Posted by jamrozykl November 8, 2010 at 6:18 pm · Filed under English 480
I think that the key for writing with a wide variety of audiences and purposes is simply to do just that…to write to a wide variety of audiences and purposes.
As teachers, it is our job to create these types of assignments, by developing curriculum, or units, or lessons, which do a lot of different things in different ways.
Encouraging this type of writing and assignments will also keep the education process fresh and fun for students, as opposed to allowing it to become stale and over used.
Giving students choice in their writing is also a great way to encourage different audiences and purposes, and then having them share their work with peers or the entire class will expose them to authentic writing even more.
Lastly, I think it is important to make the writing matter…have students write actual letters to send to real people, write memos to pass out to other teacher, write announcements for the paper, or articles for the yearbook, or poems for the literary magazine…the list goes on forever.
Posted by jamrozykl November 8, 2010 at 6:12 pm · Filed under English 480
Language is the key to most everything in life. From an early age to a late one, communication is the most essential part of social interactions, which are a central part of a well balanced life. Because of this it becomes increasingly important to enhance our communication skills, and thus our overall grasp of the English language in general…or any language for that matter (for example, being bilingual myself, I can attest to the fact that sometimes, you mean to say something so crucial, so meaningful, that a translation cannot cut it. For example, saying “I love you” in a second language loses some of its effects for a lot of people, and sometimes, the words you are looking for in one language are not nearly as powerful as the meaning they carry in another).
We can help our students develop their ability to use and appreciate language by simply exposing them to lots and lots and LOTS of language, and encouraging them to interact with it all. We can also construct writing assignments that are very out of the box which will hopefully lead students out of their language comfort zone and into exploration of other type and ways of language.
Getting students to use language in unconventional ways to express themselves and talk about events and issues that are important to them and their being will generate a need of language. This hopefully will lead some to embrace it.
Another idea…show the cultural connections between society and language.
Posted by jamrozykl November 2, 2010 at 12:27 am · Filed under English 480
How much poetry is too much? Any poetry is too much.
Okay…not really. I am just not poetry’s biggest fan. Clearly poetry instruction in an English classroom is vital, but it can be so difficult and so hard for students to understand. And, if we are being honest, most students have already decided they hate poetry, and you probably are not going to change their minds.
The key with poetry I think, it to make if fun but more importantly have student interact with it and make it relevant to them. I would never have students do an over load of it though. For each time period I would say to chose 1 or 2 highly influential poets, and select 2 or 3 of their poems. This way poetry instruction is constant and relevant.
I would also say that there will be those students who have a gift for poetry, and allowing them to jump further into than the rest of the class (by choice of course) can be a great way to differentiate for those specific types of learners.
You don’t want poetry instruction to be too intense, repetitive, or boring, but you do want your student to be familiar enough with it to be comfortable with it.
Posted by jamrozykl November 1, 2010 at 9:44 pm · Filed under English 480
I don’t think that there is a set way we should want students to respond to literature and drama (or anything else we read for that matter). I think the more important thing is that they are responding. Even if it negative (like they HATE it) or even incorrect (in interpretation) the trick is just to simply get students to have something to say about it.
Education needs to stop being about memorizing, or getting an answer or a response right or wrong, and needs to start being about learning, growing, developing individual unique thoughts, and about students learning who they are, what they stand for, and what they believe.
We of course want student to be engaged in the text and have something enlightening to say about it. We want them to relate to it and we want them to have opinions. Therefore again I state that as long as my students are responding to the text on some level, I’m more than fine with that.
Posted by jamrozykl October 26, 2010 at 4:09 pm · Filed under English 480
For the bat poetry lesson my students will have a research and writing assignment.
Students:
You must chose one side of this problem…Are bats misunderstood and quite lovely creatures!? OR… So they live up to their reputation…they ARE evil!?
After doing some research on bats and the facts, myths, and folktales that surround them write a poem from the perspective of a bat! You may use other examples of bat poetry as examples.
Your poem should convince readers that bats are either misunderstood or evil.
Posted by jamrozykl October 24, 2010 at 8:23 pm · Filed under English 480
I have written a post or two on the importance of goals, and my views on them, so I feel like I have made my thoughts on that topic pretty well known, so I will skip that first part of the development of this post, and move right into the connection between understanding and goals.
