Anxiety of testing

As a sophomore in college I understand the anxiety and frustration that happens when it comes to testing. As a nation there is too much pressure put onto students to pass tests. For example in “What the data doesn’t show”, by Susan Lazear, she talks about a girl named Autumn who wants to become a nurse but is struggling with passing the exams she has to take to receive her diploma. She takes the test over and over again but is still unable to pass, one time she was one point, ONE point away from passing her exam. In the process of studying and testing Autumn had to be put on medication for anxiety.

I had a similar issue in High School around the time of the ACT. I get good grades and I know and understand the material that I am taught but, when it comes to testing I just suck. My junior year of high school was insane. I felt so much pressure to do my best and get the best score I could but for me it was a constant struggle of being able to show what I actually know. I had ACT prep classes and books to help me prepare for the ACT but it still didn’t help when it went to take the exam. I was eventually put on medication also for anxiety. I ended up taking the ACT eight times. Even my last score wasn’t where I wanted it to be but I saw no hope in it rising anymore.

I think that it is disgusting how much pressure we put on students with standardized testing. The fact that these exams put so much pressure on students makes me so sad. All the tiny breakdowns and panic attacks just for a test isn’t worth it.

To me I feel like standardized testing also takes the fun out of teaching. Teachers can’t do what they want with topics they bring into their classroom because they have to focus on making sure students are ready for exams. I really hope that this importance of standardized testing is just a trend that will pass and eventually all of us as a nation see the negative effect it is having on young students.

Chapter 5

Reading is seeing

In the fifth chapter of You Gotta BE the Book, Wilhelm focuses on using visual aids to help encourage and engage his students while reading. Throughout the chapter Wilhelm stresses the importance of using visualization to help experience the book as a whole and to see the book coming alive inside of their heads.

It was stated that, “It has been demonstrated that visual imaging encourages students to access and apply their prior knowledge as they read, increases comprehension, and improves the ability to predict, infer, and remember what has been read”, after reading this it is clear that to help students comprehend and understand the readings visualization needs to be integrated into learning.

Also in this chapter Wilhelm urges the use of art education to help the visualization of reading. I think that Wilhelm’s idea to let the students read comic books and graphic novels is a great way to make students who are not interested in the novels still engaged with reading. He had a couple great examples such as illustrating books, picture mapping, and making collages, to help intertwine both visualization and art into reading. As a future teacher I think that these techniques and projects that students can easily do is a great way to help show students are understanding and comprehending the reading. I found this Prezi presentation on how visual aids help readers comprehend what they are reading and thought it was very informational about students with learning disabilities.

I think that using visual aids in the classroom has a huge impact on students and also helps urge students to read more. There are a lot of useful activities out there to help represent visualization which I think is helpful to teacher and lets them try new ways of getting students to understand readings better.

“You Gotta BE the Book”

Part 2

After reading chapter 3 of You Gotta BE the Book by Jeffery Wilhelm, one of the sections that I found interesting was entering the story world and relating to characters. I really enjoyed this part of the section because I could relate to it. Whenever I read I put myself into the story. Most of the time as the main character and then while I read and they are explaining different situations the characters are in I can see it in my head as real people. Or there are even times where I’ll be reading a book and I get so emotionally attached to characters and plot lines that there are times where I break down and cry. I think that most kids now that are forced to read in school tend to not pick up books outside of class and that’s very upsetting. To me reading books and getting so connected with them lets me escape reality for a while and I get to go into a whole new world. And I hate that kids today don’t experience that enough.

I like how Jeffery Wilhelm shares stories about his own students that relate to the topics he brings up. His students share how the stories they read affect them while reading. I think it is important for young readers to have such a connection with a book that while reading it they feel like it is actually coming to life around them.

In chapter 4 we are introduced to drama in the classroom. I personally believe that using drama in the classroom is immensely helpful for students and it gives them a visual representation of what is happening in the book while they read it. And going back to entering into the story world and relating to characters I think that drama is helpful in that sense too. It really makes students feel like they are a part of the book or even the characters themselves.

“You Gotta BE the Book”

Part 1

While reading this section of Jeffery Wilhelm’s book “You Gotta BE the Book” I found myself totally engaged the whole time, not drifting away in thought. It is a really quick and easy read but also very informative.

In high school I wasn’t an active reader, although that has changed a lot since then, the points he has made were very eye opening to me and I could easily relate to some of the situations. In the first chapter he states, “once students have learned how to read, and move through middle and secondary school, reading is still regarded as a passive act of receiving someone else’s meanings”. This statement really stuck out to me because, today in most classrooms students have to read a book and then explain what it is about but, there is no room for interpretation. I think by having students read and then give their meaning of the theme of the book and shutting them down by saying no pushes students towards not reading.

I think that the “new criticism” that teachers use in their classes doesn’t work toward influencing students to read more. I think that it does take away the fun of reading.

