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Conference Blog

I attended the Rhode Island College Technology Exposition at Henry Barnard School on April 25, 2019. This event was so cool and interactive and I learned a lot about ways to incorporate technology into the classroom, even as young as preschoolers! The event started off with a keynote speaker who discussed the importance of deep learning. Deep learning is a continuation of 21st Century Skills and includes character, citizenship, collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking. She said that deep learning is important for everyone, especially those who are disconnected. She specifically talked about the importance of social justice conversations to make deep learning practical. She gave us access to a google doc with information on everything she talked about, lesson plan templates, and helpful tools. Here is the link ! One source that she mentioned that I thought was really interesting is called SeeSaw . This is a virtual portfolio where students set their own personal...
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Just Keep Writing (Bonus Blog)

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In high school, my freshman year writing teacher assigned us our writing project at the beginning of the year. Each quarter, we were required to write 6 pieces. We could write about whatever we wanted, but we had to have one narrative, one persuasive essay, and one analytical essay per quarter. He wanted us to simply write. He told us that they would not be graded and that he probably wouldn’t even read all of them. He just wanted us to write, and write some more. By the end of the year, we had to compile all of our writing into a portfolio and create a summative video explaining our growth as a writer. My 3-inch binder was stuffed from cover to cover with drafts, revisions, final copies, notes, and feedback from peers and my teacher. I was so proud of this final product. Reading Christensen’s chapters on engaging with student work reminded me of this, and encouraged me to go back and find the video that I created. Here’s the link if anyone wants to watch it! https://www.youtube...
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Teaching Emergent Bilinguals

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Last semester, I had the opportunity to teach a 7 th Grade Writing class at Davisville Middle School in North Kingstown. In one of the classes, there was a young boy, V, who had just moved to the country and was still learning English. I was talking to his teacher about supports that were available in the school, and unfortunately, she said that there was not much support. He received a little support from and English Learning Specialist, but it was not as much as a student in Elementary School would have received. This student was brilliant, and could always convey his learnings in Spanish, but was bound to the use of a translator for every single assignment. This frustrated me beyond belief because the student was not really learning the English language, he was simply translating, and I did not see the code-switching process that Danling Fu mentions in his book Writing Between Languages , happening at all. His native language was suppressed, and he was forced to u...
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Creating a REAL Curriculum

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Reading about R.E.A.L teaching reminded about the Culturally Relevant Pedagogy that we discussed earlier this semester. Thinking about the R.E.A.L applications allowed me to understand ways that I can incorporate it into my own teaching. In order to make the curriculum relevant to students’ lives, the students need to determine this, not the teacher. This is something that I think is so important because far too often, teachers make assumptions about students because of where they come from without getting to know them personally. A quote that stuck out to me from this reading was “We convey messages to our students by what we include as well as what we neglect in the curriculum and official classroom activities” . This quote stuck out to me in a number of ways. Firstly, it implies that students pay attention to what is being taught in the classroom. We have already learned about making the curriculum engaging, and from reading Linda Christensen, we have learned about ways to make it ...
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Digital Media

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It is clear that digital media is a big influence, not only in our daily lives, but also in education. As future educators, I truly believe that we need to understand the impact that digital media has, and also, the most effective ways to use it. In the article “Digital Literacy Can’t Wait”, the author describes several issues that are common amongst educators, and how abiding by these beliefs constrains a student’s ability to use digital media to the best of their abilities. For example, the author says that “Using Blogs without Blogging” is a common error that many educators make. I have seen it myself in several online classes where the professor will post a discussion question, and each student simply writes their own reply, rather than interacting with other posts, commenting on other student’s work, and then replying to comments to engage in a full conversation. I believe that blogs can be a great way to have an online conversation, but only if they are used correctly. In the i...
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Response to Christensen

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I really enjoyed this week's readings and found them very helpful for learning about how to teach essay writing, and they also helped me to learn more about how to improve my own writing. One of the things that I see a lot of students struggle with is finding reliable information to use in their essay writing. When I taught in a 7th grade English class last semester, I saw first hand how the students used a quote journal while they were reading in order to keep track of important lines of text, character descriptions, and pivotal moments during the story. After each quote, the students wrote a few sentences about what it meant. By the time they had to write their essays, they already had access to a wide variety of quotations to use, and it helped make the process much easier and quicker. I loved reading about Christensen's idea of the "Character Silhouettes", and this is something that I think that elementary students would find particularly fun as well. I can im...
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Measuring Standards using Bloom's Taxonomy

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When writing objectives, I was always taught to use verbs that are easily measurable. Rick Wormeli, in the video, defining mastery he begins with the simple statement of an objective of The student will understand fact versus opinion , but then he begins to break down the verb understand. Understand is not an easily measurable word. Students may show understanding in different ways, and just because they understand a concept, does not necessarily mean that they will be able to apply it to other situations. Wormeli begins to break down this verb further: identify, create and revise. When I heard him say this verbs, I immediately paused the video and looked at my notes from another class on Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is a framework that can be applied to teaching to determine students knowledge. At the bottom level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is the “remembering” stage, where students are able to define, list, or state things that they have learned. In the “understanding” stage, students can de...
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