Rhythm and Language

I think that the easiest way to help students do this type of writing is to give them practice at it. A majority of the assignments posed to secondary students offer nothing in terms of depth or purpose. Students are deficient at many types of authentic writing because we so rarely ask them to produce it. I feel that now many students even fear the complex cognitive processes that it takes to address multiple audiences. They have become accustomed to familiar forms to the extent that they are now dependent on such simplistic modes of organizing information.

Another thing that research has shown would improve writing is increasing the amount of time that students spend on any one project. This extended time gives them the room to explore new methods in an attempt to produce something non-formulaic. We cannot expect students to address the meta-cognitive aspects of writing in the short time spans that teachers expect writing to occur. Similarly, we owe our students a sense of renewed focus. If we, as teachers, cannot make claims to the validity of an assignment it is not valid because it has become a curricular staple. In summation, writing is creating meaning with symbols, so if we expect students to produce such meaning the topics must mean something to them.

Tags: 480, authentic writing

Students need to know

Language is universal.

Something we all share.

Tags: 480, ELL

I think that the best way to help students develop and use language is  better informing them on how language as a phenomena works. Most people use language so often that they take it for granted. It is a medium that makes communication possible, a medium that facilitates our own thoughts, yet many people see it as a something that is inherent and simplistic in nature.

I think, to be completely honest, one of my favorite things to do is think about language. It is one of the only things that humans have in common, whether we speak Swahili, Spanish, or Anglo-Saxon. We all have a way of relating to external reality and a way of communicating our perceptions to others.

Language is like a paradox to me sometimes, an immense puzzle with no beginning and no end. Philosophers, and writers, and linguists have tried ceaselessly to discover the origin of this communicative ability but are inherently limited because all of the possible thoughts they could express or the messages one could communicate must be mediated through language; thus, it becomes inescapable.

I think that it is difficult to teach people this type of understanding because to do so you have to be immensely self aware. For many people, this level of self examination is too much. The things you say mean something about who you are. Not just in the sense that one says what one means, but in the sense that your word choice, rhythm, pitch, and structures place you within a group or community, or, more often, several communities.

I think one of the things we can do is explain to students how language works so that it becomes an end in itself and not just a means as we have treated it thus far. The history of the English language would be a good place to start. This would offer students a better understanding of how language evolves. This movement alone would assist in showing students the organic nature of language. Eliminating the perceived permanence of language may help students understand the diversity of world languages and develop a deeper appreciation of how large a role plays in the lives of human beings.

Tags: 480, language

Personally, I think that no amount of poetry is too much poetry, but I realize that many of my students will not feel the same. I think that some poetry must be included in the English/Language Arts classroom, but that poetry should be chosen carefully. I think that poetry, like any art form, appeals to people through different tastes: some like it all, some like some, and some like none at all. It is difficult to say which poetry, or even how much of it, should be taught. I will say, however, that students find much of the more modern poetry easier to read and understand, at least until you get into some of the real out there 20th century stuff. I think that the older poetic works, such as Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, et al., tell better stories but require more linguistic skill to comprehend.

In conclusion, I feel that it really depends on your audience as to what should be taught. If your class can empathize with the plight of Langston Hughes and his deferred dream, than awesome, but if your audience spills sympathy like granite spills water than tales of monster slaying, beheading games, and loose women/shady pardoners are much easier to sell.

Tags: 480, poetry

I think that we should have students respond to literature or drama  in a variety of forms. I always find it difficult to treat dramatic pieces as any other text because they are written to be read aloud. Thus, much of what happens is based on context and the position of the actors on stage and students may miss the details if they read silently.

I have always liked the idea of having students respond to drama by creating their own modern interpretations. I feel that this gives them ownership of the material and allows them to re-contextualize their particular scene in way that makes it meaningful in their lives.

The exercise that we did in class where we highlighted what we thought the sentences were was helpfully in introducing the textual difficulties dramatic works pose to the reader. You could also take that activity further and talk about different adaptions of the text and as the class to pick certain words or phrases to leave out. Then the class could have a discussion about how the context changes due to these adaptations.

Tags: 480, drama

Vocabulary is a difficult beast to tackle, yet the simple fact remains that for words on a page to contain meaning, students must know what certain words mean. I am fascinated by words, how they sound, how they taste, how they feel in your mouth for that moment before they are gone, but many students do not share my passion. They seem in many ways content to misunderstand a word rather than look it up in a dictionary.

