Final Synthesis Blog Post

Over the course of this semester, the tools and strategies we have discussed in class have made me realize how important it is to embrace literacy in every classroom, regardless of subject or grade level. There is no detriment to doing so, and it creates more well-rounded students capable of tackling problems inside and outside of the classroom. This course’s offerings, from the insightful class discussions to the textbook which dives into real-life examples of how to best embrace content area literacy to so much more, have made me recognize what I can do, as a content area teacher, to mold my students into better readers--and therefore better students.

Even though textbooks may not be the best method in the modern classroom to transfer information to students, the textbook for this class was incredibly helpful in developing an array of literary strategies to use in my own future classroom. The textbook was chock-full of strategies to use before, during, and after reading or analyzing text, and class assignments such as the strategy lesson and text set helped me become familiar with these strategies so that I feel comfortable applying them in the future.

For me, the most important aspect of the class was the strategy lesson, because it allowed me to collaborate with others in my primary subject area and begin to act out the initial parts of both lesson planning and getting up in front of class and trying a new strategy. As was always mentioned in class, the best teachers aren’t scared to try something new, and if it doesn’t work out, make changes in order to positively adjust for the future. By trying out new lessons and receiving glows and grows from our peers, we could understand what it was like from a more critical outside perspective to try these literary strategies.

Speaking of perspective, this class provided a unique opportunity to see a class from both a teacher and student lens. Our in-class discussions, ranging from our personal opinions on intra-content literacy to how it can best be taught, provided meaningful insight from different personalities and allowed us to really think through how we can best provide literary opportunities for our students. On the other side of the spectrum, participating in book clubs from a student perspective allowed us to walk through the entire process, have fun in a group activity, and then critically think about what went wrong, what could be changed, and how to create more impactful and efficient book clubs in our own classrooms. Think alouds put us in our teacher roles, so that we could walk through the process of digesting text in real time with our students, in order to provide positive and thoughtful examples on how to analyze and work through text, no matter how difficult or easy it may be.

The most important factor in this class to my future classroom, however, would have to be our blogs. Combing through everybody’s blogs was a unique and interesting opportunity to react to what other students had to say about textbook chapters, certain reading strategies, or incredible resources they had found. The resource blogs are a great… well, resource, for the future, because they are a plethora of free and useful modes of learning that captivate student interest and drive learning inside and outside of the classroom. The resources found over the course of this class will remain a valuable stockpile of educational materials for any educator to utilize in their class.

Overall, this class has shaped my opinion on what it means to be a teacher who embraces content-area literacy and wants the best for their students, regardless of the content area that the teacher is involved in. It is crucial to build a strong base of reading skills for students so that they can thrive in any setting--and that base should be supported by teachers everywhere, not just the ones teaching English.

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Book Club Podcast

https://soundcloud.com/mikesilver87/lled-podcast

Resource Blog Post 5 (CROSS CURRICULAR)

The resource I have chosen for my cross-curricular subject area works perfectly in both math and science classrooms when a teacher wants to give students a great hands-on, learn-through-doing experience. PhET simulations (found at phet.colorado.edu) offer hundreds of simulations built to explain key and important concepts to students through trial and error. PhET’s website boasts that their simulations have been used over 557 million times, which goes to show how prominent and well-made they are for the classroom.

PhET’s simulations range from science (where they have different sections for Physics, Chemistry, Earth Science, and Biology) to math, with intentions to help students with concepts relating from middle school to university-level physics. These simulations are perfect for creating an environment in the classroom where students feel responsible for their own learning and can truly engage themselves in a topic. This beats a traditional classroom setup of a teacher telling students information as-is, and having students memorize the information and regurgitate it back without truly understanding it. Instead, students encounter a simulation without much background knowledge, and begin to tinker with the different options until they find one that works. After that, students can work on increasingly difficult simulations, up until they have a firm grasp of the topic at hand. PhET simulations are a great resource to have in order to further student learning and have some fun in the classroom!

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Synthesis Blog Post 5

I really enjoyed reading Subjects Matter Chapter 7 because it talks about all of the non-concrete factors that affect student learning, such as the classroom environment and attitudes towards learning itself. Something as small as an attitude change can have a massive affect on how a student feels about an assignment or a subject as a whole, and it is crucial as a teacher to lift your students up in order to make them want to succeed. I also appreciated the authors including the study about the meta-analysis on social skills training--the quoted 11% jump in scores shows that it's not always about teaching the test, but teaching success.

