EDRD 7718 Module 6

PowerPoint Presentations

                I learned a lot of the stuff that was mentioned about PowerPoint presentations either through undergraduate classes or by trial and error. However, it is always helpful to hear the information again. One of the first slides needs to be an outline of the entire presentation so that the audience knows what will be covered throughout the presentation. The slides that contain any information need simply bullet point the main and most important parts of that section of the presentation. If your slides are too wordy then the audience will be too focused on reading the slide rather than listening to the details that you are trying to present. It should take from one to two minutes to discuss each slide.

                No- you don’t want the audience to be focusing a lot on the words in your PowerPoint, but you do want the audience to be able to read it. Therefore, it is important that the background is not overbearing; it needs to be simple and consistent throughout the presentation. The words also need to be big enough (but not too big) for the audience to read.

                One of the points made was that graphs do a great job of relaying data. This makes perfect sense but something I may not have thought of because I would have wanted to add information along with the graph. However, in actuality the graph can do the talking for the data. 

EDRD 7718 Module 5

      There were a lot of things from this module that really interested me. As a first year teacher, I have never actually seen or experienced effective literacy centers, therefore any little bit I learn about them is so helpful. With literacy centers it is important that the students are working on curriculum based activities and not busy work. Whether the students are working individually or with a partner, it is also important that after they are finished with their activity they have something to show for it such as a little assessment such as a ticket out the door to show where they may be in their level of understanding. However, it is not only to show their understanding, but also to keep the students accountable for their learning. The things I learned from these few videos show that I am on the right track, but there are still some things I need to work on with a balanced literacy program. I am actually in the process of getting help from my school's EIP teacher. She is going to start coming into my room and assisting me with the proper process when planning for literacy centers.
    The other topic that was discussed briefly was the classroom environment. I love seeing other people's classroom and getting new ideas on how to appropriately organize my room in order to meet my students needs. The book entitled Spaces and Places seems like a great book and actually one I may go out and purchase. She gave a brief overview of her book, but the chapter titles drew me in enough. She discussed how to plan the space in your classroom, arranging the furniture, using wall space and organizing the clutter in your classroom. The students need structure and the way the classroom is set up and organized as an effect on them.

EDRD 7718 Module 4

Instructional Methods and Strategies

      The majority of the information from this module were concerned with the RTI program/process, as well as the Common Core's effect on reading. The Response To Intervention (RTI) program/process is something we begin learning about in our undergrad and then experiencing within our schools. It is a program implemented by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) that ensures that all students needs are being met within the classroom. The original tiered program has three tiers, but Georgia's RTI model has four tiers: tier one ("standards- based classroom learning"), tier two ("needs based learning"), tier three ("SST driven learning") and tier four ("specially designed learning"). This program is intended to get help for struggling students before they are classified as "Special Education". 

      The sections about Common Core and Literacy were of utmost interest to me because it is something that has been a hot topic within grade level meetings. Our students were just given an interim assessment from the county to see where the students are assessing at this point in the semester and as a team we noticed that there was a whole bunch of content specific reading from areas such as Social Studies and Science. Instead of being full of simple narrative comprehension tests, the interim test had more content specific comprehension questions. As we noticed from our scores, the students did not do as well on the reading due to the amount of informational texts. We have begun to teach our students how to read and understand these informational passages because, as was discussed within a view of the articles, just because a child can read does not mean they can understand this specific sort of writing. 

EDRD 7718 Module 3

Encouraging Enthusiasm for Reading 

      I thought this was a very sweet video about children and reading. I loved the quote "Children are made readers on the laps of their parents" by Emilie Buchwald. I think that starting to read to children at a young age is a great way to instill the love of reading within them. Another way to encourage children to read is to read for pleasure yourself because children look up to their parents and if they see that you read they will also want to read. It is vital that parents model reading for their children.

SMART Table- Touch. Learn. Together. / HATCH Smart Table

      This was by far the coolest thing I have seen for a classroom. I have never heard of this but it is such a great, innovative piece of technology. I find myself limited when it comes to using either the SmartBoard or the Promethean board because only one person can use it at a time. This table would allow for the students to actually work together toward a common goal instead of working individually and taking turns in a group setting. This would work great with online manipulatives during math centers or even multiplayer educational games. The Smart Table could be used to create timelines, and match definitions in Social Studies, as well as manipulate passages in Reading.

