...The room smelled faintly of playdough and a loud crash rang from the back of the classroom as a tower of blocks collapsed. Nervously, I hung my pink backpack on a hook. My parents smiled down at me before leaving me in the increasingly chaotic preschool classroom. Throughout my first day, I heard an onslaught of new words. My head spun, why was no one speaking Chinese? Suddenly, there were “shoes” and “crayons” - two terms my mother had only taught me in Chinese. Every object my mother had taught me in Chinese now had a new English word. Education became a balance between Chinese and English. While in school, I was learning the English alphabet with the rest of my class; however, at home, I was learning Chinese numerals from my parents. My multicultural upbringing made understanding the western concepts taught in school while balancing my contrasting teachings at home difficult....
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...mother is a strong person and has faced some major challenges due to medical complications. She had a benign tumor removed from her back around 2007 that kept her out of work for a few months. More recently she had to undergo a hysterectomy this past year to prevent the spread of cancer they traced in her ovaries. The reason I bring this up is because my parents are two people that I care the most about. To see these two people struggling and overcoming battles with their health has given me more incentive to care for myself and to help monitor their health. Observing the health of my family has given me my ideas on personal health. Before learning about community health, I would have argued that personal health was the most important factor of health. This does not still dominate my opinion because I have developed an understanding that there is a limitation to personal health. “Although it is clear that there is significant...
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...Mrs. Sander’s Classroom We, as in my colleagues and I, knock on Julie Sander’s classroom door and she motions us to come in. As we walk into her classroom we are immediately engulfed in this terrible smell I can only describe as perspiration and puberty. We walk to a corner of the room facing the smart board, behind all the students, and to the left of Mrs. Sanders. Some 9th graders look at us but turn back in fear due to the upper-class advantage we have over them. Or I’d like to think they turned back due to how beautiful my group was and they didn’t want to make a fool of themselves. The room is filled with the putrid smell, frigid air, and cheering and booing from the students so engulfed in the game the class is playing, they...
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...Classroom Procedures My classroom procedures will be based off of the studies of Dr. Harry Wong, Dr. Fred Jones, and Dr. Rick Lavoie. The room will be organized and structured, and procedures will be clearly demonstrated for the students. The procedures will be taught and re-taught, and will stay consistent throughout the entire year. Student will know the procedures so well that they will become habit. The students will know exactly how to behave in any situation. By following the doctor’s research I will have a more efficient, less disordered classroom. My students will have a safe and anxiety free environment. Beginning of Class: My students will be greeted at the door before every class. Students will be required to check in by...
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...Combining the old age tradition of storytelling with the latest technology lead to compelling tool that motivates students to read more and write better. The approach is called digital storytelling. It is a good way to engage students in both traditional and innovative way of telling a story. It is emerging as a way to shape narrative and facilitates efforts to capture classroom moments for learners to reflect upon and revise practice, as well as to develop teaching consciousness. Digital stories revolve around a chosen theme and often contain a particular viewpoint. They are typically just a few minutes long and have a variety of uses, including telling of personal tales, recounting of historical events, or as a means to inform or instruct...
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...Yellow Wall-Paper” prompted him to collect essays for this book. He goes on to explain that “given the ubiquity of the text within various academic settings, I was also struck by the absence of attention to the text within pedagogical contexts. Despite the large (and steadily growing) body of criticism to the story, very little of it explicitly addresses its importance as a tool to facilitate learning or various ways in which to make use of the text in the classroom” (3). As a collection, Weinstock’s The Pedagogical Wallpaper contains informed, detailed, and diverse analysis that attempts to shore up the absence of “pedagogical possibilities” concerning Gilman’s transgressive short story (9). Among the contributors are a MOO space specialist, a Gilman scholar, a queer theorist, an existentialist, a formalist, and several reader/student-response theorists. Because each essayist presents a distinct critical perspective on Gilman’s text, each essay is likewise concerned with “how the narrative teaches and how to teach the narrative” (5). Thus, it seems to me that Weinstock’s The Pedagogical Wallpaper resonates with Pedagogy’s conviction that teaching is central to our work as scholars and educators, no matter what our particular perspective. Indeed, Weinstock’s commitment to diverse and instructive pedagogical prompts is persuasive and liberating, affording ample avenues for new...
