TPAs

I’m not going to lie. TPAs (Teaching Performance Assessments) scare me. To death. I have only had to do a few so far, yet they are difficult and tedious. Not only that, but every teacher I have ever talked to has told me that they are unrealistic in real classroom. That being said, they are required, and I’m sure there are some benefits to learning how to write them.

I really like the examples of questions we should be asking ourselves that this guide gives. Eastern’s template is a 2 to 3 page guide of boxes with maybe one question explaining what we should be filling out. Although that template is a great visual guide, it does not get us asking the things we need to. How are the students in this class? How many? What age? What are their proficiency levels? When I have worked on TPAs before, it has been hard for me to think of these questions off the top of my head.

I think I actually like these guidelines better than the ones we are using. Or at least the explanations they give. It has been difficult for me to understand in the past, so the thought of having to do twenty TPAs this quarter for three different classes has been really freaking me out. This really goes into more specific details in terms that are easier to understand. Plus having so many questions to think about makes it a lot easier to discuss what I want my students to be learning from this lesson.

Overall, I’ll still use Eastern’s layout for a TPA not only because I know it, but because it is required. However, I know that I will be using this handout in conjunction to that, and I am now more confident about writing TPAs than I was before.

Differentiated Reading Instruction: What and How

The article I read for this week's blog is called "Differentiated Reading Instruction: What and How." This article is based on an experienced second grade teacher's class. I love that they start out with more of the history of differentiated instruction, along with further going into detail about how it is put into practice. 

Assessment is absolutely key in the first stage of differentiated instruction. This is not done as a group, but rather finding what each child individually needs. Each school district has it's own assessments that they require, and these assessments, along with the teacher's knowledge, will help decide what kind of instructions kids need. Keeping notes on student's progress, and then conferencing with the students afterwards, will also help to formulate the kind of instruction they should be receiving. 

Another big key is how students are grouped. In Ms. Martin's classroom, she groups student's together based on reading levels, and as the year progresses, she moves them to different groups, depending on their individual progress. These groups can also be more general, based on whole-class, small groups or  even partner instruction, just depending on what the teacher thinks would be more beneficial. I'm curious to know if things like partner work could be beneficial to helping students read better. For example, if you pair a student who excels with a student who is struggling, would it be beneficial or more detrimental for the students?

Over all I think that this article had a lot to offer. Even though it is set in a second grade classroom, I think that some of these ideas can be "aged up" and used in a high school classroom. 

Tovani's Access Tools

After Tovani’s chapters 6-End, I chose to look at the Double Entry Diaries. I love this technique. This is a great way to build discussions and individual understanding. I personally am a huge classic literature fan, and just started reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. For books like this one, or other classics like Pride and Prejudice, it is easy for students to have comprehension issues. The language and the customs of the time are very different than our own.

That’s where the double entry diaries come in handy. By writing down direct quotes and page numbers, they can take a part that they are struggling with and focus down on it. Then, in the next column, they can write things under “This reminds me of,” “I wonder,” “I’m confused by,” etc. This allows them to not only locate the content they are struggling with, but to also have ways they can remember the meaning of the quotes. They can relate it to things they know and understand from their own lives.

We always annotated our books as we read them in high school. It was supposed to keep us on track with our reading, and we had an assigned number of annotations we needed to have. I really disliked them and would fake my way through them, seeing as they weren’t always thoroughly checked. I believe these diaries are a much better way to get students involved in what they are reading. It also helps clearly identify to myself as a teacher what my students clearly need help with.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It

First and foremost I want to say how relevant this title is to anyone who has ever taken a difficult class. Even in college now, there are times when I read things for classes over and over again, and I just don't get it. I hate it.

But then again, let's be honest with ourselves. How many times have you waited to do the assigned reading, and instead skim through and b.s. your responses? Often. In high school that was the competition in our senior AP English class. Though we were all intelligent kids, we were lazy and faked our way through most assignments, be it reading or writing. This "fake reading" is exactly the kind of thing Tovani discusses in these chapters.

I have always been a great reader and loved reading most everything I could. I don't think I have ever truly "fake" read anything, except for maybe textbooks. It's hard for me to comprehend why some people do not like reading. I never would have believed that a lot of it has to do with students not making a connection. For myself, a math book or a dry science or ed book have been hard for me to just skim through. I can't do it. But when I really sit down, i generally gain some sort of knowledge from it. So how do you help your students who are legitimately trying but not understanding?
I enjoy that she really tells a story as she goes along, and that this isn't just another dry textbook. I feel like she understands that we need to not only see examples on how to better our teaching, but also that it needs to be communicated in a better way.

