Week 12- McLean (Response)

In response to the description of what a lesson plan should include, in terms of vocabulary, I would have to agree.  A lesson should help students learn vocabulary in a meaningful way by focusing mostly on tier 2 words.  For instance, having students memorize a word and its meaning is not very effective on its own.  However, if you have a lesson where you are reading a book, one important vocabulary word that you might want students to learn or focus on would relate to the book or the topic of the lesson.  This might be words like characters or setting, or excited or jealous.  These different types of words could be taught through a lesson to make it more authentic and create a scaffolded meaning behind each word.  This goes beyond relying on a dictionary definition of words.  Instead, students could even create their own dictionary by writing words and their own definition of what the word means based on the lesson that it relates to.  This would allow students to create a sense of meaning behind each vocabulary word learned authentically, as well as allow children to comprehend the word fully by restating the meaning of the word by using their own words.  As stated earlier, it is essential to include vocabulary development as an authentic activity to create meaning that is relatable for students.

Week 12 Initial Post - Widzinski

Thompson's text describes the tiers...

Tier One: Basic Words: Words that are used very commonly around the house/school/playground. A native English-speaker would rarely need instruction about the meanings of these words because they are so common. Examples: animal, guitar, celebrate

Tier Two: Academic Words: Words that are used more in writing than orally. Students will learn the words meanings from their application. Sometimes, students will understand the concept of the word, but not recognize the specific word. Examples: evidence, original, spirit

Tier Three: Specialized Words: Words that are content-specific/abstract. These words are used less frequently. Examples: osmosis, Great Depression, unions

Thompson states that teachers focus their word instruction on Tier 2 words, while still including words from all three levels on word walls. I agree with Thompson. I believe that a lot of the focus of teaching should come from Tier 2 words. I think that learning Tier 3 words come with time and from teaching specific content. I also agree that some Tier 1 words may need to be taught, like the example in the book (harmonica) because not all children may be exposed to the same things based on their lifestyles and therefore will have a different Tier 1 basic vocabulary. Word walls are definitely a tool I have seen in multiple classrooms, but have never taken the time to fully examine the word choices that are on the wall and what tier they might fall under.

In readings Winter's article, Interactive Frames for Vocabulary Growth and Word Consciousness, I really liked the idea of the triangle. The teacher drew an inverted triangle and broke their work up into the three parts (transported, trans-port-ed). This got the students thinking about all three parts of the word, and when they've heard those parts in other contexts. I think this task would work well for older children, but I think there are ways to make it more simple for younger grades.

Week 9- McLean

1.     Conceptual Understanding

a.     Learning about the new literacy of visual literacy helped to open my eyes to different teaching methods in my classroom.  Typically, literacy is taught by the words on a page, rather than by using illustrations, graphs, photographs, videos, etc.  Therefore, it is a strong contrast from the traditional literacies that are taught in schools.  I also learned several different ways that visual literacy can be easily incorporated into the classroom on an everyday basis, and in each area of the curriculum.  I also learned that there are different ways that this can be easily done for upper elementary and lower elementary.  Previously, I had only seen lower elementary students refer to illustrations in books to help them decode the text.  Now, I know that children can use graphs, videos, photographs, etc to explore the visual literacies available.  The digital literacy, Glogster, helped to inform my thinking by showing me a new resource that I could use to present information to my students and for students to use to present information to classmates and me.  This online poster supports the idea of visual literacy and how it can be used in the classroom too.  This is somewhat different from what I posted about in my original definition.  Although visual was included in my definition, I now have a more concrete idea of what it look like to include visual literacy in the classroom.  As one can see, I have grown from thinking that literacy is just communicating with others by using different methods of communication and text (online vs. print).  Using digital literacy, new literacies, and traditional literacies can all be combined to teach a complete understanding of literacy to students.  It is easy to combine and integrate all these different aspects to create a definition of literacy that teaches to the whole student in every aspect of their everyday life, in today’s world. 

2.     Classroom Implications

a.     Digital Literacy: Students will need exposure to different types of online literacies, such as websites, videos, photographs, etc.  This exposure to online literacies will allow students to grow in their knowledge of digital literacy.  However, students will also need a general understanding of how a computer works.  Teachers will need to ensure that students understand how to type, use a mouse, click on objects, and maneuver the information on their computer screen/website.  For my specific literacy, they would need a class devoted to learning how to use glogster and then have a guided instruction for creating a project using glogster, especially with lower elementary students.  By going step-by-step with the students, they will be able to better understand how to use the digital literacy and then use it to respond to information online and/or classmates information.

b.     New Literacy: Students need to develop an understanding for the importance of viewing visual literacy and how it can impact their learning.  This can be done by showing students how visuals can impact their learning, such as illustrations in a book or photographs of facial expressions to understand emotions, etc.  The students will need these types of supports at first, and scaffolding on how to interpret the visual information presented to them.  They will need to be taught terminology associated with visual literacy, art, media, etc, as well as information on how to interpret it, such as what to look for.  This can be done through teacher modeling at large group time and breaking off into small groups to practice with students.  The students would then get practice watching how to interpret visual literacy, practice with a partner, and then, after this, be expected to use this information to respond to visual literacy independently.  This could even be done by responding to a post on a website or in a class discussion.  This is how I would expect myself to introduce visual literacy to my students. 