The task seems daunting, all those labeled pages in tiny print to wade through before you find the correct sequence of letters. It seems easy to lose yourself in the pages, among the multitude of unknown meanings just begging to be discovered. I think students should be taught to value this skill, or at the very least to respect their roles in the act of communication.

Tags: 480, vocabulary

I think that it is every teacher’s responsibility to teach reading. There is a common misconception that it is solely the job of the English teacher to help students improve their literacy. However, since we do a large amount of reading in the English classroom we have a much larger window to help students develop these skills. I find that in the classroom it is difficult to help low readers improve their skills because they are often self-conscious of their low ability level and shy away from reading altogether.

I do feel that many classroom teachers do not posses enough knowledge to help kids improve their reading abilities. Also, I find that many students will make it the upper grade levels without obtaining even a functional level of literacy. I think that this is due to several factors. Often times a student’s low level of literacy may be misconstrued as a lack of motivation or participation. Also, in an effort to push students through school and raise graduation rates we are failing to accurately assess a student’s literate abilities. Thus, we have high school graduates that rely on their children or spouses or good samaritans to assist them with tasks that require literate abilities.

As a nation, we muct correct this if we expect to compete with other industrilized nations. We cannot continue to fail the participants in the educational systems. I feel that if signifigant reserach were done on this subject we would find that in the long term the money spent on social programs for illiterate adults significantley outweighs the amount of money it would cost to ensure that all American students obtained a functional literacy level in the first place.

Tags: 480, reading

Bat Assignment

Students will create a proposal to the administration trying to change the school mascot to a bat.

Expert Groups

• Scientific Info
• Cultural Impact
• Influence in Literature
• Refute Negative Stereotypes

Reading Strategies

• Create expert groups

Proposal

• Class intro and conclusion
• Expert groups compile different parts of proposal
• PowerPoint slides of information will be complied to the teacher
  • Present to admin together

When you compare lessons to units, it is like comparing a single movie scene to the whole film. Developing a lesson involves choreographing a single experience that will interact with the larger goal of the unit. I think that the idea of thematic units makes planning individual lessons much easier. If the goals of the lesson are clear, then the individual lessons should be like stepping stones the completion or mastery of the skills being developed in the unit as a whole.

When you think of a lesson plan on its own, it seems incomplete, like a word floating in space without a context to give it meaning. Individual lessons are great, but I feel that they are more effective in a context in which their instruction is supported by other lessons developing similar skills or that lead to one cohesive goal.

If I had to ask some questions about the design of units, I would ask how the process could be stream lined?

I know that in my classroom I intend to have activities that will occur everyday so that the students develop a routine, and thus many of these procedures will impact the way that I structure units. I would also like to know what people think about losing instructional time to transitions between activity. I am, however, a person who believes that repeated practice for a short time nearly every day is better than long amounts of time spent infrequently completing tasks.

Tags: 480, Units

Goals are an extremely important part of instructional design. They need to be several things, in my opinion, to be effective. They need to be specific, measurable, and flexible. On big problem that I often see with goals is the literal cloudiness of the language in which they are written. I think that it is good to start with something vague, if for no other purpose than to get something on paper. But these must be refined, retooled, and condensed into forms that reflect what you actually intend to assess.

Often times, your goals will determine the product that students will produce and the manner in which you will assess it. Thus, goals in instructional design need to be in some way measurable. But when  I say measurable I do not want people to mistake ‘measurable’ with ‘easily or concretely measurable’ which would suggest some sort of factual regurgitation or uncreative project. Astute teacher’s observations are the best forms of assessment. Administrators and policy makers may argue otherwise, but sometimes assessments with no numerical or statistic correlative are the best kind.

Finally, these goals must be flexible. Both in the sense that each student is different and will be able to perform the tasks you assign with varying levels of competency, as well as in the sense that your goals as the teacher need no be authoritative. To elaborate on the first claim, the need for differentiated instruction is an absolute necessity. This ensures that every student is being adequately challenged and is expected to fulfill a certain potential that accounts for individual difference. Also, the teacher must be ego less in all of this, or at least as much as possible. The goals and projects that bring you joy as a teacher may not be what your students need to learn, or even appropriate in terms of difficulty. So often teachers mistakenly believe that since they taught something that students must account for it. Its as if the goal is to present the material, rather than the goal being to help the students attain mastery. Goal oriented teaching is not coverage, or presenting, or mere oratory; it is recognizing students unique sets of knowledge, what they don’t know, and what some know already, and allowing your goals to flex and bend to present students with an authentic and meaningful learning experience.

Tags: 480, goals