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...Teacher Training and Classroom Integration Journal article by Robin D. Groce; Reading Improvement, Vol. 41, 2004 | | | | | |An Experiential Study of Elementary Teachers with the Storytelling Process: Interdisciplinary Benefits Associated with Teacher Training | | | |and Classroom Integration. | | | | | | | |by Robin D. Groce | | | |The purpose of this manuscript is to describe how elementary teachers used their experiences in a storytelling inservice training to teach| | | |lessons in language arts, science, social studies, and bilingual education. Qualitative research methods were used in simultaneously | | | |collecting and analyzing data. Storytelling was found to be a valuable tool for motivating students to listen and engage in content area | | | |lessons, improve reading skills in the content areas, and as a springboard for beginning units and skill development. Teachers' | | | |understandings and implementation of classroom storytelling were heightened...
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...This document is for reference & educational purposes only. Reproduction or/and copying are not authorized. Any anti-plagiarism software will flag this document or its sections as unoriginal. Coping and Resiliency Skills in African American Urban Youths Introduction Growing up with a limited understanding of how to regulate emotions and cope in the face of ubiquitous urban blight, severe socio-economic hardship, and systemic racism is difficult for many urban youths. Resiliency is a term that is frequently associated with urban youths, especially if we consider the fact that according to the U.S. Census data in today’s America approximately one third of this population group lives in urban areas (Census, 2000). Given a steady increase in the numbers of low-income children living in urban areas, efforts to understand this particular phenomenon are critical. In this context, it is important not only to examine the negative (e.g.: drug abuse, violence, etc.) but also the positive self-regulatory skills (e.g.: athletics, education, creativity, dance, poetry, etc.), which urban youths employ as coping mechanisms. Another concomitant question that needs to be explored is how urban youth exercise positive self-regulatory skills under different circumstances and in specific contexts. This study specifically examined the phenomenon of coping and resiliency skills in African American urban youths growing up in the developmental contexts of various environmental stressors...
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...opportunity to understand better the material being studied. What does the research say about peer tutoring? In reviews of peer tutoring programs, researchers found: * When students participated in the role of reading tutor, improvements in reading achievement occurred * When tutors were explicitly trained in the tutoring process, they were far more effective and the students they were tutoring experienced significant gains in achievement * Most of the students benefited from peer tutoring in some way, but same-age tutors were as effective as cross-age tutors (Burnish, Fuchs & Fuchs, 2005; Topping, 2008) Some benefits of peer tutoring for students include higher academic achievement, improved relationships with peers, improved personal and social development as well as increased motivation. In turn, the teacher benefits from this model of instruction by an increased opportunity to individualize instruction, increased facilitation of inclusion/mainstreaming, and opportunities to reduce inappropriate behaviors (Topping, 2008). There is an old saying: “To teach is to learn twice.” Peer tutoring is a beneficial way for students...
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...The first narrative activity that fits under standard five: Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership would be My Personal Learning Network (PLN) Assignment. In this particular assignment I was asked to make a Twitter and LinkedIn account. Twitter is a free online website that allows its users to connect with anyone who has an account. You can share ideas, videos, news, or pictures. As a teacher Twitter can be very useful in contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession and of their school and community (5d) because you can connect with other teachers and gain ideas and lesson plans off of them. Just like twitter, LinkedIn is also a free website that helps build up a strong community of support. Professional...
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...In the article, Queer Cyborgs and New Mutants: Race, Sexuality, and Prosthetic Sociality in Digital Space, Mimi Nguyen analyzes the dialectic relationship between organic bodies and technologies in society by conducting an intersectional analysis. Specifically, Nguyen utilizes a narrative about Karma, a mutant who was a Vietnamese war refugee with the ability to “seize control of other peoples mind and bodies” (Nguyen 38). Nguyen, also of Vietnamese descent, use this first-personal narrative to not only relate herself to Karma, but to also humanize the subject at hand. Nguyen exhorts that being a cyborg or mutant is considered to be the ‘other’ in society. She claims that al though these mutants were brought together to fight evil mutants, these “New Mutants are nonetheless viewed with fear and suspicion by the non-mutant population” (Nguyen 374). These cyborgs and mutants are characterized as outsiders because their bodies are subjected to specific stereotypes that do not fit in the overwhelmingly “normal” society. Nguyen continues to say, “in these science fictions mutant bodies and cyborg bodies are analogized as minoritarian bodies, subjected and subjugated…” (377). Relating back to class discussion, these bodies are actually constructing the space around them. Since these mutants are so different and are being put in a space where they are considered to be the “other,” a majority believes it is there duty to remove them from that space. Even with their unique powers and...