Another point that stuck out to me was what makes valid reading. While reading stories I could think one thing means something and the person next to me could think that same thing means something completely different. And for books with authors who has passed away we may never know the actual meaning behind symbols and text. So why do we tell students that their interpretations are wrong? As long as we all agree on the outcome and theme of the book I don’t believe teachers should be able to tell students that their ways of thinking about it are wrong.

A different point that was brought up in this section of the reading was about grading reading. I think that students who read for fun and then come to school and have to be quizzed on the reading tend to stray away from reading for fun. First we are forcing the students to read books in class that they might not even be interested in and then we go and we grade them on their understanding and the content that they have read. This goes along with what I was saying before, students all have different interpretations of what things mean so why is that our job to tell students that their ideas and thoughts are wrong?

I thought this chapter was very informational. He gave some very good ways of grading reading and what makes reading valid without shutting down the students. I really like this book so far and I’m excited to read the rest of it.

The teaching of grammar

 

In class we were assigned two reading assignments on was a blog post called “Does Bad ‘Grammar’ Instruction Make Writing Worse?” by Patricia Dunn and then the article “Teaching Grammar in the Context of Writing” written by Constance Weaver. In both thee blog post and the article the authors talk about what they feel about teaching grammar, and the do’s and don’ts of teaching grammar.

In Patricia Dunn’s post she focuses on how we should encourage students to be engaged and willing to write. To her grammar worksheets and drills that most teacher do now interfere with the willingness of students to write and care about their writing. Her blog was basically saying that grammar drills is a big not to do because it is doing the opposite of what teachers want and it’s causing students to hate writing and grammar.

I thought all the research that has been done relating to this topic is very interesting and educational. Constance Weaver gave so many helpful examples of what not to do in his article. It made me realize what ideas help the students and which ones do not help them. One of them that he said was to let students make mistakes. If we as teachers let students make mistakes but then help them to see the mistake it will make the students less nervous to branch out and try new writing techniques that they might not have thought about trying before. I agree with him when he starts talking about how worksheets that students have to do every day do not work. I remember doing them in High School and I still make some mistakes that the sheets were trying to fix. It just never clicked from a worksheet. But then making the mistake in my own writing and finding a way to fix it myself worked so much more.

I really liked reading things from other teachers who have seen it first-hand about what does and what doesn’t work. I also think that peer review is a good idea. Having another student show them something that doesn’t look write or a mistake that they made might be better than the teacher herself.
 

 

Clearing the Way

Before reading this book by Tom Romano the only grading of papers I had experience with was from high school and very little from pervious college classes. I never agreed with the way that my papers were graded because it never seemed far that they were grading my on my thoughts and opinions and telling me that those were wrong. So going into English education I was scared that I would have students who felt the same way when I grade their papers in the future.

After reading clearing the way all those worries seemed to just disappear. Romano has very good ideas and thoughts about what and how to grade students work that I found very helpful. I think he hit a bullseye when he said that students first look at the grade they received and then the comments, but I really like how he focuses his attention more on the story the students write and not the grammatical side of it. While grading the story he looks more for the creative part of it like the use of wording and vivid imagery. I think this is a very fair way to grade the papers. I think that if students are repeating words and not trying to expand their vocabulary while writing that is something we can mark down for. It shows the student that they are writing well and they have a good story but just try to broaden their words up.

To him the only thing that matters more than the grade is the quality of the writing. He gives his students their own voice which has seemed to have a positive effect on his students and he strives for his students to write the best that they can.

This book was very useful because I feel like I share some of the same views on this topic as does Romano. There was a lot of very helpful tips and tricks to help teacher’s grade papers and I think that I will be using most of them in the future. This was definitely a helpful book to read in class and I will for sure be keeping this book with me throughout my teaching career.

 Here is an article that I found about tips for grading and giving feedback that I thought was helpful.

READING, WRITING, and RISING UP PT. 2

At the end of last class we had the opportunity to try one of the assignments from the book call I am from poems. And then at the beginning of next class we got to go around and share them. I really enjoyed this assignment because it brought back my childhood and all the adventures and crazy things I did at my lake when I was younger. I also thought it was nice to hear everyone else’s stories about their childhoods and where they came from.

 

In the second half of this book it focuses more on the importance of language and the student voice. Diversity is a major topic in the section as well. I think that it is important as teacher to understand the effects of having a diverse classroom. In my opinion having diversity in a school is a great thing to have. By having students or different races and background brings difference aspects and conversation to a classroom, especially in English classrooms. After reading stories from classmates about their background and seeing how different it is from their own can really open students eyes and perspective.

I also think it adds to conversation. After reading books and short stories or even poems about different cultures students compare it to their own and learn things that they might not have known about. You can learn everything in textbooks, so by having different cultures and races in the classroom helps with the understanding of cultural diversity. In this short article it talks about how teaching different cultures in the classroom is important.

