CIR 411 Digital Literacy Project- I am an Angry Driver.

Passive, sweet, and quiet- typical adjectives that have been used to describe me. These words, however, do not reflect the demon that I become when behind the wheel. In my car, I can release the irritation that I bottle up every day. The drivers that cut me off, tailgate me, and steal my right-of-way represent the people in my life who cause me stress. I see my car as a safe place- one with automatic locks and wheels to take me far away. But don’t worry; I won’t run you over if you’re next to me on the road. If you cut me off, however, we may have a problem.

CDLP

Here it is... it's a very rough rough draft. So yeah.

Toward New Media Texts

When I was handed this enormous stack of paper and asked to read and respond to it, I thought to myself, "Wow, this looks incredibly boring." And... I was right. However, the fact that this document made me want to bang my head against the wall proved one of its own points: Literacy in the form of words on paper is quickly becoming outdated. Although I love novels and many other forms of written text, I am usually much more engaged in more visual forms of literacy. In this chapter, Ms. Selfe explains that, "if our profession continues to focus solely on teaching alphabetic composition- either online or in print- we run the risk of making composition studies increasingly irrelevant to students engaging in contemporary practices of communicating." I absolutely agree. In a society controlled by movies, the internet, and video games, simple black words on white paper will do little to excite the students of today.

As Ms. Selfe explains, there are many reasons why teachers shy away from these contemporary forms of literature. They may not feel competent in it, they may not value it, or they may just be comfortable with what they already know. I believe that many teachers simply do not value media texts. Written text has always been considered the ultimate form of literature, with media texts used only as supplementary texts. This is probably because reading requires students to experience vivid, descriptive language and use their imaginative skills to view the story or message that is being conveyed. When students view visual texts, that picture has already been painted for them.

Kress and van Leeuwen are quoted as having stated, "By adding a focus on visual literacy to our existing focus on alphabetic literacy, we may not only learn to pay more serious attention to the ways in which students are now ordering and making sense of the world through the production and consumption of visual images, but we may also extend the usefulness of composition studies in a changing world." In the past, writing has been considered as putting pen to paper. However, I have learned that although reading was considered calling out words, to actually read something entails so much more than pronouncing the words correctly. The sole purpose of reading is to make meaning. Similarly, I believe that the sole purpose of writing is not to create words on a piece of paper, but to convey meaning. Therefore, teachers should consider including more visual forms of literacy in their classrooms.

Ch. 11- Developing Content Area Writers

It seems to me that when many students are told that they must write something for school, they have the urge to cry, run away, and/or shout out a long string of obscenities; this is similar to the way I feel about math. These students have probably not had positive experiences with "writing" in the past, and they may have given themselves up as being "bad writers." What this chapter taught me is that "writing" does not have to be the same boring old five paragraph paper, just like we have learned that math does not have to be hours of worksheets and textbook problems. And while stiff papers and snooze-worthy worksheets are sometimes necessary, they do not represent a practical, real-world use of what is being taught.

Like Conley explained at the beginning of chapter 11, the writings that students will complete outside of school include memos, letters, charts, tables, schedules, and policy and procedure documents. The focus of these types of writings is not the structure of the text, or whether each paragraph has five sentences. The sole purpose of these writings is to communicate information. In the past, too much focus has been placed on the format of a paper, and too little focus has been placed on its meaning. Perhaps this is because it is much more difficult to assess the quality of a paper than its structure. Similarly, students will be required to write papers in college that do not follow a specific format. If students are only taught how to write in one way, there will be no room for creativity and personal expression. The papers will typically be stiff, redundant, and dull. It's no wonder so many students dislike writing!

Conley explained that teachers should teach their students that writing does not only occur in the school setting. E-mails, blogs, and even text messaging are forms of modern, technological writings. However, I believe that text messaging may do more harm than good in the long run. Last semester, Dr. Hanna expressed her hatred of text messaging and how its shortened form of writing can result in incorrect writing and spelling. This afternoon while I was tutoring my student, I asked him to write a sentence with one of our vocabulary words in it. He wrote "wat" instead of "what" and said that he is used to shortening his words when he uses text messaging. With the increasing popularity of such forms of communication, we must teach students that there is a casual way to communicate, and a formal and professional way to communicate.