Science and Math Integrating Literacy in Early Childhood/Expository Text Article 

      This was mentioned in the video but I also know from experience that students love learning about Science and it is something that has interested them for a long time because it is something they can see and understand. As discussed in the expository text article, I found out quickly that having my students read through textbooks on their own was not beneficial at all because they did not understand the way they were set up. The science textbooks can be difficult to read and understand without teacher scaffolding due to the elevated and content-specific vocabulary. Therefore, whenever I introduce new topics or when I am trying to clarify other topics I will find children's literacy that has to do with the topics because they are easier to understand. For example, we read through The Lorax when we were talking about pollution. When we were learning about Georgia Habitats, I rented habitat specific books that went into detail about the animals and landscape. These books told just as much information as the textbooks but were written in a more child-friendly way. Therefore, I have found that it is beneficial to read and discuss the text book, but then reinforce the information with other forms of literacy.

Development of Literacy Strategies

      While I was reading through this PowerPoint presentation, it reminded me of when we were finding our initial information regarding our action research project. We had to know exactly what type of information we were looking for, while also making sure that the information we were gathering was valid and relevant to our study.
   

EDRD 7718 Module 2

4-Information Literacy/Learning Theories PowerPoint

      This PowerPoint was very interesting to me because it really put differentiation into perpesctive for me. I understand differentiation, but this put it in a manner that made everything that much clearer. There were two awesome analogies used within this PowerPoint to describe differentiation. The first one discussed the millions of species in our world today and how this can look messy. The other discussed the replicating of cells. Cells replicating can look extremely messy with no central authority while acting to their environment. At first, learning was looked at as very, very structured and mainly used organizational charts and outlines. Along with these outlines came tons of information. However, as we know this is not cognitively appropriate for our students. We need to teach our students by making learning a building process and allowing the students to learn new information by constructing it from the information or background knowledge they already have. We need to apply the earlier analogies to our classroom by making the classroom more student cantered with constructivist learning and discovery. Georgia has now begun to take part in the Common Core which puts a lot of focus on differentiated learning and allowing the kids to take charge.

Planning Strategic Reading Lesson

      The pupose of this PowerPoint is to discuss strategic reading. I have actually never heard of strategic reading before, but it is led by the teacher who chooses various text for the students to dive in to. Eventually the work the teacher has chosen will lead to student-directed work through activities such as literacture circles. I did get to experience literacy circles during my student teacher, but it was also an experimental year for my host teacher so I do not know if I got the full experience. However, the ability-grouped students would all be reading one book and every few days they would have different tasks they would need to complete and then discuss with their group-mates. They really enjoyed it and I feel like it allowed them to grow independently. Since the teacher chooses the books, the students will get to read various genres and learn different strategies for reading those genres.

Literacy Practice: Promoting Content Area Reading

      Content Area Reading most closely means text books. I completely undertstand that my students would have a hard time reading the text books because there can be difficult content-specific vocabulary and knowing the fact that I continue to have a hard time reading some text books. However, this does not mean that they should not be used, it just means that the students need assistance reading through these types of books. The PowerPoint discusses the concept of scaffolding which means that the teachers supports the students throughout the entirety of the lesson by modeling different reading strategies. We are there to assist the students while they read. As teachers, we need to be sure that we can read and understand the text books before we give them to our students to read, so that we can thoroughly and accurately assist the students and make sure that this text is actually something the students will understand even with assistance. Before reading the text, it is also our responsibility to determine the readability to ensure that the text features and clear and understandable. If after reading the text, the teachers realizes that it is too hard for the students then we can modify the content and put it in context that is understandable for the students at their current levels. As far as vocabulary is cnocerned in the text books we use, I believe that they do a good job of not introducing too many new words at one time. Each lesson usually has five or less new words throughout its length. Usually I introduce the vocabulary first before the student begin to read because that way the students have at least a little background knowledge. I do not recall teaching text features last year in my student teaching, but this year it was a standard that we needed to teach and after having finished the lessons I realized how much they helped the students understand the structure of the text. After the students have completed their reading, we need to do something that will allow for the students to put what they have learned in their own words in order for the information to mentally make sense to them.

Goals for Differentiated Instruction Video

      Differentiated instruction was something that was of upmost importance in my undergrad, so I am glad to see that this is something that is being discussed a lot because I feel like I learn more and more each time. Differentiated instruction is a new way of thinking about the teaching and learning process. None of our students are exactly the same, so we should not treat them that way. In order to effectively meet our students needs, we need to focus on their specific learning styles and needs. We also need to get the students involved in their own learning by setting goals. Within each of our lessons, we need to make sure that each student is being challenged and has found an interest in the current topic. In my undergrad, our lesson plans consisted of an entire area dedicated to differentiated instruction. In each lesson I had to discuss how the lesson was differentiated: content, process or product. If the students are engaged and interested in the topic they are more likely to pay attention and retain the information because they have connected the knew information to something they already knew. 

