Week 7

Week 7 already!  I know my students are excited for this semester to be over and I remember feeling the same way... but this group of students has really touched my heart in such a short time!  They are so appreciative, and while I have worked hard to make the lessons relevant and meaningful, it amazes me how much they notice the effort and take the time to tell me!

So while they are rejoicing and frantically putting together the last details on their lesson plans, I am feeling bittersweet about the inevitable ending.  Many of them are finalizing their college careers. I hope some day our paths cross again somewhere in the world of education.

Bio Poem

Terri
Cheerful, Inquisitive, Adaptive, Content
Mother of Ashley, Wife to Bob, daughter to Shirley
Lover of sunsets, the beach, books.
Who feels chocolate should be at the bottom of the food pyramid, who believes books should be free, and that music be a core subject,
Who fears losing friends, memories and trivia games
Accomplished Doctor of Education, writer of books, teacher
Who would like to go to cooking school in Italy, swim around the Greek Islands, have hot chocolate with my grandpa,
Resident of New Town, Saint Charles, Missouri,
Steffes

Week 6

This week we are starting to get into the flow of our work.  We spent several minutes talking about "Flow" and "getting into the groove."  You know when you are there as time flies by.  We also did a lot of reading strategies back to back in a single lesson plan.  Tonight we did a TPRC (Think, Predict, Read and Connect) followed by a GMA followed by a VSS (Vocabulary Self Collection Strategy).  Afterwards I shared Anticipation Guides, Questioning the Author, Reading Response Groups, and then writing across the curriculum with double entry journals, learning logs, written conversation, writing from our maps, KWLs and others.  Katie, Kaci and Stacy all shared one of their lesson plans.  We learned that the rubric says we need to include 10 questions from Bloom's taxonomy in our lesson plans.  I then assigned them two blog entries, one being take aways from tonight's lesson and a bio poem, which I cannot wait to read!

Week 3

In preparing to discuss Ruddell's chapters one and two, I remember a moment I had in week 2 where I realized I was going over material that I asked them to read in advance.  The book had been clear that this was a weak strategy for trusting that students had read the material.  If I was going over it, why did they need to read it?  So, this week I concentrated on activities that supported their readings. For me I felt like the class was a much more engaging than it had been the week before.  

One activity had students looking at cartoons to discuss schema.  The students analyzed the cartoons for what information their students might need to understand the cartoon.  The students were amazing in their work, coming up with clean and clear concepts that their own students would have to know.  

Another activity was to focus on perception and stance.  I emailed them a reading and asked them to take notes based on the reading and gave them a "lens" to look through.  I don't want to give too much away here, so let's just say that when they were presenting out, there was great confusion about why someone was choosing specific attributes.  Later they learned that they were all reading from a different lens.  It helped us understand why we can all be reading the same thing, but get different meaning from it.

We discussed upcoming work:  lesson plans, fact pyramids, and next weeks readings.  Big readings ahead.

Week 2

It was interesting for me to try frontloading our reading assignment for Chapter 4 (Buehl).  I sent in key vocabulary and questions for the students to answer.  I found that this group of students liked the questions the best, but there were a few who felt the vocabulary helped them the most.  Like all good teachers, it is probably best to use a mix when working with your class.  

We discussed a number of strategies, particularly metacognition, and I am learning from my students as much as I learned from the text.  These students are already very good at so many reading tasks.  What I am really enjoying are the blog posts.  If you want to see what students are capable of...give them a blog!  

Check out these posts:

http://mrswhitandwhimsy.blogspot.com/2015/11/horses-cows-and-students-oh-my.html

http://terrillstorytales.blogspot.com/2015/11/teaching-terrill-my-first-lesson-plan.html

http://terrillstorytales.blogspot.com/2015/11/toto-by-terrill-day-in-kansas.html

There are many more good ones, these blogs are just a sample of what's going on in Educ. 338.

Stay tuned for more information to follow.

Week 1

What an interesting group of students you all are!

A new mom-to-be, a soon-to-be-student-teacher, a substitute and mom, a mom to five and a para, a dad and coffee shop guy, and a stay-at-home mom.  Lots of talent to be learned from in this group.

Thank you for making this first three hour session go by so quickly.  I am eager to learn from each of you.

Welcome to Education 338!

If you are here, you have successfully found your instructor's blog for Education 338 Columbia College!

We will be using blogging as a way of introducting content to Education 338 and to promote reading and writing to your students.  Use this blog for now just for course assignments, content, reflections on your field experiences, etc.

Blogger is an easy format to learn.  There are literally hundreds of youtube videos on blogger set ups and you can have a lot of fun with the creativity.

Send me your blogger address via email as soon as you get it created at tasteffes@cougars.ccis.edu

Happy blogging!