I love the use of journals in content area classes. Students learn so much information in one day, and it is very difficult to retain it all. There are so many facts and ideas being shoved into students' brains that much of it spills out and it is forgotten. I have written things down that I learned in class, looked at them a few weeks later, and realized that I had completely forgotten most of what I wrote. When a student writes in a journal after a lesson, he or she can dump all of that information onto paper so that they can see it, organize it, and revisit it later without overloading their brains.

My Experiences with Smartboard and Promethean

Several of the classrooms I've been in on campus have either a Smartboard or a Promethean board, so I've seen them in use many times. I consider myself an expert at observing these types of technology! But as we all well know, simply observing something is pretty much the lowest level of learning. So, I'd love to have some hands-on experience with either the Smartboard or the Promethean board. I think they can be great tools for teaching. However, I do not want to become that teacher that uses such technology in every single lesson. Smartboard and Promethean boards should supplement teaching; they should not take the teacher's place.

I have never had any sort of instruction with the Smartboard, but I did participate in an introductory lesson concerning the Promethean board and its software. I took a tutorial online, then listened to a lecture on how to use the software and the board. While the instructor was demonstrating the use of the Promethean board, I really wanted to try it for myself! I feel like I learned a lot about how to use the technology, but I didn't learn much about what to use it for in the classroom.

In my experience, Smartboards are great tools for teaching skills that involve steps or procedures. The teacher can model skills for the students using the Smartboard so that the students can observe, then practice the skills on their own. For example, Dr. Manning uses a Smartboard in her Assessments class and she goes through the steps of determing assessment values, such as standard deviation, Z-scores, and other things I have yet to understand. By seeing her work out the steps, it helps me better understand the process. Teachers could also use the Smartboard as a tool for teaching editing skills in Language Arts. Similar to the assessment values, editing involves steps. Each step must be clear and understood before a student can move onto the next step. Smartboards are great for teaching steps because they allow the teachers to interact with text on a screen, rather than just presenting it to them.

Conley Ch. 7- Activating Prior Knowledge and Increasing Motivation

When I read the title of this chapter, I thought to myself, "Activate prior knowledge, make things interesting, blah blah blah.... I've heard this before. I get it." How many times in our education classes have we been taught that we must activate prior knowledge and increase student motivation? These two teaching strategies are certainly important, and they are unquestionably effective. However, I have never connected the concepts together so strongly until I read this chapter. I came to realize that prior knowledge and student engagement are related in such a way that they create something like a cycle of learning. If a student has prior knowledge, he or she will have interest in the subject. That interest leads to motivation, which leads to engagement in the learning process. Engagement leads to comprehension of the concept, which gives the student prior knowledge on which to build. Then, the cycle starts all over again!

This idea of a cycle of learning reiterates the idea that teachers should teach nothing in isolation; everything should be connected in some way. When teachers follow the standard schedule where they introduce a concept on Monday and test on Friday, they bring the learning process to a halt. Teachers need to build on what their students already understand so that the students can have a foundation on which they can build their fortress of knowledge (Cheesy, I know). The stronger the foundation, the more stable and expansive the future knowledge will be.

Activating prior knowledge can also be done by connecting basic ideas across content areas. Students may have an interest in one subject, but they may not see the relevance of learning another. By connecting Big Ideas between the two content areas, teachers can motivate their students to learn about subjects that some students may not normally perform well in. For example, I absolutely despise math. I was that student in school that asked, "What is the point of me learning this stuff? That's what calculators are for!" However, if one of my teachers had connected math with a content area that interested me, there is a good chance that I would have been more motivated to learn math. Similarly, teachers can use their students' personal areas of interest to motivate and engage their students. This reminds me of an episode of a favorite childhood show, Full House. Stephanie shared my animosity towards mathematics, and had a difficult time understanding fractions. Joey, being the genius that he is, used food- an interest and motivation for many students- to demonstrate the concept of fractions. Stephanie understood the concept of fractions, D.J. and Kimmy ate the cupcake halves, and all was well at the Tanner family household.

