy before and I felt it would be beneficial for the students to see a new technology. I think it is important to keep in mind that when you are doing a project such as a digital picture walk to be as specific as possible. Many times just a picture will not convey your message so it is important to have multiple pictures that explore all possible answers. The good thing about visual literacy is that it allows students who are illiterate the chance to engage in literacy. I find this particularly beneficial for lower level elementary and special education.

Lesson Plan:
Target area and rationale: Environmental and visual literacy through a digital picture walk. Students will learn how to wash hands properly, recycle, and put on warm cloths when its cold outside. These are important life skills needed to be a functioning member of society.
Objectives: Students will learn how to wash hands, recycle, and realize when to put on warm cloths and what to put on.
Materials and supplies: Camera, sink, soap, towel, examples of recyclable items (plastic bottle, cardboard box), snow pants, boots, hat, mittens, coat.
Key events: A step by step process of how to wash hands, recycle, and what to wear when its cold outside.
Closing summary: By the end of the project students will have taken a digital picture walk and explored the ways of washing hands, recycling, and dressing warm in cold weather. All students will be expected to know how to do all three based on the pictures alone. Text will also be provided for those who are literate.

New Literacy Project - Notes

With our new literacy project we chose to explore two different literacy subjects, environmental and visual. Through this project I have learned many new strategies when dealing with literacy. I have leaned that literacy goes way beyond reading and writing. It also involves speaking, listening and observing. When dealing with visual literacy this is the most evident. Through visual literacy you are able to communicate with students who are either illiterate or who do not speak English. I would find visual literacy particularly useful when dealing with second language learners. Through this project I was able to learn how to use a new online program, flicker.com. This is a program where you can upload pictures, give each picture a title and description as well as organizing your pictures however you would like. This was the first time I used this program and it did not take long to get used to it. I found it particularly interesting how effective visual literacy can be for all levels of education. For our particular project we focused on kindergarten students but we could have just as easily made a visual literacy project for a fifth grade classroom.

The other form of literacy we chose to explore was environmental literacy. The thing that I enjoyed most about environmental literacy is how much you can do with it. There are so many options when it comes to learning about the environment. When I think of environmental literacy I like to compare it to life skills and how to become a part of society. I am a special education major and I feel that environmental literacy plays a big part in their education. The more you can teach them about how to become a contributing part of society the better off they will be. Things such as showing someone how to wash there hands properly are things that many teachers take for granted. I learned that it is very important as a teacher to help your students become one with their environment. While doing this project I found it easy and interesting to use environmental literacy with visual literacy. It is easy to connect with the environment all you have to do is go outside. Overall I found this project to be very beneficial as I learned new ways to teach literacy.

Levels of Comprehension

After reading the Applegate article, I thought it was funny how it went over all the types of comprehension. I never thought about how I comprehend material. I knew I was different and sometimes I twist words up and make my own understanding of the question or the reading. That would make me an author in comprehension. Not only do I twist the answer around I also add my own story to it. For example I always relate things back to myself. I create examples that could be related to the question. I will also pull information out of thin air to make it lengthy and educational, that description makes me a minimalist. I will elaborate on issue that are unnecessary to the answer.

On the other hand, my children are left field and fuzzy thinkers. Since my class is a kindergarten, if that get asked a question without it being modeled, they will answer with a story. Their stories consist of what they like, what they did, or what they will be doing after school. For my fuzzy thinkers they pick up on the question, but are not able to give a concert answer. They are learning make-believe and real as of right now. As they continue to grow they will become more experienced critical thinkers.

I previously stated that my students learn by modeling. Their comprehension level becomes higher when given an example or a visual. For example the other day in class my CT had a question that was what job would you like when you get older. First answer a car wash and second was taking care of dogs. My CT chimed in and said well car washes don’t make much money and a person that cares for dogs and animals is called a vet. The children then began to think of the jobs their parents have and established a higher comprehension. This activity was meant to be open-ended but my CT had to simplify it for the children to become more aware of the topic. In the future visuals, charts,, and modeling is an extremely important strategy in teaching young children.

Literacy in Homeless Shelters

I read the article, Supporting the Literacy Development of Children Living in Homeless Shelters. I found this article particularly interesting in how effective literacy can be for someone of poverty. Last year was the first time that I had experienced having a student in my classroom that was living in a homeless shelter. He was a seventh grade student who has spent most of his life in and out of homeless shelters. What was most interesting about this student was that he was illiterate. This article shows how powerful literacy can be to someone who doesn't have much money. I often wonder how different this students life would be if he would have learned how to read. This article shows many ways in which a teacher can help a student who is living in shelters. Literacy can be a great outlet for students who are struggling with matters outside of the classroom. Something as simple as reading a book will help educate the children who have to live in homeless shelters giving them a better chance at making a better life when they grow older.