Harris - New Literacies

1) YOUR CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING:

My conceptual understanding of literacy has definitely improved since beginning this class. Initially, my definition of 'literacy' largely revolved around what constitutes a literate person. This project helped me realize that 'literacy' and 'literate' are two very different things. One's exposure to a number of different forms of literacy aids them in the process of becoming literate. This project helped solidify in my mind that literacy is not limited to things that involve reading and writing, but also things that provoke language through internal thought as well as external verbalization. The development of my own digital literacy using Weebly helped me realize that technology can be incorporated to make virtually any lesson more effective. I am now more knowledgeable about the fact that, to provide early elementary students with exposure to literacy, I need not only use picturebooks, but may also refer to images, videos, and voice recordings to provoke internal thought and external verbalization of those thoughts. Reviewing my classmates' projects allowed me to briefly explore and becoming minimally familiar with a wide variety of technologies that I could incorporate into my classroom lessons in the future.

2) CLASSROOM IMPLICATIONS:

As technology continues to advance, students' knowledge of and familiarity with the various forms of technology available increases. For this reason, as a teacher, part of my job will be to constantly be working to discover and familiarize myself with the forms of technology that my students are or will be using. However, it is doubtful that all students in the classroom will have equal exposure to all forms of technology that are used. Some students may not have any exposure at all to one or more of the forms. For this reason, I will need to walk all students through the process of navigating and manipulating the technology in order to introduce students to the technology who are unfamiliar with it, and also to review it with the students who are familiar with it. Once all students demonstrate that they have a descent grasp on how to operate and use the technology, I will begin to incorporate that particular form of technology into lessons. In specific regard to my project, I believe digital literacy is a very effective way to provide students with exposure to cultural literacy. On the Weebly site we created, we were able to integrate photographs and videos, maps, links, facts, and more, which would not be possible without the use of some form of technology. The incorporation and use of digital literacies in my classroom to help teach lessons will help my students become literate, in regards to language arts and technology.

Widzinski - New Literacies

1. Your conceptual understanding:
My ideas and thoughts of literacy has changed and enhanced dramatically over the 10 weeks in this class. What I am realizing more and more, and especially with this project, is that literacy is all around us. The thing that is so great is that we have the means to take the world around us, the literacy around us, and teach it in awesome, hands-on ways. I have also realized that there are so many forms of technology that I don't know how to do. I explored Julia's page and when I talked to her, she didn't even know how to use glogster, she just figured it out as she went along. This is something I need to take the time to do - explore different technologies so I feel comfortable one day incorporating them in my classroom. At the beginning, I was aware of cultural literacy and the basic definition, but after completing this project, I realized the depth of the literacy. It was awesome to find the resources that are available for teachers and students on cultural literacy. What really got me to this point in thinking about literacy was through our class discussions, and exploring this project.

2. Classroom Implications:
Providing effective literacy instruction to diverse learners will be a struggle. I believe that as each year passes with new diverse students, the ways in which I teach literacy will have to change to cater to each student. This is the big thing- to teach literacy effectively, you must know you students and their strengths and weaknesses. With this you can tailor the lessons to their developmental level and to their interests. In exploring cultural literacy, it has given me insight into knowing that I will be supporting all different cultures in my classroom, and that I will need to teach and represent them all in a positive manner. I want my students to explore digital literacies and try out different things with them. I plan to help them do this by providing them with all the resources I possibly can. I can do this by exploring different technologies on my own, teaching with them, and then giving the students the tools to use these digital literacies. For students to develop cultural literacy, I believe they need to go into each culture and idea with an open mind. This will also help kids start to recognize their own biases which is important to know as an adult, while teaching them and opening their eyes to different ways of life. I hope to provide support in teaching children about many different cultures in any way that I can. I hope to make my students as well rounded as possible by using cultural literacy in the classroom.

Week 9 - Harris

In my opinion, traditional literacies play a significant role in becoming literate in the area of cultural literacy. In order to learn more information about your own cultural, or cultures separate from your own, it is necessary to be able to read, listen to, or view the information, and ultimately comprehend it. Today, the process of experiencing literacy often involves some form(s) of technology. We experience literacy through modes such as computers, SmartBoards, tablets, cell phones, and more. Through these modes, we can access various forms of literacy, such as newspapers, magazines, blogs, websites, etc.

