I am very excited to be taking the second part of senior year teacher education courses. These 400 level courses have provided me with the best concrete, practical information for my future career as a teacher. Going through topics about social studies and science in detail helped me gain perspective on how those subjects are currently being taught and what improvements need to be made in those areas. I am interested to engage with the topics of English language arts and math in the same manner this semester.
In specific regards to learning about English language arts, all I've experienced is just following through textbooks and not a very real engagement with the topic of language arts and how it relates to the real world. I have a few goals in regards to what I want to get out of this course:
- Think more out of the box, or out of the textbooks, with lessons and application
- Learn different strategies as to how to incorporate English language arts into other topics, especially science, social studies, and math
- Take lesson planning further than my inexperienced self from last semester and think through my ideas more and follow through with them in the classroom
Overall, I've been thinking about what kind of school and community I want to teach in for some time now. While I would take any teaching job after college, I have some preferences:
- Upper Elementary (4/5 grade) or Middle School
- High Hispanic population or teaching Spanish in some facet
- Haven't made my mind up about rural/suburban/urban preference
What do I want to learn about literacy instruction to help me reach my goals?
- How to tailor literacy instruction to ELLs
- How to use another language (like Spanish) in literacy instruction
- How to make literacy instruction very applicable to the real world context
- What the best strategies are for encouraging literacy development and reaching all learning styles
Lenski Article (Assessing English Language Learners in Mainstream Classrooms)
- I want to be familiar with different forms of assessment that are good for not just mainstream students but English Language Learners and Special Needs students.
- I want my assessments and lessons to be authentic and meaningful.
- I want to be aware of all of my students' backgrounds and how that might affect their learning.
- I want to use alternative assessments and nontraditional ways.
Risko (Tapping Students' Cultural Funds of Knowledge to Address the Achievement Gap)
- I want to make sure that all of my students feel represented and included in content and in the classroom.
- I want to use the cultural modeling approach to spark the attention of a wide variety of my students so that they are all able to relate to content and teaching strategies, and not just one group of students.
- I want to continue to seek out a variety of resources to use in my teaching, rather than just one source all the time.
Tompkins (p5-12)
- I want to be more student-centered in my teaching, rather than using the Behaviorism Theory, which is more teacher-centered
- I want to incorporate the "new literacy" of the Internet into lessons
- I want there to be a great deal of interaction between students in my lessons, and I want these interactions to include speaking and listening, reading and writing
- I want to teach all of my lessons within the context and culture, not just for "school"
Gibbons (p1-13)
- In understanding the concepts of Context of Culture and Context of Situation, I want to provide this knowledge to my students and give them experiences in different situations instead of assuming they are familiar with the culture.
- In understanding the difference between conversational proficiency and academic proficiency, I want to provide ELLs opportunities to continue to develop their language skills within all content that I am teaching, rather than isolating the language development.
- I want to teach with a more "progressive" outlook, rather than thinking that my students are coming into my classroom as "empty vessels."
- I want to provide my ELLs and all my students with sufficient support, scaffolding and feedback for their development.
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