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.
I also hope to learn about different learning styles that students have. I think that the better I understand the different ways students learn, the better I will be at having the students learn the content I want them to.
ReplyDeleteMy goals in this course include
1) Learning how to teach students with different strengths and learning styles.
2) Learning where to find high quality grade appropriate books for my future students.
3) Learning how to structure a classroom so that every student learns to the best of their ability.
I haven’t yet decided where I want to teach or in what setting. I think wishing for things like that makes it far too likely I will be let down in the end. I have heard that there is a shortage of science teachers, so I think it is likely that I will end up teaching middle school science. The kind of literacy instruction that I expect to receive from a class like this one, probably doesn’t help me too much in teaching middle school science. However, if I should end up teaching a fourth or fifth grade class, then literacy training would be useful for that. Additionally, learning about different learning styles of students and how to teach them is something that can be useful across teaching disciplines.
My goals for learning in the course:
ReplyDelete-Learn more creative ways to integrate language arts with the other subjects
-Learn different ways to help students with their writing skills, since my placement class struggles in that area
-Experience fun, active ways to teach language arts to elementary students (other than just reading and writing)
-Learn about different ways to integrate language arts with technology
-Learn more about the language arts standards for elementary students.
Where I hope to teach:
In the long run, I actually hope to become a modified behavior analysis for children with autism. If I were to get a teaching job instead, though, I would love to either teach a special education class with students between the grades of kindergarten and third grade or become a resource teacher for those students that need extra help. I would love to move down south one day, maybe to Arizona, and teach in a rural area rather than an urban area.
What I want to learn about literacy instruction:
Basically, what I really want to gain from this class is experience with different means of representation for language arts assessment. If I do get my own classroom one day, I want to keep my lessons fresh so my students do not get bored with my assessments. I would love to learn different creative ways to teach and assess my students so I can assure that all of them are able to learn in the way they prefer.
In my placement classroom, I get to see literature done every Friday afternoon. My kindergarten class does what we call writers workshop. To begin, we will sit in the circle and watch the teacher model what we are going to do first. For example, the topic may be something exciting that happened that morning. The teacher will explain her story, and as she does so she will draw a picture of it on the board for everyone to see. Once she is finished, she will label her picture and write a couple sentences about it at the bottom. Then the students go to individual working areas and draw and write about their own exciting story of the morning. The students dislike writers workshop very much, though. They complain about doing it and are ready for it to be finished before they even start. I think a way to make writers workshop more enjoyable for the students would be to make it more meaningful to them and change it up. Rather than having them to choose a story to write, maybe the teacher could give them an idea, or read them a certain book to write about. Like in the Leland article (2005), the teacher read the students a story about a real life topic and had them write their thoughts and ideas. My class struggles with writing, but my teacher could still read a story and have them draw a picture of their favorite part or of what their thoughts and ideas were about the issue in the story. By making the assessment more interesting to the students, they will be more motivated to try their hardest to express what they are trying to say through pictures, labels, and attempted sentences.
I agree that understanding the different types of learning is very important. The test we did in class to see what type of learner we are really opened my eyes to how different everyone learns. I hope to learn many different ways to teach language arts and give assessments so I can make sure all my different learners are learning to their fullest. I would love to learn how to give different options for my students to chose from for all of my assessments and lessons. If the students have options, it may motivate them to work harder, because they are doing what they chose to do rather than only being given one option that is mandatory.
ReplyDeleteThese are wonderful goals and desired accomplishments. I am confident that this course will be a great tool in your arsenal as future educators.
ReplyDelete