As future teachers, I feel it is imperative for us to be knowledgeable of a variety of ways to incorporate various forms of literacy into the classroom in order to cater to students of all abilities and learning styles. The Weebly page we are working on would enable us to do just that. The website allows us to provide students access to a number of different literacies, through the use of links, blog pages, videos, voice clips, and more. These different forms of literacy cater to a wide variety of student learning styles and abilities.

Week 9 - McLean

1.     What am I learning about the NEW LITERACY I am researching?

        The definition of literacy that I thought originally includes the idea of communicating to others around you visually.  In this way, my new literacy of visual literacy is an extension of that definition.  Visual literacy is defined in many ways- one of them being the following: “visual literacy can be defined as the ‘ability to construct meaning from visual images’” (images.adobe.com).  I thought it was interesting to discover the implications of teaching with visual literacy and methods of teaching visual literacy.  Through learning about these, I also became more familiar with the content involved with visual literacy.  For example, I read that it is important to pose questions to students about images (implications), which can be done by analyzing environmental print from supermarket packaging (methods of teaching).  In this example, I have seen more about the content of visual literacies by learning that visual literacy includes environmental print.  I learned it also includes videos, analyzing images (pictures, photographs, magazines, book illustrations…), reading graphs and creating ones own images with meaning.  However, I also found that visual literacies also have traditional literacies integrated with the learning.  This can be seen because visual literacies are to be implemented in every subject area by using images and critical knowledge.  Therefore, this requires analyzing the image (viewing), but also having a discussion about the images (listening & speaking) and could include responding to the image or discussion (writing).  In this way, I was surprised to learn that visual literacy can include traditional literacies and be incorporated into different subject areas of teaching.  Finally, when thinking about my placement, I anticipate my kindergarteners would do well responding to visual literacy by using several hands-on, discussion oriented, and written tasks.  For kindergartener’s, there would be a different type of analyzing that is occurring, but I think there are techniques that can scaffold this learning to allow children in kindergarten to learn about visual literacy.  In the same way, this can be taught to children in all grades because it is necessary, at every stage, to understand how to interpret and respond to the visual world around us.

 

2.     What am I learning about how my DIGITAL LITERACY is developing as I use a new technology to create my product?

The digital literacy that I am researching, Glogster, is a new digital literacy to me.  However, I can immediately see the benefits as a future teacher.  It is even directly stated on their webpage, “How to use Glogster EDU…” and they provide numerous options for teachers on how to use Glogster in their classroom.  They also allow specific controls that are useful for teachers, such as a school wiki, an embedded code, sharing, sending to email, etc.  In this way, there are ideas and supports made available for teachers to use this technology in the classroom.  In addition, it allows for interaction with the students.  By using Glogster, there are several different multimedia elements that can be included in the page, which makes this online poster very engaging for students to use.  Although this is a huge benefit, it can also be seen as downfall because all these graphics and medias incorporated into one webpage can be overwhelming for children and cause children to lose the overall idea of the lesson.  This could be a potential challenge for a teacher and something to consider strongly when using Glogster to create a webpage.  Despite this, Glogster helps to communicate ideas by having a two-way communication (drawing, writing a response, recording a video response, clicking a link…) and helps communicate the teacher’s ideas (written text, photographs, links, videos, etc).  Due to this, it is clear that students are using reading, writing, speaking, and listening/viewing in new ways by using Glogster (see examples above).  As a result of all these things, I think students in my placement would find a Glogster very fun and engaging.  They may even be able to explore the webpage on their own (if given specific guidelines on how to do so).  They may find the different visual pieces to be somewhat overwhelming, but by constructing a page with more order and sequencing, I believe the students in my classroom would benefit from this technology.  In addition, as a teacher, by creating a Glogster, it is an effective teaching tool where a lot of information (that will be used for teaching) is in one spot, rather than wasting time clicking around online to find video clips, etc.  The same techniques can be applied and scaffolded for older children, and as a result, teachers for children of all ages can use this technology to benefit their learning and support their teacher instruction.      

Week 9 - Widzinski

After working on and thinking about our new literacies project, I have started to think about literacy a little differently. The definition of literacy is simple: the ability to read and write. I think the definition needs to change and include technology in some way. Today's students are so wrapped up in some form of technology, whether its on a cell phone, computer or tablet, and literacy is being done via these forms of technology. Technology has so many different aspects that we have been learning about all semester (cultural, visual, etc.). A teacher needs to be prepared to teach all different forms of literacy. One way I think that would be beneficial to teach literacies is by using the smartboard. I have been introduced to this technology this year in my placement for the first time and I believe by utilizing the smartboard to its full potential can really help teach literacy to students. I'm still learning all the ins and outs of everything a smartboard can do, but from what I've seen, from the different apps it offers and its capability to connect to the internet, it seems like a useful technological tool. In thinking about the technology that we are using for our project (weebly), I can say that I love weebly! It is such an easy to use site and I think teachers can use this technology to their advantage, especially in teaching literacy. The most effective way for teachers literacy instruction is to base lessons off of what interests your students most, and including technology.