Class on April 27th

Thank you, Esther, for giving us time to work with our groups and have our work reviewed. Part of me always hastes doing peer review, but I'm usually grateful for having done it. As a teacher it is sometimes hard to tell if a class is really acomplishing anything during group work time. My comp 101 class had a peer review session of their final paper, and I really don't think too many people completely followed my directions as to what I wanted them to do. But I do know several students got questions answered that were important is their success on the final paper, and I guess that's what really matters in the end; not that they followed my directions to a T, but that they get the help they need to meet the requirements four the class.

I am interested in learning more about classroom mangagement at the 'adult' or college level. I'm curious as to what research has to say about the similarities and differences between techniques for younger and older students.

Class on 4/20

Taking the test tonight was an interesting experience. I'd really like to learn more about how the test is scored--maybe I could use the same system to help me grade this stack of papers from Comp 101 :) Actually I think having several humans look at and judge human writing is the best way to go about it.

I just wanted to share the following story about a guy who wrote a children's book entitled B is for Beer. I thought some of you might appreciate it.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/04/28/tom_robbins/

Reading for 4/20 (Dude)

Classroom-Based Assessment

I am a big fan of making my own tests. Although I like to borrow and steal material and questions from other places, I find that most tests do not meet my needs (and in turn my students').
Washback is difficult to achieve. I hate providing extensive comments on my students' writing, mainly because of the time factor, but it is also only a handful of students who even want or utilize extensive feedback. I usually use a rubric or checklist for grading, and then 3-4 comments with a few grammatical corrections if they happen repeatedly. I've had to go over punctuation for quoting and integrating sources with my students quite a bit this semester. I am surprised that this is a skill that is lacking. We see it used in print so often. Okay, I see it in print so often. I have a hard time remembering how old I am (the show thirty-something finally makes sense). I played a video clip from Letterman with former govenor Rod Legovitch, and only a couple of students knew who Legovitch was, and not many more knew who Letterman was. Ugh.
As I mentioned before about my placement in the kindergarten room, I got to administer an end of unit test 1:1 with two students. I think it would be extremely helpful for classroom teachers to have the opportunity to do this, although rather time consuming. But it was extremely clear to me what each of them still needed to work on. And it eliminated some external factors that could skew results, such as a student just not hearing the question, or thinking something else was being asked.

I just wanted to alert you to two websites I found interesting and useful, particularly for younger students.

http://www.storylineonline.net/ - this one has recordings of famous people reading popular children's stories. Last week I observed the students engrossed with Sean Austin (go Goonies)reading A Bad Case of Stripes. I developed a super fun lesson plan using that book that I used last year.

http://www.tinyd.net/sseandb.html - and this is a link to a bunch of Sesame Street song lyrics. I can never remember the words (la-de-da-de-dum).

6th and 7th observations

This week I completed my observations at the elementary school here in Mankato. On Tuesday I was asked to give two different kindergarten students (one at a time) their unit test in Reading. I thought the test did a wonderful job of pointing out the skills and concepts the students were struggling with. There was one question, however, that I thought was misleading. The students were supposed to point out which picture, out of three choices, had a cat in the middle of the tree, meaning the picture with a cat sitting on a branch half way up the tree. Unfortunately, the picture with the cat on the top of the tree had the cat placed right on the top center, so one could argue that cat was also in the center of the tree.

One of the students really had a hard time differentiating between the words 'bud' and 'bed'. The test covered several beginning, middle, and end sounds.

Today I learned an interesting technique used by one of the ESL instructors. She pre-teaches several of the concepts that are going to be covered in the classroom the following week. She does this to give the Ell students background knowledge before the classroom teacher introduces new topics. Today I worked with 2 boys on comparing and contrasting by reading a book about elephants and ants. Next week the teacher is going to start a unit on bugs so I highlighted the parts of the ants, such as their antenna and jaws. She will also be having them start comparing and contrasting items.

When I interviewed the classroom teacher I asked her what the most important thing a new teacher needs to know, and she said hands down it is classroom management. She recently went to a seminar about the Responsive Classroom (http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/about/aboutrc.html). I'm really hope that classroom management is addressed at some point during the TESL program. It really is just as important as content knowledge.

Class on April 13th

http://samuraisam1.blogspot.com/2005/12/role-of-teacher-opinions-in-public.html

I posted this link to a blog that discusses the role of teachers' political opinions--which tend to be closely tied to one's views about what is right and what is wrong within our society--in the classroom. It was an interesting discussion that every teacher should consider.

So, class last night... I learned of a few new interesting activities. I'm going to have to file away the idea of the story recall. The activity is good for testing both listening and writing. An excellent way to teach students how to take notes as well.
The presentation at the start of class was interesting. I was reassured that I am teaching at about the right level of difficulty. When I surveyed my class 1/2 way through the semester, a few students said they were overwhelmed with all of the work, and a few of them said everything was too easy. Nobody else really said much. "It's fine."
I agreed that the ELL students in a mixed freshman comp class are not necessarily the worst on grammar. They usually have more subtle, or different types of errors, but the native speakers (in my limited experience) tend to have more pronounced and noticeable grammatical errors. I usually grade grammar based on how it affects meaning and distracts from the message.

Reading for April 13th

The other day I was holding Oscar (who will be 4 in June) while I was shutting down my computer for the night. He said something about listening to music, and then clear as day: "We need an i-pod so we can just put the music from here to there."
"Oh, really," I responded with a raised eyebrow. We don't own an i-pod. I'm not sure if it is something he's heard about at school, or picked up from watching commercials...
Next he requests, "Mommy, let's buy one."
"Okay." Hey, why not?
Pause. Pause. Pause. "Mommy?"
"Yes, Oscar."
"What's an i-pod?"

This conversation just reminded me of how important our student's experiences are, both in and outside of the classroom, to their performance on tests. It also is important to their reading comprehension. It also reminds me that if I am going to test my students on using an i-pod then I need to teach them how to use an i-pod first. It sounds obvious, but it really isn't. Using this reasoning, teachers should "teach to the test" in regards to standardized testing. But that methodology is looked down upon. Does this make sense?

I get to present on assessment tonight, so start getting excited. We'll cover IRI's, Cloze passages, and other wonderful topics.

Class on April 6th

I found the presentation on the Koren educational system quite interesting. It is amazing how cultural views about education can vary so drastically. I hated giving my 5th graders any sort of homework if I could help it. Only those who goofed off during work time ever had to do anything outside of class. And then they usually only got it done if I emailed their parents to let them know it should be getting done that night. I guess I just want kids to enjoy their days being grasshoppers before they have to become ants.