Welcome to EDUC 300

 I met my EDUC 300 for the Fall of 2021 last night.  As always, I am one to get giddy about the first night of class.  I did what every other teacher in America is doing right now, worrying about my content, my presentation, meeting the needs of my students and picking out my first-night-of-classes outfit. I wonder if anyone even noticed my copper leaf necklace?

First day of school 1993

I teach via Zoom and have for the last six years as part of a face-to-face yet Zoom, called asynchronous classes.  I love seeing their faces and responses to my content and I need that feedback to know if I am making sense. Our first class is a lot of relationship building and telling stories and is usually a lot of fun.  This class was no exception, there were wonderful stories and a fun 2 Truths and a Lie game we played that was hilarious.

We spent a part of the class in learning a tool for writing learning objectives which I call the ABCD method.  A is for audience, B is for the behavior you want the students to do, C is the conditions that will provided for the students, and D is the degree of success that is expected for this objective.  It is a simple and effective way to remember to cover all the bases.

Students wrote their own objectives about doing laundry.  It's fun to see who the audiences will be, and often we get my husband, or my roommate, or my kids.  The behaviors range from picking up the dirty clothes and putting them in a basket to washing a complex load of laundry following specific directions on a card located on the washer!  All degrees of success are 100% of course, and the conditions are that there are baskets, hampers and other holding devices available for use.  This is always fun to do and really gets the point across.

I am eager for the rest of the year, learning how to design a unit plan and write a good lesson plan. I have been known to say, "a well executed lesson plan is the best classroom management plan, and that all starts with a well written lesson plan!

 

Welcome to EDUC 337 Summer 2020

Language Arts is the most basic and widely taught subject in our schools today.  In EDUC 337 at Columbia College, we will look at teaching English Language Arts in five basic categories, reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing.  We will look carefully at the science of teaching ELA through the use of our textbook, Language Arts: Process, Product, and Assessment for Diverse Classrooms, 6th Edition by Pamela Farris, et al. 

We will discuss the historical overview of the Language Arts through the 21st century, and then begin to build a literacy culture in our classrooms. We will learn about emergent literacy and how students begin to read and write.

We will look at working with works, writing, writing genres, reading approaches, children's literature (my favorite!) oral language, speaking with expression, listening, and visually representing. The ultimate goal will be the integration of all these pieces in the unit plan that the students will develop.

While our class is for both elementary and middle school, we will look at the differences and commonalities of each to learn when doors open for learning on these unique skills.

We will look at Balanced Literacy and Structured Literacy, and examine the differences.  We will learn the science and the application of science into our lessons and units.

Throughout the class we will tell stories!  Yes, stories!  We will explore our own backgrounds of learning to read and write. We will honor those experiences and learn more about each other through the process.

In addition, we will participate in 15 minutes of Sustained Silent Reading every week.  Do you remember SSR?  We will explore those best practices and look for ways to incorporate them into our daily work.

Buckle up, and get ready for the ELA ride of your life!

Take Aways from 5/3 EDUC 337

I am so excited about teaching this class again. I learned a lot from my first go around with 337 and want to do some small changes that I think will benefit the class as a whole.  As I was reading the blog posts from the first class, I found these suggestions that I am wanting to think more about:

1. Students seem to like doing the discussions in class.
2. Students seems to like working with small groups in blogging.
3. Students like visual cues for dates.  Can I somehow incorporate a calendar somewhere?

I am eager to learn from these pre-service teachers, too.  As I did as an elementary teacher and principal, I want to get better at this so that I send prepared teachers to the world!

Ed 376 Adolescent Literature

Tonight I embark on an adventure that I have been dreaming about since I took Adolescent Literature from Ben Nelms in the 80's at Mizzou.  Teaching a reading course to college students.  I painstakingly designed the course from top to bottom, but I know there will be things I will need to adjust and redo.  This is an eight week course meeting three hours in one night a week.  These students are about to swim in adolescent literature.  I can't wait to see what comes from it.

Top Ten Cinderella Books

Cinderella books have been beloved through the years.  The story shows how kindness shall prevail over wickedness, a theme that we need desperately in today's world.  In the primary classroom I would center my Cinderella studies on setting.  Where is this story taking place?  How many settings do we see in Cinderella?  In the intermediate classroom, I might consider discussing the bullying aspect of the stepsisters.  How does the bullying get resolved?  What feelings does Cinderella have to go through before she can overcome it?  In Middle School we might discuss gender roles.  Have those changed today?

Here are the top ten Cinderella Books:

These books were chosen due to their settings and gender roles.  What other Cinderella books might be chosen?

Using Padlet

I am trying to use new tech tools for the classroom.  Here is our class example of Padlet.  We had a lot of difficulties getting in to write and some students never could get in to write, but those that did, were able to write some great pieces!

Created with Padlet

Frontloading

Frontloading is a literacy practice that helps students gain useful information that helps them comprehend complicated texts.  We are discussing frontloading by looking at a variety of strategies.  These strategies will help teachers scaffold their lessons to give students the support they need to learn the content in their classes.

Frontloading strategeis happen before reading takes place.  Students are making connections to the content by bringing their prior knowledge to the table.  Teachers are also using frontloading activities to close the learning gap between students.

Here is an example of a frontloading activity taught in class.  The strategy is the Frayer model, which is useful in teaching vocabulary.

Here Mollie is showing how the brain remembers new words: by using examples, non-examples, characteristics and the definition.

The students will learn many other frontloading strategies such as KWL Plus, Mind Mapping, Quick Writes, Chapter Tours and Concept Mapping.