A learner for life

As this quarter comes to an end and I am moving slowly, checking my work for errors I discover how much I have learned. I love learning but at times it feels so exhausting. I can only imagine where I will be a year from now.
Technology is changing rapidly. I try to keep up learning about all the new things that are out there and find it hard to keep up. From blogs, to creating websites, and making digital stories it seems the list is never ending. Google keeps discovering new ways to give us more to learn. It seems that each week there is something new to be found whether it is through a new gadget or a new web sharing site. My mind is working harder than ever to learn all of these things.
But then I must learn about the mind and how it learns. How do students learn how to read; what strategies do they use; when is it time for them to move to the next level? As a teacher there as so many questions to be asked about students. Teachers are always learning new ways to best teach their students. It seems as if we find a way that works really well but then a student shows up and teaches us that one size does not fit all.
I can only imagine how young learners feel while sitting through hours a day of class and taking in so much information. At the end of each day I feel like I could collapse on to my bed and sleep for a week. Now I am realizing that I am learning just like these young minds that I have observing.
There have been times that I have asked myself if this is really what I want to do. But I am reminded often by the students that in the end it is worth it all. I love learning and I am always proud of myself when I come to a point where I start to feel as if I really get it. I love watching students as they teach me and as they learn from each other.
As this quarter comes near to an end, I sit here and reflect on how much I have learned about young literate minds and how technology appears to be shaping our world.

literacy

Lamott seems to really capture me. I feel like I am sitting down with her with at a coffee shop and discussing writing. Although she is harsh at times, I feel that she is honest on her thoughts, like a friend who sometimes tells you things you do not want to hear and keeps telling you until they are sure you heard them. There are times when I feel like we are talking about me and how I write but then we jump to how students I have watched and observe write.
This week as I read it I felt like we were talking about me as a person and how who I am affects how I write. It made me realize that if I sat down more often and just started writing I would probably do very well with it. I am often like the person she talks about in her book who stands back and observes what is going on around them instead of participating in it. I like to see what is happening before I get into something and can’t get out of it. I like to see the whole picture. I feel like I have a lot going through my mind and if I could put it down on paper it might turn out to be more organized that what it is in my mind. If I could take what I see and make it into something new that people would be able to connect to and enjoy I wonder how my writing would turn out.
Lamott talks about how writing often has a hidden message in it whether it is meant to or not. I think that this is very true however; it seems that as humans we need to find purpose for something therefore we make up the meanings and sometimes the meaning will be different for me than what it would be for someone else.
Lamott takes a look at Mel Brooks advice saying “Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it”. She relates it to intuition and how we need to put aside the still voices inside of us that cause us to jugde and have doubt but to write without thinking about what it is that we are saying. We are so use to being doubtful of our work and have little confidence in what we say or do that our work doesn’t turn out as well as it might if we just followed our intuition.

literacy

Literacy blog
During September experience I had the opportunity to watch running records being done with many different students before doing some on my own. When this was introduced in the literacy class I was excited to see what more I can learn about it. I wanted to know what teachers do with running records and what they can do with them. I am excited to watch students as they work through many different strategies to solve for unknown words.
When I finished my time in September, I was able to do a running record but did not have the ability to analyze them well. I also did not know about the strategies. From here on out I am going to watch for students to self-monitor, cross check, reread, confirm, locate known words, self-correct, search, and predict. I understand that there can be more strategies than these listed but I hope that knowing these things will help me better understand where the students’ needs to focus their attention on to help them become a good reader.
One thing that I find interesting is that there are so many ways to level books. At one school they might use AR levels but another school might use Fountas and Pinnell reading levels. I can’t help but wonder which one is better. I understand that it is important for a reader to have 90-94% accuracy while reading. But it seems to me that some students do have strong accuracy but can’t give a strong retell or even remember anything that they read. Find the just right book maybe more difficult that it appears. But it is important that readers are reading just right books so that they can improve on their reading skills.

literacy

Litercay 4
Lamott seems to really capture me. I feel like I am sitting down with her with at a coffee shop and discussing writing. Although she is harsh at times, I feel that she is honest on her thoughts, like a friend who sometimes tells you things you do not want to hear and keeps telling you until they are sure you heard them. There are times when I feel like we are talking about me and how I write but then we jump to how students I have watched and observe write.
This week as I read it I felt like we were talking about me as a person and how who I am affects how I write. It made me realize that if I sat down more often and just started writing I would probably do very well with it. I am often like the person she talks about in her book who stands back and observes what is going on around them instead of participating in it. I like to see what is happening before I get into something and can’t get out of it. I like to see the whole picture. I feel like I have a lot going through my mind and if I could put it down on paper it might turn out to be more organized that what it is in my mind. If I could take what I see and make it into something new that people would be able to connect to and enjoy I wonder how my writing would turn out.
Lamott talks about how writing often has a hidden message in it whether it is meant to or not. I think that this is very true however; it seems that as humans we need to find purpose for something therefore we make up the meanings and sometimes the meaning will be different for me than what it would be for someone else.
Lamott takes a look at Mel Brooks advice saying “Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it”. She relates it to intuition and how we need to put aside the still voices inside of us that cause us to jugde and have doubt but to write without thinking about what it is that we are saying. We are so use to being doubtful of our work and have little confidence in what we say or do that our work doesn’t turn out as well as it might if we just followed our intuition.