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...|Student challenging behaviour and its impact on classroom culture: An investigation into how challenging behaviour | | |can affect the learning culture in New Zealand primary schools | |Author(s): |Langley, Dene John | |Issue Date: |2009 | |Degree Name: |Master of Educational Leadership (MEdLeadership) | |Publisher: |University of Waikato | |Abstract: |Managing challenging behaviour in the classroom is a problem faced by all teachers. Challenging behaviour is any | | |form of behaviour that interferes with children's learning or normal development; is harmful to the child, other | | |children or adults; or puts a child in a high risk category for later social problems or school failure. The purpose| | |of this study was to gain an understanding of the link between undesirable behaviours of students and their effect | | |on classroom learning culture, as one of the key factors in behaviour...
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...new. Informational text can be intimidating to adults let alone small children so it is understandable that some teachers may be intimidated introducing non-fiction to their early learners. There is an assumption that children will understand and make sense of a story that is fiction before they will be able to comprehend text that is a nont-fiction text (Bortnem). Some teachers may feel the text is too complicated, the vocabulary is too topic specific, there is not enough age appropriate material and many may such as storybooks, fairytales, etc. The author like many teachers was convinced that kindergartners preferred fiction, even though much of the research cited children's preferences for the content of informational books over narrative text. The author decides to investigate the children's book preferences through a study to determine if her perception that they preferred fiction was accurate. The core of the article centers on her study that was done among a class of kindergarteners. The study was done to determine whether kindergarten students would choose fiction or informational texts more often. The study was done over a period of 19 weeks. The study concluded that the kindergarteners would pick informational texts just as often, or even more often, than fiction books. The teacher found that students liked to learn about things they found interesting. The children chose nonfiction or...
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...those philosophies are Constructivism and Explicit Instruction. Teaching strategies have long generated debate and ideological controversy, especially as to ‘best practice’. Two clear orientations have provided the basis for this controversy: direct (or explicit) instruction, and student-centered constructivist approaches ((Rowe, 2006, p. 1). In order to develop good reading skills, the teacher must first determine which philosophy will benefit his or her students in the classroom. From a constructivist view, the teacher would use a student-centered approach and the students would learn by constructing their own knowledge and meaning through the use of hands-on and problem solving activities. Also from a constructivist standpoint the classroom environment would consist of open discussion about various topics that would build a foundation for reading on what the students already know by sharing their personal experiences through writing personal journals and narratives. Also in a constructivist classroom the student would use critical thinking to solve their difference while learning how to respect each others views. From a Constructivist approach, students would be assessed using authentic evaluations such as writing journals, their ability to comprehend information, working in groups to solve real life problems, and other various writing skills to help build their vocabulary of information...
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...◆The fact that you have this book in your hands means you may already believe that informational text should be included in primary classrooms. Perhaps you have had professional or personal experiences that have led you to that belief. Perhaps you have thought of some potential benefits informational text may hold for young learners. We hope this chapter helps bring together much of what you have been thinking. It is designed to extend your thinking and provide access to research and theories that support it. What’s the Difference Between Informational Text and Nonfiction? Often the terms “informational text” and “nonfiction” are used interchangeably. In our view, however, they are not the same. Informational text is a type of nonfiction—a very important type. Nonfiction includes any text that is factual. (Or, by some definitions, any type of literature that is factual, which would exclude texts such as menus and street signs.) Informational text differs from other types of nonfiction in purpose, features, and format. Purpose The primary purpose of informational text is to convey information about the natural or social world, typically from someone presumed to know that information to someone presumed not to, with particular linguistic features such as headings and technical vocabulary to help accomplish that purpose. By our definition, therefore, biography is nonfiction but is not informational text, because its primary purpose is to convey information about...
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