Final Blog Post

I think that motivation is a very important thing for a student to have for them to become good readers, but it’s important for teachers to differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation like it says in the book.  Extrinsic motivation is when people want to do something for the sake of something else such as a reward, whereas intrinsic motivation is when someone wants to do something for the sake of itself.  I know that when I was young I wasn’t a very good reader, and I think the reason was because I wasn’t given books to read that interested me. I know that it is important for students to read many genres of books for the purpose of enrichment, but reading science fiction or reading non-fiction should be the same as far as learning to read with fluency.  I know that some teachers like to motivate students to read by giving out rewards such as pencils or candy, and the rewards did get me to read, but I wasn’t reading because I enjoyed reading, and when the reward went away I stopped reading books for fun. 

As far as students in the class are concerned, I think it is important for teachers to do what they can to motivate students to be interested in learning about the subjects that teachers want to teach their students.  There was a math class that I was observing where the teacher built up the tension saying, “I know your all not going to like this but… in today’s class were going to be doing… FRACTIONS!!!” Then the students predictably said, “OH NO!!!” I think that if a teacher has a positive attitude towards the subject their teaching, then the students will be more receptive to learning.   

Blog Post 4

Dear Lily,

                It’s good to hear from you again.  How’s your son Harry doing?  Anyway, I may have a few ideas to help you with your student named Jonathan.  By the sounds of things Jonathan is a talented and intelligent boy, who just struggles with reading tasks.  I know it’s easy to jump to conclusions that Jonathan is either disinterested in his work, or bored, but It may be the case that Jonathan has a learning disability in reading.  For example, Jonathan may struggle with reading tasks because he is dyslexic. 

                I just read this article that may help me help you, the article was called How Can I Help Children with Learning Disabilities? by Maguire, or Carlisle, I forget which, anyway the article talks about how if students are still not able to complete the work that they need to, then they should be referred to a specialist for evaluation.  A special education teacher has training in how to help students with learning disabilities that most regular classroom teachers don’t.  It is very important that both you and the special education teacher keep a positive attitude towards Jonathan’s education, and that Jonathan appreciates that his education is still his responsibility.  Students in Jonathan’s position can lose their self-esteem if they think that the adults around them don’t believe in them, or that their work doesn’t matter. 

                It could also be that Jonathan has a language learning disability stemming from his lack of reading comprehension.  If this is the case, then Jonathan would be reading words slowly or incorrectly.  Perhaps Jonathan should be referred to a reading or speech therapist.  I know you’re busy with 24 students, but if you can, you could also try helping Jonathan with his phonological awareness and word-reading skills.  Bye lily, give my best to James.

-Brian Walker

Blog 4

Dear Mrs. Potter,

I understand that you have a student in your class named Lupita who is extremely quiet and you believe that she has a lack of academic skills.  From the knowledge that I have gained, there seems to be a slight language barrier since she has been raised by her Spanish speaking grandmother and does not have much access to the tools that the other children do in their free time.

I would like to point out that she may be as smart as some of the other students in the class.  Since Spanish is her first language, she was able to finish that homework very quickly and also finished a puzzle that many other students were struggling with.  The reason for her lack of participation skills is most likely due to the fact that she is not fully comfortable with English yet.

An article by Kurth suggest ways to make adaptations within the classroom.  The first thing you should do is talk to her a few times a week one to one while the students are working on something.  This might make her more comfortable and she could explain what kind of subjects she is struggling with.  Once you determine her learning needs, you will be able to better prepare her and alter classroom activities.

Marissa

Blog 4 2/19/14

Madison Strong

TE 405

2/19/14

Dear Mrs. Potter,

                I am very sorry to hear about your troubled students in your class.  While looking at one particular student’s case, Eddie, I noticed most of the issues explained were behavioral problems.  It seems Eddie has a very difficult time staying on task and focusing.  He is very fidgety, as well.  These issues may be the reason behind why Eddie is not completing his assignments in school.  After going over some options, I found a few that might really make a difference for you.

                The first option I looked at is called a STAIR assessment, which stands for System for Teaching and Assessing Interactively and Reflectively.  The purpose of completing a STAIR assessment is so that a teacher can record and use what they observe and know about their students.  By using this tool, you will be able to observe and record information about Eddie, which will allow you to form a hypothesis for why he is acting out in the way that he is.  Once a hypothesis is made, it can be tested to see if that is the true reason behind his behavior.  If your hypothesis is tested correctly, you will be able to take action in order to improve Eddie’s behavior so he can start learning more and start getting his work completed.

