Kelli Siebers:
The reading "Supporting Underachieving Readers in the Elementary Classroom" really hit home for me. I was (and still am) a struggling reader and it was almost as if this article was written about me. I related to their comment that J.P felt defined by his inability to read and that surfaced in almost all activities within the classroom. Although I had never heard of the term "gifted/learning disabled" I feel that this describes me perfectly as me doing well in other subjects in school led to me not being officially diagnosed with a learning disability and having so much trouble with reading and writing led to me not being able to shine through in school like I could have. The last connection I made with this article was when they mentioned people like J.P and I being vulnerable to performance orientation because we tend to be perfectionists, which is very true of myself.
I also felt a connection to the reading "Opening the dialogue:Using Culture as a Tool in teaching young African American children". This article talked about a white female teaching who had a disconnect between herself and her African American students, particularly the boys. In my TE placement I also feel this disconnect between myself, my mentor teacher and the African American boys in our class. Though every child is different I think I now understand some things that may work better in the classroom for these children.
Both the Tompkins and Gibbons readings reminded me of classes I have taken in the past 3 years where we learning about different psychologist's theories on how children develop and learn. One of there people is Vygotsky, who believes that oral language provides the foundation for learning to read and write. His theory includes scaffolding or providing support by having students collaborate with adults so that they an accomplish more difficult tasks. He also using the term zone of proximal development to describe the gap between what a child can do on their own and what they can do jointly and in coordination with a more skills person. Vygotsky therefore believes in development between people.
Gibbons also reminded me of the differences between conversational language and academic language. For English Language Learners, conversation language develops within about a year or two. Academic language take between five and seven years. This is because they are learning new concepts and new registers through a medium different than their first language.
Goals for learning in this course:
- How to be more confident in my own reading and writing abilities.
- How to be an effective teacher when it comes to language arts.
- Some ideas for working with children who are struggling with language arts concepts.
- I don't have a specific area or type of school I want to work in.
- I want to learn how to make literacy understandable, fun and useful for the children I teach.
The personal connections you made with the readings will sincerely help you when you become a teacher. They show that you took the readings seriously and were 100% sincere when writing your blog post. Although I cannot exactly relate to your first point about being a struggling reader, I can see where you're coming from through my younger brother. He has always had major struggles with reading and constantly communicated to me and other family members about how he felt it defined him. Because of these situations, it's important to acknowledge a few points made in the article. For example, it was stated that reading becomes a chore to these types of students; therefore, it is important that they have positive role models demonstrating a joy/purpose for reading. Though it is important that parents are one of these role models, it was also stated that TEACHERS should be these role models too. This is something to definitely keep in mind for when you have your own classroom.
ReplyDeleteMoving on, I like the connection you made with the Diller article and can relate to it a lot. In the placement I am working in now, a majority of the students are African-American. Though I feel like I have a very solid connection with some of the students, there are other students that I feel very disconnected from. Because of this, it is important that we take the advice from the article. For example, the article states that we consider many different teaching styles. This way, students of diverse backgrounds (who are likely to have differently learning styles) all have an equal opportunity to learn. It is important to realize that if a student is consistently struggling, it may not be because they do not have the motivation or skills to succeed, they simply need to be a taught differently.