Science Lesson Plan- Camouflage

Curriculum Standard: Mississippi Third Grade Science Framework- 3a. Research and explain diverse life forms (including vertebrates and invertebrates) that live in different environments (e.g., deserts, tundras, forests, grasslands, taigas, wetlands) and the structures that serve different functions in their survival (e.g., methods of movement, defense, camouflage). (DOK 2)

Big Idea: Some animals can hide from predators by camouflaging themselves to look similar to their surroundings.

Preparation

1. Put the students into groups of four (or less).
2. Give each group a red sheet of chart paper and tell the groups to place it on the floor. Make sure there is enough room for the students to move around.
3. Give each group a bag of small squares (about 1 cm each) that have been cut from many colors of construction paper.
4. Tell the groups to empty their colored squares onto their chart paper and spread them around evenly.
5. Tell the groups that each student should stand at one edge of the chart paper and face away from it. There are no more than four people in each group, so each student will have a side of the chart paper.
6. Tell the students that when the teacher says “Go,” the students will take turns turning around and picking up the first colored square they see. The students must do this quickly because they only have 60 seconds.
7. After the 60 seconds are up, the groups will record the number of each color square they picked up.
8. The groups will report their findings and the teacher will total the class’s numbers.
9. Ask the students why they think they were able to pick up more of certain colors, and less of certain colored squares.
10. Guide the discussion by asking students questions that lead them to understand that the red squares were harder to see because they blended in with the red chart paper.
11. Explain that some animals use a survival strategy similar to this to hide from their predators. Remind students that predators are animals that hunt and eat other animals for food.
12. Read aloud How to Hide an Octopus and Other Sea Creatures by Ruth Heller.
13. Ask the students how the animals in the book hide from their predators.
14. Explain that when an animal hides in an area that looks similar to itself, that animal is using camouflage.
15. Ask the students if they have ever seen a green lizard run into a grassy area, and if it was difficult to see the lizard. Explain that the lizard was camouflaged in the green grass to hide from people, because he probably thought that they were dangerous predators.
16. The students will each be given a different picture of an animal and use crayons, markers, and construction paper to create an environment that would camouflage their animal from predators.
17. Students will share their animals and their created environments with the class and explain why the environments they created would camouflage their animals successfully.

Guidance

1. The teacher uses general to specific questions to guide the students to understand the concept of camouflage.
2. The teacher uses previously learned knowledge of predators and prey to relate the concept of camouflage to their students’ prior learning.
3. The teacher relates an authentic example of lizards hiding in the grass so that students can relate their personal experiences with lizards with their new understandings of camouflage.
4. The teacher will walk around while the students are creating their animals’ camouflage environments and provide feedback and direction.

Application

1. In small groups, the students will brainstorm some animals that live in their state that use camouflage to blend into their environments.
2. In small groups, the students will analyze the use of camouflage in the Army and when hunting and discuss their thoughts.

Assessment

1. To assess student motivation, the teacher will observe the students as they share in their groups to determine whether the students are providing low level answers with little thought, or if they are actively thinking and discussing the topic with understanding.
2. To assess the students' understanding of the content, the teacher will ask the small groups to summarize their thoughts from both discussion questions. Then, the teacher will allow each student to choose one of the topics and individually write a brief summary of their own thoughts on the topic.

Great Teacher Blog- Making Science Fun

Steve Spangler's blog focuses on making science classes more interesting. There are hundreds of experiments and other class activities you can use in the science classroom- or if they seem too dangerous or expensive, you can just watch the video on his blog. The lastest experiment is: Potato Gun Wars: Teachers Relieving Stress or Just Having Fun?
I can't wait to try out some of these experiments in my own classroom. :)

How to Post Links in Your Comments!