Once the assessment is completed, a step needs to be taken towards having an intervention for the student to prevent these behaviors from happening again.  An idea I recently learned about is called a mystery motivator.  Like the mystery motivator, there are many other motivational options to choose from as well, such as a contract or other types of scheduled positive reinforcement as well.  For the mystery motivator, a certain number of days will be marked on a Monday through Friday calendar.  If Eddie performs a certain behavior, such as completing all homework assignments for that day, he will be able to look at his weekly calendar to see if that is a day that is marked.  If that day is marked, then Eddie will receive a certain prize for behaving in the correct way.  If Eddie does not complete all of his homework assignments, he does not get to see if that day is marked or not, and he does not receive the designated prize that day.

It is important to stick with the form of motivation that you choose and to make sure that method works for this student.  If you do not notice a change in Eddie’s behavior, a new form of motivation should be tried instead.  I hope this is helpful for you, Mrs. Potter.  Good luck with your class, and I hope all goes well!

Sincerely,

Madison Strong

Blog Post 2.5

I found the Mcgee article to be intellectually bankrupt and devoid of any useful insights. On page 9 Mcgee tells us that, “The real purpose of response centered talk is to use children’s responses or ideas as a springboard to reasoning and problem solving”. Reasoning and problem solving are admirable goals to have for teaching students of any age, but response centered talk as it is described in the article won’t contribute to this in the slightest. On page 3 Mcgee tells us that, “fleeting images, feelings, impressions, and thoughts work along with their respective responses to form the reader’s unique and personal understanding of the literary work.” Feelings, impressions, and thoughts are based on nothing. Just because someone feels as though something is true, doesn’t mean that it actually is. Things that are true are testable, conceivable, and arguable. Arguments can be falsified, feelings cannot. The worldview advocated by Mcgee is one where there is no truth, only feelings. On page 5 Mcgee tells us that “Carlos… suggests that her cockscomb could be a spying device. “Although I have not read the book referenced in the article, I can be sure that the idea that the hen had an electronic listening device implanted in her body was completely invented by the student. I am perfectly fine with having a literary text in class where there are different points of view about the motivations of the characters, or why something happened. But to claim that there are no wrong answers so long as you persuade others of what you believe is nonsense. The Almasi article takes a different approach in advocating for a subjective/relativistic view of reading literary texts. Almasi gives us many reasons for why discussions, are better than recitations. These reasons include cognitive, social, and emotional benefits to working with other students. I can see no reason though for why these benefits can’t be realized while still maintaining that the information lies in the text and not the person reading it. In reading a particular text there can be more than one interpretation of what is written, and working collaboratively can help students understand and enjoy the reading more. However, a person’s culture or background, or whatever only acts as a filter through which the information contained within the text is understood. Those characteristics can cause the person to not understand, or misunderstand the text, but no additional information is added to the text based on the reader’s filters. Unfortunately, I have not seen classroom discussions taking place in the classroom I do my service learning in. I would not have response-centered talk as it is described in either of the articles in my classroom, because they both suppose that there is nothing that is objectively true. I do think though that having students learn concepts through the discovery process is a great way for them to learn. As a teacher it will be my job to guide the students in an experiment, or class discussion to learn whatever it is we are studying. Something that is a useful strategy for getting quiet students to participate in class discussions is to have the teacher draw popsicles with the student’s names on them, so that a student could have to respond to something that is said at any time. Students in this system all participate equally, because they all have an equal chance to be called on.

Blog Post 2 1/19

I have noticed that in my fourth grade classroom, the students are writing papers about Black historical figures related to Michigan. They were given articles to read, and then were asked to incorporate the information into the papers. The students were also being taught the importance of introductory sentences in their papers, and how to structure paragraphs. The way this lesson is being taught, seems to be a lesson that combines social studies and language arts. This lesson seems to give the students a brief overview of what happened and what the people went through. It seems like what the Leland article was encouraging teachers to do, was to have students read articles that would illicit an emotional response from the students reading it, so that the students could better relate to what the person in the story went through. While I think that it is important and good for articles to question people’s assumptions and prejudices, the Leland article went too far in the other direction. On page 10 it says, “In an all-white community, it can become ‘normal’ to assume people of color are somehow ‘different’ and maybe even ‘dangerous.’ An example of the dominant discourse” (10). However, the CDC disagrees with the above claim that it is just a dominant discourse with the below link showing the per capita homicide rate among different races of people in this country over the last 20 years. In 2010, the White homicide rate appears to be about 3, and the Black homicide rate appears to be about 30. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6227a1.htm#fig3

1st Blog Post 1/14/14

Some of my goals for this course is to try to understand what type of learning works best for me and to become familiar with other types of learning that may work best for my students. I understand that everyone has strengths in different areas so I want to be able to incorporate as many different techniques as possible. I hope that this class will help me better understand other techniques I may not be comfortable with in the beginning of this class.

I hope to teach in a community where I can challenge myself as well as my students. In order to achieve this I hope to learn new and different literacy strategies of teaching.  I want to be able to help my students succeed, but challenge them at the same time. I am not the best in logical instruction so if I can better myself in that type of teaching I could help my students who are more skilled in that context.