Blog #7

The end of this experience is definitely bitter sweet. I sincerely enjoyed my student teaching experience. However, the work load along with the student teaching responsibilities, seemed almost unbearable at times. I felt that I didn't have enough time devote myself fully to either my studies or my students. This is a very hard experience for me. My grandfather always told me, "If you can't put 100 percent into it, then don't waste your time." This advice is something I attempt to uphold in all of my daily encounters. Therefore, this experience left me feeling a little inadequate in each of my responsibilities (as a student and a teacher). Now that my student teaching is finished, I will be able to focus on my research and other student responsibilities.

One thing that I am proud of is my incorporation of literacy engagements. Honestly, at first, I took this assignment as a "can of fluff" more than influential material. However, during the eight weeks I noticed where literacy is effective in the furthering the comprehension levels of my students in a mathematics classroom. The last literacy engagement that I produced was a "fix-and-learn" project. This project gave my students the opportunity to better a quiz grade through a written reflection process. For each mistake, the student had to describe the mistake, retry the problem, and then finish with a reflection paragraph as to what they learned. This activity helped the grades of the students both physically and comprehensively. It forced the students to realize their errors and then made them reflect on the knowledge they gained through the process. This experience could be compared to memorizing a person's name. Studies show that the immediate repitition of a strangers name will aide in the memory process. I feel that the three tier reflection assignment acted as a repititous way of helping the students comprehend a topic.

Overall, I have enjoyed the experience and I look foward to my future in education. Good luck to everyone and I encourage you to continue with your content literacy engagements. I believe that we are a new generation of teachers that better understand the necessities for creating well-rounded, educated individuals. As well, I hope we now understand that content literacy is one of those necessities. See yall on Monday!

Student teaching...

My student teaching experiences have been unique to say the least. I have found some new ways to introduce content literacy, which is encouraging. During a day devoted to vocabulary, my host teacher and I incorporated a different definitions technique. We allowed the students to make a sort of "hide-away" vocabulary organizer. The organizer included the word, the definition, and an example. I think the students prefer the new method versus the traditional method. While teaching this technique, I also noticed that many of my students were not using the glossary and were having struggles developing definitions and examples using the chapters. Taking a peers advice, I decided to take the time to explain the uses of the glossary. We actually discovered that the glossary also incorporated examples for each vocabulary word. Talk about killing two birds with one stone...

I am now working on word problem literacy. I believe that students struggle with the mathematical interpretations of word problems. I have noticed that they have struggled with simply pulling out the given information. Thus, we have devoted some time this week to word problem literacy techniques. If anyone had any advice on this, I would appreciate it.

I still have difficulties with avoid readicide in my classroom. I want to incorporate reading, yet we do not use our textbooks often. I am thinking about incorporating math journals during my TWS and maybe developing a mathematics history assignment.

First Weeks at School...

My first weeks at Baldwin County have been as expected. Lunch room confusion, kids thinking I'm a student, and the usual classroom struggles for a few examples. However, I am struggling most with how to introduce literacy situations in my classroom. One of the causes of my struggles is that we are not working out of the book. My host teacher works with her own lesson plans that coincide with the book, yet she does not ask the students to open them during class. I like the idea of exploring reading issues of word problems. However, I have yet to encounter a word problem. Thus, so far I have only introduced new note writing techniques in my classroom. Furthermore, I have introduced the techniques only to a small group of students. I plan to write about this for my first literacy exploration so I will not go into grave detail here.

The literacy future of my class does look promising.I have explained my inquiry research project to my teacher and she liked the idea and gave me some pointers. I plan to still incorporate a mathematician historical project in order to further develop content literacy. Hopefully my students will react well to this project and will become more engaged after they understand the origins of the mathematical facts that they constantly take for granted.

My teacher has been very supportive and intends to help me incorporate all of my literacy techniques. Any suggestions about literacy engagement projects that were not outlined in the book would be appreciated.

Readicide Blog #2

One of the main things I found interesting with Chapter two was Gallagher's discussion about the knowledge of the Vice President and Al Queda in his classrooms. Gallagher continues to discuss possible contributions to this lack of knowledge. At one point, the lack of prior knowledge he connected to low socio-economic status families. I find this to be of extreme importance in regards to "real-world" knowledge. Students of poverty more than likely do not have the same resources than students that fall in higher economic statuses. Things like computers, televisions, and the daily newspaper at times are not generally accessible to poverty students. These situations will cause a student to not be knowledgeable of daily newsworthy information.