I liked how this article took you through five basic ways to help bring literacy into the homeless shelters. I think the most important point they made was to work with the director of the homeless shelter. If you want to implement any sort of literacy inside the shelter you must run it by the director first. You will need to explain to them how this will be a great way to help educate the students who are living in the shelters and also how it is inexpensive. There was a sentence in the article that stood out to me it was, "as educators, we must all first recognize the potential and possibility even in the most seemingly unlikely places." This shows that teachers need to be aware of all of there students backgrounds and understand that just because they may not have the most ideal living situation they are still fully capable of being a great student they just may need a little different teaching methods or in this case more resources. I dont see a reason not to bring literacy into the shelters as it will only help educate more people in this world.

ELL in Literacy

Having had access to a computer throughout the majority of my life, and being instructed to use it as a tool in classrooms from a very young age, I would consider myself a digital native but by no means a digital explorer, innovator, or addict. I use technology as a tool to function in this technological world, but I have no particular understanding about how it works. The majority of my family, however, would be classed as digital immigrants. My grandparents, for instance, use technology regularly in order to communicate with others. However, they must explicitly learn how to use everything that comes naturally to a digital native. I find myself comparing this relationship to the digital world much like English language learners.

Like the English language, technology is a means to an end; it gets us information, allows us to write, create, and read. The English language is very much a similar thing. In a classroom, English allows students to access information and acts as a means of communication. Without this tool, one cannot get the same information. Therefore, the "digital immigrant" is much like the ELL in that they need to explicitly learn both the tool and the information that it provides at the same time.

The Mohr article addresses this difficulty when it highlights the fact that ELL are frequently taken from their classes to a ESOL teacher where the explicitly learn the tool, but are in the meantime missing out on the information that the tools accesses. In both of these cases, the students need several things to allow them the best possible chance at success. One point that the Mohr article suggests is increasing "talk time." Similarly, digital immigrants need to have time to practice using technology as a tool so that it becomes more natural. Explicit lessons in both English and technology will be beneficial for their respective "immigrants."

Types of Talk in the Classroon

Since my classroom is a Kindergarten, my CT plans almost all or lessons around literary. She will explain a new concept then use a book reference it to. After the book we will summarize the story then they will do an activity. From Goldenbergs article it talks about instructional and conversational discussions. I believe my CT uses both. Most of the time we use instructional discussion, because she already has the lesson and questions planned out ahead of time and goes by the lesson. Other times if a student brings up a good point, a more in depth answer, or a question we will go into a spontaneous discussion which is the conversational discussion. The student then have the opportunity to discuss their thoughts and keep the conversation open end.

In the Almasi article it talks about traditional and recitation discussions. Almost 100 percent of the time my CT uses traditional discussion. This discussion is a question and answer discussion. The teacher asks a question about the readings and the students answer. This tends to be book concept based and comprehensive based. Just like Jimmy in the article says “We have discussions so that if you don’t understand the story you might be able to understand it better if you talk about it.” This shows me it is not looking out side of the box and just talking about minor details. As for the recitation discussion is opposite from traditional. The students are required to look outside the box and think more of critical thinking. It tends to be more personal and the students are able to discuss amongst themselves. My CT never uses this way of discussion she relies every from the book and her own thinking.

As for the McGee article it states the understanding of response-centered talk. This is based on critical thinking as well. It is meant to explore the book and take a deeper position on the readings. This takes extensive planning, thoughtful interactions from the students, ways to assess the students, and personal responses from them. Again my CT does not use this way of discussion.

To scaffold the student’s response- centered talk the teacher needs to plan ahead open-ended questions to guide the students in their discussion. Also letting the students speak among themselves. The teacher is there to lead the students and help pout the back on track if the discussion gets lost. The teacher can expand on student’s thoughts and create new ideas. To keep the questions open-ended the teacher can ask a question such as what did you like about the story? Then expand from that.