To put a link in a comment, just type < a href= "websiteaddresshere.com"> Here, put whatever words you want to be "clickable," then close it with < /a> (minus the spaces after the <'s)

For example, this:
< a href="http://usm.edu">Click here to visit USM's website :) < /a>

will look like this: (if you take out the two spaces after the <'s!!!)
Click here to visit USM's website :)

Hope that makes sense... :D

Conley- Ch. 4: Ongoing Assessment

Conley stresses the importance of ongoing assessments, meaning that the students should constantly be assessed throughout the school year. He states that "an important guideline is to use multiple assessments and look for patterns in students' performance. Do not overrely on results from any single test." I totally agree; but my question is: Isn't this exactly what high-stakes/standardized tests do? They take the results from one assessment and gauge a student's comprehension of a subject from that one test score. There are too many factors that influence the outcome of standardized tests, and I believe that these tests rarely reflect the full understanding of each student. How can teachers prepare their students for these tests and still have time to personalize lessons to engage and motivate students?

I loved the section about personal assessments. They seem as though they would be time-consuming, but so much valuable information can be obtained from these experiences with students. By making personal connections with the students, a teacher can create instant engagement in a lesson and motivate students' future learning once the students realize how learning can be applicable to their own lives and interests. We are going to use the reading attitude and an interest survey to get to know the students we will be tutoring in clinicals this semester. I am so glad that we have the opportunity to get to know our students on a personal level so that we can do as much as possible to motivate them. I only wish that when I have my own classroom, I could create individualized lessons based on every one of my students' interests!

Chalk Talk- ch. 3

Conley suggests that teachers use "motivation and self-directed learning, which includes building motivation to read and learn and providing students with the instruction and supports needed for independent learning tasks they will face after graduation." (p. 76, #3)

I believe that Conley was suggesting that teachers motivate their students and instill in them the desire to learn. If students have no desire to learn, they will not learn much outside of the classroom. The students may succeed in school, but will they succeed in life? It is similar to the proverb that says you can "give a man a fish, feed him for a day. But if you teach that man to fish, you'll feed him for life." If we teach our students enough to get them through the school year, they will succeed- for one year. But if we teach them how to be effective learners and give them the motivation to learn, we will help them succeed for the rest of their lives.

If students are motivated, they will be more likely to remember what they learn and it will be more meaningful to them. Teachers should relate lessons to their students' lives, as well as connect it to their prior knowledge. Teachers should also try to create interesting and engaging lessons and activities that will not only motivate the students to learn more, but also give them a deeper understanding of the content at hand.

Also, students do not always enter a classroom with the skills necessary to be great learners. Sometimes, teachers have to teach their students how to learn before they can teach them what to learn. Skills such as classifying, note-taking, summarizing, and self-reflection should be taught and practiced in the classroom.

Conley Chapter 3

Chapter 3 informs us that No Child Left Behind requires teachers to be held accountable for every student in their classrooms- by being tested on specific standards. How can teachers avoid teaching to the test when they are faced with mandated assessments such as these? It seems that the assessment creates a strict schedule for the teacher that can not be veered from, even when students are very curious or interested in a topic that is not included in the assessment. This seems to stifle the learning process and does not encourage much inquiry and exploration.

This chapter also has a lot of information about using textbooks in the classroom, and choosing a textbook that is the most appropriate for your students. I understand that teachers need to use the textbook and create their own personalized instruction connecting with the text, but in my experience, there are very few textbooks that can be considered interesting to young students. Do students have to read directly from the textbook? I have a hard time paying attention to textbook information, so I know my students will. How can I use the textbook, but still focus on students' interests (and not put them to sleep)?


When teachers use literacy (specifically writing) in their content areas, students seem to focus more on the structure and grammar than the content. How can we avoid this? Correct grammar and spelling are very important for students to communicate effectively in the world as professionals- but should grammar and spelling be included in the criteria of a math, social studies, or science assignment? Shouldn't the focus be placed on the specific content of the assignment?

"Big Ideas" remind me of the themes/goals/etc. of the thematic units we did for Mrs. Beavers last semester. They provided connections by linking all of the subject areas together and focusing on one main idea. I think the thematic units are great- but very time consuming. It is sometimes difficult to connect something from math with something from history or science, etc.