When I taught at Early College, I experienced students of low socio-economic status. In that class we had the opportunity to bring in a Current events day. This gave the students the ability to experience newsworthy information that they might not normally experience. Some students rebelled from the project, however, the students that took the assignment seriously sincerely benefited. I hope to be able to incorporate this idea in my mathematics classroom as well. Regardless of the content, I believe that this assignment will help my students grow as individuals.

I am still struggling with original literacy ideas for my future classroom. Yet, through some of the reading, I have discovered different strategies that I will include in my class. Such as, notebook organization to increase vocabulary retention. Dr. Webb also gave me a good idea about textbook reading in yesterday's class. She described how I could assist my students in breaking down text. This strategy would normally be utilized in different content fields, but Dr. Webb showed me how to direct the strategy to a mathematical approach. Hopefully, i will continue to find ideas from these resources. In this case, I don't mind stealin...

Readicide Blog #1

The message of the intro and first chapter of Readicide is mainly concerning the idea that students are simply being taught how to achieve in test taking. Readicide involves the deterioration of pleasurable reading in order to force students into higher achievement of standardized testing. I thoroughly agree with the evidence shown in Readicide. I have witnessed in my small amount of teaching experience, these thoughts in action. While I was assisting at a middle school in middle Georgia, I witnessed students being taken out of normal classroom schedules in order to utilize the time in a mathematics "blitz" setting. Our traditional learning styles need to be changed, I agree, but not to the extreme that we only concern our teaching with standardized test scores. I think that schools are starting to focus too much on testing achievement and it is stealing the "well-rounded" feel of today's student.

Honestly to this point I am not sure how to help students in my classroom to more effectively read in my content. I hope that through further reading I am able to apply new techniques in my future classroom.

In my Junior year, I took a History of Math class. With an enthusiastic teacher, I learned about mathematicians who developed original mathematical ideas and their difficulties. Believe it or not, at times, mathematicians were banished from areas due to their mathematical beliefs. The intensity that was involved in the beginnings of mathematics forced me to appreciate math in a brand new light. Due to this class, I began to see math as more than words and symbols on paper. Quite literally, it showed the blood, sweat, and tears that were involved with the basic concepts that I and others take for granted today.

I am interested in bringing this type historical value into my mathematics classroom. I feel that the students will benefit from seeing evidence of the struggles that went into the algorithms in their textbooks. Hopefully they will discover a new interest in mathematics after being able to appreciate its origins. Not every story is an epic one, yet they all involve interesting twists and turns. I think that middle school is an appropriate time for us to bring these situations to light, yet I am willing to conduct my research in high school.

Unfortunately, this topic might not have struck the interest of others. Therefore, I am worried about being able to find enough articles or other forms of literature in order to complete my research. Thus, I am open to other research topics but if possible I would like to work in this area. Help is desired where available.

My perceptions of content literacy and the adolescent reader are as follows: I believe that educators are not granting the proper "tools" to their students. The tools they have granted them are very cut and dry and do not spur new interest into content topics. Thus, students remain disengaged and will not attempt literacy trials on their own. Students will continue to pursue a strict bare minimum as long as the tools afforded to them inspire them to do so. I believe as teachers, we should inact a new beahvior towards content literacy and grant our students the proper tools to support their own original discoveries. This can include using technology, finding different texts (other than the norm), or allowing for debate over a specific topic. Each of these efforts will allow for students to spur new interest and contribute at higher levels involving content literacy.

My content is mathematics, thus my experiences involving content literacy are lacking in originality. In the normal mathematics classroom, a teacher would give me a textbook and would assign readings in order to properly understand the vocabulary. That was the main goal of the literacy in a mathematics classroom. As long as the student could memorize the vocabulary to ace the quiz, he was deemed as exceptional.

My initial observations of effective reading in mathematics are discouraging yet fill with hope all the same. I intend to employ the methods I will learn in my Masters program in order to develop a method of effective reading in my classroom. I understand now that the memorization of mathematical vocabulary will not inspire upcoming mathematicians. Thus, I believe it will be my job to find effective literacy techniques to inspire not only the mathematical minds in my classroom, but everyone else as well. I will become inspired to do so by the discouragement I have felt through my previous math classes and the hope I have for my future math classes.