The strategies listed to help us make our future classrooms more inviting and build a stronger sense of community are extremely helpful, even to a current teacher--there is always room to improve. Feeling comfortable enough to take risks, to me, was the most important diagnostic in showing that students have a strong sense of community, and it directly relates to learning. If a student isn't comfortable trying new things, how are they supposed to learn new things? I believe that the two go hand in hand, and it is our job to create an environment that promotes students' own desires to push into new territory.

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Resource Blog 4

The resource I found for this blog post is an academic journal by the name of Social Education. Social Education prides itself for being at the forefront of social studies global discussion and its publications serve to help social studies educators learn new ways to serve their classrooms. While the journal itself is a paid resource, the academic journal has free articles that it releases to the public that do not require a membership. Social Education also has deals for current students and beginner teachers, cutting the cost of a yearly membership by around a third.

Social Education is an important resource to have because it constantly provides social studies educators with resources and data backing up how to best utilize educational strategies in the classroom. One of the resources that I read detailed the importance of knowing how and when to lecture in the classroom in order to keep students not only focused, but also constantly learning. Social Education also has numerous entries emphasizing the importance of content area literacy in the social studies classroom, through primary source documents and critical thinking strategies when it comes to reading historical documents. Social Education is a great resource that is worth the money and can help social studies educators everywhere expand their pedagogical repertoire.

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Strategy Lesson Reflection

Overall, I think that our strategy lesson went well. Our group was lucky to have an activity that was interesting to students as well as could be replicated pretty easily in a "classroom demo" setting. Off the bat, we were able to combat time management problems by posting a short URL to the projector so that every student could engage with the text without passing out individual papers or having them dig for a link. When it came to dividing into groups, our (college aged) middle school students were able to do so quickly and quietly, which might not be the case in an actual classroom. If we were to do this in a real setting, it would help to have pre-assigned groups or some kind of "get with your table" plan ready.

When it came to the Password activity, there were a few ways to improve. First, while it was nice to have the entire class involved on one game, it made the actual activity drag on time-wise if we were to try to get through every student. Instead of having one student go in front of the entire class and play the game, it would help if we had some sort of rotation system set up between groups so that every group could participate simultaneously. While that solution seems pretty general, it also leads to a louder and more difficult-to-control classroom--nothing impossible, but definitely requiring an active role from the teacher to ensure everything goes smoothly. Overall, I enjoyed demonstrating our strategy lesson!

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Synthesis Blog Post 4: Science Article

Summary:
Westcott and Spell's article is all about tearing down the "wall" between science and language arts. Off the bat, the authors talk about how neither side of the fence is really set on becoming an expert in the other field: science teachers don't really want to become English teachers, and English teachers don't want to do experiments in their classrooms. The article tries to create an expectation that science texts can not only be great texts overall, but also intrigue students into learning more about science through its presence in novels.

Connections:
When the authors mentioned Carl Sagan's Cosmos, I immediately thought back to the hit mini series that was re-released by Neil deGrasse Tyson. I loved watching it in middle school, and it definitely opened my mind to embracing science and seeing it as "cool", rather than just something I had to learn in school. All of the literary examples that Westcott and Spell use are meant to lead students down a path to realize that science can be interesting and worthwhile.

Critique:
Overall, I thought that the article had a good intention and the authors did a great job of describing how utilizing science-related materials leads to higher student interest in the subject. However, the one bone I had to pick with the article was its introduction: the reference to a certain Robert Frost poem (to which I was unfamiliar) confused me, and I found myself stuck on the opening sentence for a few minutes. It was only later, when they directly referenced Robert Frost, that I googled the poem, which led to some clarity. For language arts teachers, it may be a well-received introduction to the article--for science teachers with limited knowledge on poetry, not so much.

Importance:
This article is important because it stresses the importance of content-area literacy and mends a disconnect between multiple subjects. The implication that every area of knowledge in school has to be distinct and independent is a notion of the past, and it is important that we begin to blend different paths of knowledge together so that students can be more well-rounded in their learning.

Word Count: 356