EMBED CODE

ED 500 - Using Embed Code for Screencastomatic

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Sherpa Jill

This week Prof Clayton said that the “number one rule of teaching is: know your audience.” There are/she has a few number one rules, I think, and Johanna Mustacchi seems to share at least a few of them, and gave us a little show and tell incorporating some of those right at the top of her presentation. Ms. Mustacchi opened by inviting us to make ourselves known – she said, ““I just want to start by getting an idea of where you’re all coming from…[and find out] what’s your angle…” She modeled for us: how to not wait for a moment to engage your students in what you’re doing; get to know your students; help your students find a reason to identify with what you’re doing. “Excellent!” Mustacchi said, to each one of us after we answered her initial question --- and we hadn’t said much – just our names, our fields of interest. With that “Excellent!” she was establishing a culture of success, letting us know she appreciated us, that we had much to offer, before she’d ever gotten to the “content”. To start with, it wasn’t our academic literacy or achievement she was valuing – it was our engaged presence. That’s quite something to know about how to address students, and it transcends all content areas. Success with the content follows – at least, the path leading to success has begun to be cleared. As the Cazden “Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” article noted, “We are, indeed, designers of our social futures.” It’s up to us.

We can appreciate each other (or not), but appreciation, both in terms of valuing and understanding, is what will make anyone feel welcome, and feeling welcome just opens the door to the world of Success, in this case, success with academic literacy – and keeps it open. Mustacchi talked about appreciating students’ facility with IM language, for example – in the same terms and in the same way that Delpit or Ladson-Billings write about appreciating students’ home languages, even while we have to make sure our students understand the “cash” language and can use it appropriately.

More of the evening was about what’s “fair” – Prof Clayton said that adolescents have a strong sense of what’s fair and what’s not – and “they can get really worked up around that.” Ms. Mustacchi appreciated everyone for saying their names and fields of interest – that’s fair! The prof reminded us that academic literacy is “power” in our society – and that not everyone has it – not fair! There’s a “disconnect – we’re not reaching all the students” – not fair! We’re not adolescents – but still – we should be getting all worked up about that!

The theme of the current issue (Spring 2008) of the Harvard Educational Review is “adolescent literacy” and well worth looking at (available of course online at the Pace Library). Wish I could give you a link and make it easy, but I’m still in the troglodyte phase of my metamorphosis… and flying in the face of Ms. Mustacchi’s judgment that “to be completely cyber-literate is one of the most important things in the world today” – I’ll just have to get there a bit later…

Spanning the gap from multiliteracies to academic literacy, bridging the achievement gap, striving for social justice – this reform is a process, and it takes time, and money. We’ll write terrific grant proposals and gain a few hundred dollars here and there – but where’s the real money going to come from? Do we or don’t we have to train all the teachers? What’s the critical mass in terms of buy-in – does everyone have to believe this is the way to go, or will a few hands-full of us be enough? What does it take to make this movement really soar?

This week's class was interesting to see how utlizing strategy could be used in one's content area. It's good to see that I wasn't the only person to have trouble with this strategy. It is important to show students the correlation of what they are taught in the classroom to everyday life and/or experiences. Currently I am in a classroom and I always have kids say when will I ever use foreign language and I take this moment as a teachable moment bc of my own experiences. I told them I majored in Eco. and Finance, took some Spanish for an easy "A". My sister majore in Communications and Spanish. She originally took French in school. Her company sent her to France bc she was the only with knowledge in the language. She was able to use her HS language in her work experience. I would never have thought about becoming a teacher I was planning to go to law school. And look at me now a Foreign Language teacher. So i always tell them take in the knowledge because you will never know when you will use it.
I had to introduce them how to tell time in Spanish, I had to explain how to tell time military way, they all thought I was in a military. They were surprised that I retained this info since my Middle school teacher taught me in Spanish class bc in some countries they tell time in that manner. Again we are always taught something for a reason. When will we use it only time will tell.
Finding a utilizing strategy was a bit difficult, I chose to do the Project Journal. Again this is hard to use in the classroom bc Thanks to NCLB teachers at time do not do projects anymore until they are at the advance level. Teachers stick with curriculum far too often, and especially new teachers bc the dept. head is always overseeing them making sure they stay on task.
I nominate Eric to be our Sharpa :)

Sherpa Paul T.

Been thinking some about last night's class. After class, Ari and Al and I paused to chat in the hallway about the utilizing strategies we'd presented. I off-handedly remarked that the problem with both of our strategies is that the lessons we'd planned spent the bulk of our time on non-math related activities. The math was almost an afterthought; seemingly incidental to how the students were spending their class time. But I'm thinking that that is OK. As math teachers we can justify using our valuable time to include these types of activities during a school year because there are some underlying aspects that make them worthwhile.

In the strategy that Ari/Joe presented our group was presented with a challenging complex topic. We reached some frustration with it and did not arrive at a group consensus. However, we DID have a brief meaningful conversation about the issue and took it as far as we could go before we got lost in trying to fill in the cube. The subtext here was that the 'teacher' expected us to have opinions and wanted to know what they were. Our thoughts and opinions were important! This is very powerful and empowering. Students are not expected to think much for themselves but are expected to listen, follow directions, and comply. Empowering them in a strategy like this, I think, could pay off in greater participation and active cognitive involvement in class down the road.