To promote rich discussion with participation of all the students I would use conversational conversations, recitation discussion, and response-centered talk. This creates an open, personal, and interactive discussion in the classroom. Most of my students in the classroom need a teacher’s guidance to create discussion. The students have not had a chance to have recitation discussion, so I do not know if they have the skill to interact and speak amongst themselves. To have a response-centered talk my students will need to start with a traditional discussion just so they students understand the readings then go into a conversational conversation to bring up new ideas and go off into discussion that may lead to critical thinking. I could see maybe 5 of my students being able to even use critical thinking, but the rest will need the teachers guidance and leading,

How literature is included in the literacy curriculum in the classroom

I am currently in an Elementary classroom where the students are starting to learn the basics of literature. To start of each day my CT writes a morning announcements on the board explaining the main points of the upcoming day, once she is done the whole class reads the announcement together and then one by one they will come up and circle either a letter or a word that they recognize. At the beginning of the school year they were all expected to circle single letter but as the year has progressed some of them have learned new words. One way my CT includes literature in her classroom is by reading to the whole class on the carpet. She has used multiple strategies while doing this. One way was that she would read page by page and ask the class what they thought would come next and why. Another strategy is when she goes through a whole picture book without reading any of the words and then asks the class what they thought went on in the story based on the illustrations. I have also seen her take a book that they had previously read a week or two ago and ask them what they remembered about the story, then she would break down the book page by page letting the students come up with as many thoughts as they can for that particular book.

Each week they learn a new letter to the alphabet and each letter has a name for it, for example, Benny Bear and Silly Sally. Along with each letter is a book, for example, "The B Book", each page has an object that starts with that letter and has a short sentence to go along with it. The first time they go over a letter my CT helps read the book for them and then the rest of the week they are expected to read it to themselves as my CT goes around individually to see how each student is doing.

I think that my CT does a pretty good job of incorporating literacy into her curriculum. One thing that I noticed that she hasn't incorporated is sensative subjects. In my classroom there are eleven students, ten of which are white and one black and they are all from the Lansing school district. In my classroom there seems to be an issue with students getting upset when they don't get what they want. Incorporating a text such as "Freedom Summers", like in the article, "Out of the Box: Critical Literacy in a First-Grade Classroom: page 5" the students were able to realize how people were treated and wondered why some people thought they were better than others. The teacher wrote how this became an eye opener for most of her students and she immediately noticed how they started to treat each other with more respect. I think that by incorporating books that deal with sensitive issues will only help the students become better people but at the same time it will help them think outside the box when it comes to there literacy.

When I read the Langer article I found many similarities between this reading and my CT's approach to literacy. Langer wants the students to think as much into the readings as they can which in return will make them more interested in literacy. I also believe that starting at a young age such as Kindergarten will help the students understand the importance of literature. Using envisionments, which are what Langer describes as, "the students understanding of a text" go beyond what they initially think. It is the teachers job to expand the students thinking. This can expand from what they understand at a certain point in the text, what they think is going to happen next, why they think that is going to happen next, how their thoughts have changed throughout the text, ect. I have seen my CT use some of the steps that Langer uses but not to the extent that Langer wants them to be used. I think that the more you push your students thinking the better off they will be.

Jigsaw Articles

For this assignment, I read the Flemming article about teaching students in areas of high poverty. As the article addressed many of the things that these diverse students need from their teachers, I chose to address the question "What types of support do diverse learners need to participate fully in the learning community?"

This article highlights the fact that students, especially in an urban setting, are not always the children you see sitting in front of you. All of these students have back-stories; some are acting as parents to younger siblings, some are trying to figure out where their next meal will come from, others are dealing with death, drugs, broken families, and poverty. It is impossible, therefore, to focus only on academic support. The article suggests that teachers in these settings need to be able to find a balance in supporting the academic, social, physical, and emotional needs of these students. Some teachers mentioned in the article take on much of the student's financial burden (for the academic setting) so that the student can still participate in the school activities. Others focused on making sure students ate at school, or had physical ailments cared for.

The "learning community" here is also important. The question suggests that it is only the students that need support in order to fit into the learning community, but in many of these cases, the learning community is also in a world of hurt. In an impoverished school system, some teachers do not have access to paper, pencils, copy machines, and other basic materials. Thus the learning community is greatly compromised. The teachers depend much more on their students and the community of people within the classroom in order to teach, and given that many of the students have more pressing matters on their minds, this can be stressful to say the least.

So in response to the question mentioned above, the diverse learners mentioned in the article need individualized support. One student may be able to for get personal problems while in the classroom and need only academic support, while another may have a great home life and still struggle with emotional problems. Still other students may need support health-wise, and others with their emotional problems. There is no "one size fits all" type of support for these diverse learners, but a genuine, caring teacher would not go amiss.