Blog 4: Chapters 1 and 8

     Usually, I cringe whenever the thought of having to read a textbook crosses my mind.  This textbook, however was a little easier to digest.  I found myself enjoying the readings in this book!  Chapters one and eight proved to be enlightening.  The first chapter seemed to hit the highlights of Dr. Stacy Reeves class (the one that connected to Dr. Hanna's about literacy strategies to use in the classroom.) When I say it hit the hightlghts, it didn't just skim the surface.  It went into depth.  A few startegies it mentioned were think-pair-share, jigsaw, and litature circles. In high-school, the extent we went to was think-pair-share. This is a good strategy. Don't get me wrong, but we only used this one strategy (if we were "good") that particular day. It became sort of monotonous. After an amount of time, the teacher could say "Ok, if y'all don't be good, y'all will have to work quietly at your desks." Of course the said students were like, "yeah, whatever." and continued not paying attention.  Can you see where new and exciting literacy strategies (or mixing up the many there are) and some classroom management could have been employed here? Anyways.. I digress.  In Dr. Hanna's class we tried the jigsaw strategy.  It wasn't too shabby.  We were put into groups, had to learn a concept and teach it to the group connecting to the other persons concept. We used powerpoint presentations to do this. Fun!. In Dr. Stacy's class we did Literature Circles, which is my all time favorite strategy so far. We read a book in our groups then created a portfolio, brought food to go with our story, presented our portfolio, and told how we would use this in our future elementary classrooms.
      Chapter eight was enjoyable as well.  It went into depth about writing.  Most children are writing constanly but either a) don't pay attention to the content, notes, etc. or b) don't care. They're just doing it so they don't get in trouble.  In this chapter I found multiple ways to incorporate writing in classrooms every day, in every subject in ways that students could even enjoy.. Sneaky!  I noticed in Math a certain teacher was making students write out how to solve a problem they were given.  This is a great idea because this can help them understand the problem they are solving and how it is solved.  When I was in elementary and high school, I never had to do this, yet when I started college, I had to do this for quite a few elementary math classes.  It was a learning experience and opened my eyes as to why some problems are worked the way they are.. We actually are still having to write down how we solved problems in Dr. Larmon's class. It not only incorporates writing into a subject that normally doesn't require any but also stimulates higher order thinking.
       After reading these chapters, I know I learned something.  That said, these chapters also raised a few questions.  If a student can't write down they way they worked something in a Math problem (say... that's just not how they think) couldnt' they just as well show you step by step or with manipulatives and tell you orally what they did? I guess what I'm asking is: Does writing have to be incorporated into everything?

Content Area Literacy

                I think it’s great that content area literacy is being encouraged more in lower grades now.  Since our generation has been in elementary school, things have changed drastically. School is all about testing now and the common core standards are also moving things up two grade levels. With these two factors in place it’s enough to require content area literacy(CAL.)  This being said, it should have been in place before now.  Every child needs a base to build on and CAL can give them this.  I myself do not feel as if I’ve been cheated, for I had some great teachers over the years who read informal text to us no matter what the grade.  This got every student involved.  Reading and comprehension were two things that I excelled in due to the encouragement I had.  Before now, some teachers realized how important content area literacy was and some did not.  It was important but not pushed as much as it is now.  I think it is vital to a child’s education to carry out content area literacy through every grade (especially the 3^rd and 4^th grades where it slacks off) so they’ll realize the importance of it and can see how it connects to other content they might be studying.

Learning about my peers..

               I really enjoyed reading all of my peers' blogs. I'm also looking forward to learning more about them. Since I had intermediate block last spring I'm totally new to the group, and I am excited about making new friends.  I chose to write about reading Memorie's blog because she's one of the people I recognized the first day of this semsester.  Her sister and I went to high school and cheered together.  It was nice to see a familiar face, but I'm looking forward to getting to know her better (as well as all my other classmates!)  Like Memorie, I hope to get an art endorsement after graduating. We both were art majors before going into the education field.. Neat:) Oh and we have a bulldog as part of our family too. It's really admirable to me that she and a few others in our classes are full time moms yet find the time to devote themselves to becoming amazing teachers (that we all some day hope to be.) Another peer I chose to write about is Jordan Zilla.  I had never met her until this semester, but she seems very friendly and sweet.  I did not start out knowing that I wanted to teach like Jordan, but I do share her passion for teaching. I also like the moment when you see a child understand a concept they may not have understood before. Her point about third graders was interesting. I've always thought I'd just like to stick to teaching K-2 but 3rd grade is an important time in children's life.  Reading her blog inspired me to be more open minded about what grade I teach.
             The Design Thinking article was enlightening. It was stated in the article that practitioners could alter the steps depending on what they're being used for.  However, I think that the 6 steps they used from the BIF2011 would work well in most situations.  I also liked the idea that this is a group effort (small groups.) This article would be benificial to all schools and would encourage establishing a community between the teachers in the school. I cannot wait to discuss this article more tomorrow in class.