The Dream Car project that Dalila and I presented could be improved to get students to think about what really is their 'Dream'. Is their Dream Car one that looks flashy and will impress their friends, or is it one that is fuel efficient, and has a smaller carbon footprint? As we've been reading about in our book group - the understanding that one's choice of car has hidden costs that are not reflected in the sticker price of the car. There is also the possibility of introducing them to the concept of 'value'. By that I mean getting your money's worth. And so after they've completed their project we could spend a few minutes exposing students to services like Consumer Reports new car price service. Or similar pricing info offered by Edmunds.com

I've run out of time. But let me close with this link to a story about a man from Tennessee who recently learned how to read. Functional literacy and how it has impacted his life. Click on the first story about Joe Buford.

Sherpa Katie

The topic for this week’s and next week’s class is: “How do I access multiliteracies to help students utilize knowledge in ways that enhance academic literacy in school?” We are getting to frosting on the cake, so to speak. We have all of these “ingredients” that help us to define what literacy is and how to enhance literacy through the use of different strategies. Now, we’re bringing all of these “ingredients” together and looking at how we can help students to apply knowledge that will help them in our content areas. We started by defining what it means to be literate then moved to understanding why it matters for secondary students to be exposed to literacy techniques, to looking at multiliteracies, to looking at multiliteracies through the lenses of Alvermann and Finn, to assessing how language shapes our access to power, to the reading apprenticeship framework, to learning how to help students build knowledge of content through reading, to embedding reading instruction in content area instruction, to writing to learn, and finished by exploring how emerging technologies can influence and change how we present writing in our content areas. We have covered a lot this semester. Just like the outline of Stephens and Brown, we started the semester tapping into our prior knowledge and understanding of what literacy is. We then built upon that prior knowledge, expanding on what we knew or thought we knew, through various readings, writings, presentations and discussions. Now, we can apply this knowledge to places that are important to us as educators… the classroom and our students.

In this week’s class, we spent the beginning portion discussing our grant proposals. Many examples were given, both by Professor Clayton, as well as individuals during group discussions. From getting money to go towards school buses, to subscriptions to interactive educational websites, to an idea like a film festival in social studies (which reminded me of the example given in Kajder’s “Unleashing Potential with Emerging Technologies”), we were coming up with ways to enhance our curriculums, encourage the understanding of our students and make content area units more meaningful.

We then saw two very interesting strategy studies on utilizing. What made them more interesting was the fact that both groups were math. I have heard quite often throughout the semester, “I still don’t know how to apply literacy to math.” But there it was! We created our black exterior/white interior dream car using the “Examining the News: Internet” strategy, and we thought about some debatable issues using the “Cubing” strategy, creating our own data. Although the cubing method did not contain the math equations or numbers that most of us “non-math” people are used to, it was a unique way to apply the strategy to math. I also learned that I can’t afford my dream car on student loans. Both strategies showed the importance of thinking outside of the box when we are working to help students to apply why they have learned. Math isn’t always about numbers. It is also about process.

To end the class, we took a look at the initiating, constructing and utilizing set up of Stephens and Brown’s book. All categories are based on scaffolding, and therefore, the gradual release of responsibility to help create independent learners. The strategies also support metacognition or modeling how to think about things. We also thought about how adolescent psychology comes into play. I found this to be particularly interesting. It is true! Adolescents are very focused on their audience and it is important for them to have choices. As Professor Clayton pointed out, this generation in particular is an “out there/see me” generation that is always looking for ways to express themselves. This is something that we as teachers can tap into and use for everyone’s benefit.

One of next week’s reading, “What’s Relevant for YouTubers?” and our guest speaker will be helpful as we strive to be effective teachers. The education system tends to be a bit behind the rest of the world. We are finally tapping into technological tools to use in our classrooms, tools that the students have been using for years now. As the beginning of Mustacchi’s article states, “The media doesn’t have to be a distraction. It can be a tool for learning that students will carry with them throughout their media-saturated lives.”

I am left wondering a few things. How will I know which literacy strategies to use when? Will it be obvious to me when my students are ready for a little more responsibility? Will there be some students who are independent learners almost immediately and others who are given very little responsibility? If so, how can I differentiate my class while keeping everyone challenged and united? How can I prevent creating a culture of power from emerging in my small classroom community?

I believe I am the last Sherpa to go. If not, let me know, and I will nominate you J

Sherpa Dani

At the last class we had discussed about what does it mean to write well in my content area. There were so many different answers because sometimes it depends on the subject of the class. For example, as a Spanish teacher writing is one of the most important parts when someone is learning a new language. A lot of students learn new language by speaking first, which is a signal of being comfortable with the language. We also tend to say something in the head before we write it, because we want to make sure before we write it down.
After the class I started to think why is really important to write in Spanish? We can still live without knowing how to write. The important part was that knowing how to write in any language is extremely meaningful because writing is like an art and anyone can do it whenever they want to do it and also how they want to do it. In addition, at the book club meeting we had also discussed about the reading of importance of writing, which as a foreign language group we all agreed that writing is important because is not just writing words; it is because we learn how to express ourselves and writing also helps students to learn how to think from another point of view.
I’m not really sure if speaking or writing is more important in Spanish because in a foreign language class we always let the students practice how to say it and write it. As a future teacher I want to make sure in which part I should focus more.
Next weed Sherpa is Cristina.