Teachers need to understand their goals and their students as well as their own style of teaching to successfully reach the goals they have set for their classroom. At the same time, so do students. Students need to have a clear understanding of more then just the lesson and the material to be successful. They need to also understand themselves and how they act as learners and scholars. They need to understand their teacher, how she grades, or how he tests. Lastly they need to understand the over all picture of what they are expected to know, so that they can master the material and reach the goals that the teacher has set.
However important understanding teacher set goals is though, I think it is just as important that the students understand goals in general, and understand the importance of setting their own goals for themselves, setting them, and then making a plan (and acting on it) to reach them.
Understanding is the key to goals. There are many uses and meanings behind these words, but they all equate to the same thing eventually.
Posted by jamrozykl October 24, 2010 at 8:17 pm · Filed under English 480
I believe that all teachers have a responsibility to teach reading even if they teach in a content area other than English. Literacy is so important in society and yet somehow so many students it seems, fall through the cracks. Each teacher a student encounters has the responsibility to make reading important to the student and help the student however they can.
Our responsibilities with teaching reading are, to me, very similar to what they are when it comes to teaching writing. We must make the reading relevant to the child. At the same time however, it is very important that this reading does not become a chore to the student and is instead something they want to do…something they enjoy doing. We must teaching reading that isn’t too hard, and that isn’t too easy. Reading must matter to the student, and they need to be able to leave the reading lesson with a love for reading, for books, for poetry, plays, narratives, stories, literature… It is our responsibility as teachers to foster an environment where the student experiences reading, and really interacts with it.
As teachers we must show students that reading can be fun, and is more than simply an assignment for a school grade, but a resource in every aspect of their lives, personal, professional, and academic.
Posted by jamrozykl October 21, 2010 at 3:19 pm · Filed under English 480
I think the biggest difference between creating a lesson and a unit is pretty clear. A unit is big. A lesson is smaller. When you design a unit you have to keep in mind making the connections between the lessons so that everything you teach becomes clear and connected for the studnets. It can be confusing for students if they don’t understand why they are learning all sorts of things in one unit, or if they miss out on how everything is connected.
Also different in a unit is the iead of goals and assessments. In my opinion it is far more important to understand and know exactly where you are going, and what you want your students to learn and achieve from teh BEGINNING of the unit.
Posted by jamrozykl October 17, 2010 at 6:57 pm · Filed under English 480
Goals have always been the foundation. I mean this in terms of every aspect of our lives. You set goals at the start of a class, month, day, year, unit, life phase…. You set goals in each category of life… then you work to accomplish them. You formulate a plan, and you act on that plan to make these goals a reality. The same applies to learning goals for our students.
We set them (hopefully as the first step in our planning). We make them understood to us and to the students. We form them academically and socially. Then, we make our lessons, activities, assignments and tests. Hopefully, our goals are the core of these other things. We keep them in mind and we work and teach to THEM. We may alter them as we need to, but they are our destination, so we make our own path, follow our own map….every step of the way reaching towards our final destination…the successful completion of our goals.
Our goals affect our instructional design because everything we create centers around, or follows the goals. Our goals serve to keep our instruction focused, accurate, honest, reasonable and valid. Our goals are the center of our student’s education.
Posted by jamrozykl October 11, 2010 at 2:55 am · Filed under English 480
Teaching, education, school, its all about the student. To me, and to most teachers I would hope, the student, the child, is the reason we teach. Its not to make money, its not to better our own lives, but it is to enrich the lives of the young minds we work with each day. We entered this profession in order to make the lives of the youth better.
So, is making students the center of the classroom even a question? We should make them this center because it is about them. Not us. We can talk, or listen to ourselves lecture forever. But what really matters is what the students are taking from it.
We can make these kids the center of the classroom in a lot of ways. The key idea here is to make them super involved. To allow them to experience their education. 1) We can literally or physically make them the center of the actual classroom so that education is all around them. 2) We can make our lessons center on them. By this I mean, we teach to the SOLs yes, but we really focus in on what matters to them. We give students options, making the assignments then relevant to them. We can use 21st Century Literacy options to allow the students to connect with what they are doing.
In the alternative education program I hope to become a part of one day, centering on the students is crucial to their recovery. These youth really need to feel like someone cares about them. Letting your attention as an educator slide away from them for even one moment can be detrimental to them. Not only that, but if the center isn’t on them as students, the possibility for danger can increase drastically.
All in all, we are here for the students…why wouldn’t education and the classroom be centered on them?
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