This reading was one that actually really had me interested from the get go. I like the idea that as readers we are trying to expand our horizons and make connections whether or not we are consciously doing so. The example he gives is Romeo and Juliet, which is fitting since this is a play that we have been assigned for this course. He really explains the emotions and thought process the reader goes through when trying to relate to and understand the characters. I also really like that he gives us goals and guidelines as teachers to help establish better learning in our classroom. This allows us to focus on what we find important, but it also gives us some guidelines to follow to help keep our students, and ourselves, on track with the lesson.

I think as a teacher, I should really be incorporating these things, emotions of characters, how relate, etc. into my lessons. Maybe it's something as simple as asking my students to explain how they felt through out the chapter or the entire play. Or, maybe it can be a more focused lesson on the emotions of the characters, how they could have handled things differently, and how the time period played into their actions.

Of all the articles we have read so far, I think this has probably been the most useful one to me. It helps to lie out guidelines and structure for students, while still asking them to focus and work hard to expand their knowledge. It opens their minds up to new ideas on reading, hopefully making it more enjoyable to them, while helping to create new possible directions for lesson plans for us teachers.

Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom

In this reading of popular culture in an urban secondary English classroom, they bring up the fact that they do not just teach classic canonical literature, though that is a big part of the English classroom. One of my favorite ideas from this text is that some texts, “offered more insights to the American psyche than most United States History texts.” This is true for a lot of books even outside of the US, and I think that it is an important thing to keep in mind as a teacher.

I also really loved that they took poetry and poets and were able to get students to make comparisons to hip hop artists that they listened to. I really think that this gets them more involved in their learning and gets them excited to work on the lesson that you have assigned. They use concepts that they want to talk about in their lessons, such as racism or heroism, and they take a book that can be used as an example of these topics.

By incorporating things that students can relate to, a teacher is showing she knows her students and knows they might need something more “recent” to get them to understand what they are learning. I want to be able to do this as a teacher; be able to know what my students are interested in and be able to use it as a tool to catch their curiosity. I don’t think that kids anymore are spending enough time reading, instead opting to play video games or spend their time online. That is all good and well, but I want to be the kind of teacher that doesn’t “force feed” their students literature, but instead encourages them to enjoy it and ask questions. If that means that I use a rap or pop artist to relate to them, as long as their music is appropriate, I will do whatever I possibly can to get them to enjoy reading.

Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts

In Peter McLauren's Critical Pedagogy, I found, first off, that he was much more easy to understand in comparison to the previous articles we have read.
I really like how he goes into the idea that knowledge is socially constructed. He explains that this knowledge comes to be when people of a the same race or social class agree. It is interesting that groups of people can look at a situation so differently from one another, like women's viewpoints on things verses those of white men. I love that his idea of critical pedagogy asks why knowledge occurs like this.
I also really loved his topic of hidden curriculum. My understanding is that this are the things that get taught, whet ere or not they were meant to, outside of a normal lesson. These can include rules and regulations in the school. But it also includes behavior, and the way that the teacher teaches and reprimands her students. He talks about how boys generally talk more in class or do not raise their hands to answer, but girls are the ones who get in trouble for this things more often. I think it is interesting that as a society we preach that men ad women should be treated equally, and yet we still subconsciously except different things from each gender.
I am very interested to see how our in class discussion plays out, especial since I feel more confident in this reading.

Chapter 1: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

If I thought that our last reading was dry or difficult, I was mistaken. I really struggled to read and understand this chapter.

My basic understanding is that what he is discussing is bullying. How it happens, and how it keeps happening. The oppressed (bullied) he demoralized enough that instead of rising up to defend themselves, they oppress others to feel better about themselves; they know that people are feeling the same things that they had felt. With this in mind, it is interesting to see who I believe he describes as the oppressors/the bullies. The teachers, who are supposed to be molding the minds and lives of their students, are the oppressors; their students are oppressed.

Overall I still have a hard time fully understand what he was trying to get across in this chapters. I think discussion will really clarify for me what he was trying to emphasize, but without it I would be completely lost. I have not had such a difficult time with a reading piece in a long time.