The Story of Differentiation Video 

      Carol Tomlinson began by discribing her first years of teaching at a school that had a very diverse population. She stated that she had students who were four years below reading level and students who were four years above reading level and that she had no students in the middle. Tomlinson realized quickly that it was pointless to teach to the middle because the students would lose interest due to lack of understanding or boredum. She began implementing classroom rotations where the students were in what she called "flexibility grouping" which means that the leveled groups are interchangeable. She did not want to keep the "low" students together because they would not get as much out of that group as they would if they were pushed academically by their peers. After moving on to the college level, she realized that other teachers were experiencing what she went through, so she started teaching them about the big picture instead of focusing on how to teach the "lower" students. She want to show them that we can allow the students to work twoards the same goal with varying academic levels.

EDRD 7718 Module 1

Exploring Literature PowerPoint

       In order to increase student word knowledge, it is vital that we increase the amount of time students read on a daily basis to give them more experience with vocabulary. The PowerPoint gives examples of activities we could do that would assist in making our students proficient readers. Activities that involve stretching words, blending sounds and asking the students to say words without specific parts of the word would build phonological awareness. I really liked the phonics activity within the PowerPoint because it was transformed in to a card game. The student was asked to sound out the nonsense words and then whoever's card was higher would get the cards. To increase a student's fluency, you could allow a child to read a passage and write down the mistakes that were made throughout the reading. Once the child has completed the student and the teacher will discuss the mistakes that were made. It is also important to show the students vocabulary in passages in order for the students to get used to using context clues.

Expository Texts PowerPoint

      This PowerPoint was very interesting to me because this topic was actually something that I experienced for myself this past semester. The thought that text organization is something that students do not understand blew my mind because in my mind it was something that just made sense. I was very wrong. I quickly realized, much like I read in the passage, that students need to understand the different patterns of expository text as well as their signal words. The students need to be familiar with sequence, comparison, descriptions, cause/effect and problem/solution. Using graphic organizers to teach these to students would be very each beneficial because the students would be able to dissect the passage in pairs or individually. However, when first beginning the lessons regarding each of these aspects it is important that teachers model how to find and recognize them.

Vacca Reading Chapter 14

      Before beginning to read Expository Text, it is important that we not only focus on the process in which the students read through the text, but teachers also need to put an emphasis on the content that is within the particular passage. The content in text books can be very complex especially if students do not have any prior knowledge on the topic. As teachers there are specific questions that we need to ask ourselves about the text before we expect our students to understand the content: How difficult is the text to understand? How usable is the text? and How interesting is the text?. Vacca describes "usable" as meaning how well the text is organized and "interesting" means how easy is the text to relate to. There are actually specific formulas that educators will use that base the readability off of sentence length and word difficulty. I know for personal experience that some of the books that I have had to study from in college were vary hard for me to understand due to the proficient vocabulary. Therefore, it is not a far fetched idea that children would experience the same frustration I felt while taking my undergrad classes. However, instead of strictly focusing on textbooks, teachers could also begin to implement the use of trade books. Trade books are texts that focus in on one subject matter and will go in to more depth.  Also reading textbooks along with trade books allow the students to see the same vocabulary in a different setting or book which will allow for the students to potentially gain more understanding of the needed vocabulary. Vacca describes the benefits of combining literature and trade books as "intense involvement", "schema building", "abilities and interests", and "vocabulary building". 

EDRD 7717 Module 8: Reading Responses

Video Analysis

      As I have been stating from the beginning of the course watching videos about other people's classrooms and teaching strategies is my makes em feel as if I have entered that classroom - or in this case a program. This video was describing the Reading Recovery program and all that this program in tells. The video did describe the program, but it was not very specific as to the teaching strategies. I was hoping that this video would give me more insight into the teaching part of the program, but I was disappointed to find out that it didn't. However, the video did talk a lot about the how the teachers become certified to teach the Reading Recovery program. I loved that the teachers had to attend a class once a week in order to talk about the things that they had experienced as well as learning more and more about the teaching strategies themselves. As much as I love learning new strategies, it would be much more effective if I could see these various strategies at work. The teachers in this program were actually able to watch tutoring sessions through a one-sided mirror where they could see a teacher and a student in an actual tutoring session. This would be amazing to be a part of. I would definitely be interested to learn more about the actual teaching strategies. 

"Factors Involved in Reading and Writing Difficulties"

      This PowerPoint made me feel as if I was back in my undergraduate program, which is not a bad thing, but these concepts were things that we discussed daily. There are a lot of different variables that could effect a child's reading and writing progress, and some were discussed within this PowerPoint. There are cognitive factors, visual processing deficits, language factors, social/emotional factors, physical causes and educational factors that could impede the progress of a child. I actually had a child who we thought was just on the lower end of the students when in actuality we found out that he was having hearing difficulties. He just happened to go to a check-up where they did a hearing test and he failed. After he had tubes put in his ears, it was as if he were a brand new child! It was an amazing turn around.