March 6, 2008 - Sherpa Blog - Theresa Murray

This week was all about connecting to the readings relating to Initiating Strategies. As a class we defined what initiating strategies are (engaging, stimulating, setting purpose, and connections/motivation) and discussed some of the ways to focus on them as a means to motivate our students for the formal learning/lesson plan. In particular, we addressed the persond and social connections of the stage. For example, how students view themselves in relation to the subject, how can we use initiating to set up the classroom as a safe environment allowing for strong social dynamics and effective communication. Several students raised questions relating to math and that they have seen primarily ony direct instruction and it was noted that these strategies can be used effectively even in direct instruction situations (e.g. the use of effective questioning to bring students into the conversation and stimulate thinking). Other students in our class gave examples of strong initiating strategies which included group work, scaffolding, and the use of computer games. The professor also outlined the interacting areas of reading (which made some connections to the text) - motivation, the technicals, cognitions, and knowledge. I found the discussion relating to fluency, automaticity, and phonics informative and it was very eye opening to see the levels of reading for indept., instructional, and frustrational (particularly with regard to comprehension). The question of how we integrate and assess each students level comes to mind - particulary since we are going to be teaching very diverse learners. We want to make sure that subject matter is hitting the sweat spot of instructionsl levels of word recognition and comprehension. I nominate Dalila to be next weeks blogger.