literacy

literacy 2
I found it interesting to see Lamott use the term “shitty first draft” because I often use a term similar to it about my first drafts. When I start writing I often start typing everything on my mind and not considering grammar, organization, or spelling. I just type as fast as I can as my thoughts flow through my mind to be sure that I put everything down that I want to put down. Once I am finished it looks like what I call word vomit on my pages. I print it out, pull out a green pen because I find red to be seen as a negative color, and start fixing my errors, adding descriptive, and changing words. I find that it can be difficult at times for me to go over the draft but I enjoy writing like this and tend to end up with a better piece of writing.
I am starting to feel like I am learning so much right now in this class that I hope I can remember it all. I am enjoying watching my kindergartener as he seems to change every week. I have noticed several of the phonics and phonemic awareness taking place at my dyad and in my main placement that I have been going back to visit. It seems that I feel like I am starting to better understand why a student does what they do when they are writing and reading. It’s been a lot of fun for me to start to really see what I am learning on campus in the classrooms.

Literacy Blog 2

Before I start to discuss my thoughts on some of the reading so far, I would like to say that all this information would have been very helpful to know about when taking the West E. I wish that we either took this class soon or that we had a longer time to allowed to take the West E. With saying this I hope that instructors will encourage students to read books like Word Identification Strategies to help them prepare for the test. Now that I have that off my mind I will move into my thoughts about the Fox reading.
Word Identification: I have always wondered if the program Hooked on Phonics really worked and what it did for kids. I know my parents purchased the program for my brother and I when we were young however I do not remember much about it. When reading Fox I realized that it is really important to teach Phonics to kids and it seems to me that without realizing it I have used phonics to help kids read through hard words. I just can’t help but wonder if a kid sounds out a word and comes up with a wrong spelling if it will have impact on them later. When a teacher corrects these mistakes will they feel bad about the mistake they made? I look at figure 1.4 and it seems like I have seen it before amongst seconders. When is the right time to show them the correct spelling?
Phonemic Awareness: The last week in September I remember helping several kids with this area. I spent times help them break the words they didn’t know into chunks and sounds to help them figure out how to spell them and read them. Many of the kids now have goals they are working on while reading and several of their goals relate to phonemic awareness. I will be visiting the class on Friday and now that I am more aware of this I would like to talk with my mentor teacher about how she decides what the kids need to work on in this area. I am excited to give some of the activities suggested a try either in my dyad, main placement, or with the kindergartener that I will be seeing some.
I knew that there are many different ways to teach kids how to read and write but I never realized up until now that I have used several of the techniques that have been suggested in this book. However, there were many more ideas that I have not really thought much about and now that I am more aware of them I am excited to try and use them.

Literacy Blog 1

This weekend I had a wedding to attend in Poulsbo. I head over there the night before to save time driving. The next day I was walking through the small town. I walked into one book store and was disappointed to find the high priced books. I continued my way through the little shops waiting for the time of the wedding. I found this one little shop covered with used books. When I did a quick walk through it appeared that the books were mainly adults. I took one last look around only to discover that my first impression was wrong. I spend a lot of time going through hundreds of classic children’s chapter books for all different ages. I found myself remembering the times that I had read the books and some I had read to me. I thought back to last week’s class and how we discussed the books we remember most from our childhood. It made me think back to the moment I decided I liked reading. If I had the money I would have bought a lot of these books that were before me. These books brought me into another world away from the one that I knew. I knew I needed to pick a few carefully. I want for my future students to find a love in reading but in order for them to get there they need to find that book that catches their interest, one that they just can’t put down. I don’t remember what book it was that did this to me but to each person it may be different. I searched through the books and grabbed a large variety that I hope will attract both boys and girls to read. I ended up with about ten books for thirty dollars. I was very proud of my findings. I hope that someday I will be able to venture my way back to this store and continue to grow my collection of books. I may not know the grade I will end up teaching but I think that it is important for me to have a large range in my library and to start now so that I have something to start with. I am excited to share many of my favorite books in read alouds, and possibly share some of these books this next year.

Math Expressions

Math expressions Daily Routine for Second grade

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