ENGL 493

When reading the article, I loved that the first paragraph mentions the student-teacher relationship in the classroom.  Students are often looked as youth that teachers are to fill with all the knowledge for the world outside the classroom.  Many teachers will try to just cram a lot of information into one lesson; this often leads to students losing focus in the classroom. During many lessons students don’t engage with the learning and “check-out.”  The lack of engagement in the classroom with the materials and content lead to a lack of student success.  Teachers used to just continue to teach in the same way all the time, lecture and notes, a “narrative education.”  Teachers now are trying to find ways to create a more engaging environment during their lessons to promote student learning. Teachers no longer are looking just to fill the students with as much information as possible.  Study after study shows students do not learn in that kind of env...

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Description of Test:             The Hunger Games is a fictional story.  It is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic setting.  North America was divided into 13 districts and there was a large civil war rebelling against the Capital; District 13 was lost in the civil war.  The districts are controlled by “the Capital.”  The districts each have their own “part” they play in the survival of North America; each district oversees different resources that are used in the Capital.  The farther away from the Capital the district is, the more impoverished the people.  In District 12, where the hero, Katniss Everdeen lives, they are in-charge of mining.  The Capital hosts an annual “Hunger Games” to control the districts; the Hunger Games are used as a reminder of the pain from the civil war and to enforce the idea that the Capital will always win.  At the age of 12, ...

Pre-reading is extremely important when is comes to teaching a text of any kind.  When giving students a way to look at a text (a lens), it allows for students to actively engage with what they are reading.  Students are able to then understand what it is they are looking for in the text whether it is a theme or concept or stylistic choices of the author. The other thing with doing a pre-reading is as teachers, we can help students make links to their personal lives.  In creating those connects, students tend to respond to a text in a more thoughtful manner and understand why the text is being read.  Currently in the classroom I am teaching in, we are reading I Am Malala .  This is a book about a girl who was shot by the Taliban for going to school and protesting in that manner.  When prepping the students for the reading of the book, I had to give a context to the students of what the book was about and why it was written.  The students watched a v...

Social justice is an important topic among educators.  It is the act of creating positive change.  We can all do this, whether it's in our classrooms or in daily activities.  As educators, we need to think of how we can implement this in our classroom and teach this concept to our students. First of all, teachers should not look at implenting social justice as an add on to their lessons.  Our lessons show be focused around social justice.  This could be as simple as connecting the lesson to the everyday lives of our students.  We should be thinking about this connection for our lessons to begin with.  When I think back on when I was a student, I didn't stay engaged with an assignment or lesson unless I knew how it related to my life.  Even now, I hear students walking down the halls asking each other when they're ever going to use certain parts of lessons. Secondly, if students know they can make a positive change, they will be more likely to ...

This was a very interesting article to read.  Many different teachers and people feel there are many different ways to assess a students' learning.  With all of the studies that are around about how to assess and evaluate a students' learning, not everyone is using those methods in their classrooms. What I liked about this article is it mentions that as teachers, we have the ability to chose what we emphasize as important.  We will then create our lessons with that in mind.  Our students then need to know what we are putting importance on for them to learn.  Therefore, we need to be aware of our choices in the classroom and how we will be evaluating and assessing our students.  My eyes were opened to the idea that some assessments are actually "correct answer" assessments (225).  While we start assessing our students, we need to be aware of how our assessments are affecting our students in their educational confidence.

When you hear “Common Core State Standards (CCSS),” what goes through your mind?  I have heard mixed thoughts about CCSS from teachers, students, family and community members.  Some love the idea of CCSS, others very much dislike the idea, and a few are confused as to what they even are. Even up until now, reading this article, I could hear the multitude of opinions I have been given in my head. Now let’s take a minute to think about the idea in which CCSS is formed around, help students be better prepared for college and everyday life outside of high school no matter where they are in the United States.  Before reading this article, I never thought about the fact that the federal government didn’t create the idea first, but the individual states had.  The federal government just decided there should be some “main guidelines” for all public schools to follow.  Among many states and educators, there was a bit of an uproar with this when President Bush create...

I enjoyed reading Discussion as a Way of Teaching  by Stephen Brookfield.  As a future teacher, I have learned that discussion is a very important piece to learning and understanding for students.  Through research I found that learning from peers can be more beneficial to the learning process.  Currently as a college student, I enjoy having class discussions about texts and homework.  It gives more perspectives to the reading to help create a better understanding and further my learning process.  I want to implement this for my students in my own classroom. One thing I don’t remember most of my teachers in high school doing until I got to college was “setting ground rules” for the class discussions.  They always said we were to actively listen and be respectful to one another, but to us, it was just the “normal” discussion.  Not once did we get to choose how our discussions were going to go or how we wanted everyone to participate and act du...