Another assignment that stuck out to me in the second half of the book was the remember me poems. I think that this really shows the students own voice and how they think about themselves or even in some of the sample essays how other students think about them. I think this project could be fun for seniors in their last few weeks of school to write about thinks that have happened to them during their four years of high school. i think that they would really like this assignment and I think it could be interesting to hear what the student would want their peers to remember about them as they will soon be separated by college.

This was definitely a good read for future teachers. It gave me a whole bunch of ideas that I wouldn’t have thought about on my own and also a lot of ideas that I would like to try out in my first few years of teaching.

READING, WRITING, and RISING UP

After reading the first half of this book, I got a clearer understanding of what it is actually like to be a teacher in a classroom. Even though I won’t become a teacher for another couple of years the book really made we aware and it was a great perspective on what a classroom environment is like.  

The book focuses on diversity in the classroom and assignments used by Linda Christensen in her classroom. The assignments main purposes are to let the students open up about themselves and be engaged with everything that happens in the classroom. It is understandable that all students are different and some may connect with and assignment while others don’t but I think that as teachers or even future teachers it is important to understand that no two students are the same. I think that the way Linda teaches her students and the assignments that she does is a good way to let students feel more comfortable around the other students.

 

Almost all of her assignments are based on the student’s life and just parts that they want to share. For example one of the many assignments that she mentioned in her book is the praise poems. I absolutely love the idea of these poems. I think that teachers could use these if they are teaching a book about bullying or if there is even a situation happening in their classroom that involves the students. In this section of the book she states, “I encourage students to praise themselves, their “people”, their culture, their language, their school, their neighborhood”. With these poems it is very easy for students to open up about anything that they want and to praise it.

She uses these to have students praise an aspect of themselves that they really like, but I think it could be flipped around. Like I said this could work every well with bullying. If you flip the assignment to have the students write a praise poem about something they hate about themselves I think it could get a really good outcome with students and self-confidence. I think it would even be interesting to see the student peers reactions to the poems.

I learned a lot of new ideas that I never would have thought off from this first chapter and I’m excited to read the second half and learn even more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curriculum

In Early Career English Teachers in Action chapter four is all about curriculum. I’m assuming most people who are reading my blog know what a curriculum is but for those that don’t it is basically a set of plans for what a student will learn and how they will learn it.

In the introduction for this chapter Lindsay Ellis brings our attention to some pretty important points about how the curriculum system has changed in just a few short years.

The first point she mentions has to do with a school that didn’t have a set curriculum plan but rather just told the teachers what books to teach and let them teach them how they wanted to. I think there is both positives and negatives to this system. A positive is that it allows the teacher to be able to teach the way they want to and be more free and comfortable in the classroom. But a negative that could come out of it would be not knowing what to do. As a first year teacher with no other teachers experienced in what we are teaching I would be lost. I think it would be easier to teach the books better if teachers had experience in the books they are teaching. Even for new teachers being able to talk to other teachers and finding out what works and what doesn’t is huge when it comes to helping the students learn the material better.

Now a days in middle and high school teachers are seldom given a book and told to teach it. Like it was said in the book I read curriculum is seen as too important to be left to the hand of just one teacher. Today in high schools teachers gather together for meeting after meeting discussing what they are teaching and how they teach it. Unlike the old days where the teacher was able to teach a book the way he or she wanted. In high schools today administrators are more focused on testing and what is required for students to know by the time they finish that grade.

I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think we should be more focused on students and how they learn and what works for them to understand topics rather than putting all our focus in to test grades.

School Culture

In class after we read about school culture and filling out surveys about the school culture of our high schools I soon learned during discussion that my high school was very different than some of the other students in my class. Whereas some school may not let students voice their own opinions or want to hear the ideas they have for the school my high school was very different. The deans and principal encouraged student involvement even though like every other school we had those students who could care less and sat in the back of the classroom counting down the seconds till they could leave, the majority of the student population was extremely involved. Between sports, theater projects, or even clubs, the student body was very involved in everything. For example I myself was involved in three different sports ranging throughout the year and I was a part of ten or more student clubs and after school activities.

It was weird of me to hear students saying the opposite of what I experienced. Saying that their schools didn’t have much student involvement or clubs for students to participate in.

This chapter about school culture really opened my eyes to the differences between schools in different areas in the world. Some schools only care about the testing and the grades the students end up with, others fight problems about race and culture that are developing outside in the community around the school. And others such as ones in Africa that was mentioned in our book have a lot less than what we have here.

Learning about different school cultures really made me realize the difference that occurs in schools worldwide.

 

Student Behavior

In Chapter six of Early Career English Teachers in Action it talks all about student behavior and classroom management.

 http://www.adprima.com/managing.htm I absolutely love this website that I found a while back. It has helpful hints and tricks for new teachers, lesson planning, teaching methods and even classroom management. Under the classroom management tab on this website it gives new teacher’s tips on how to effectively manage a classroom and also how to manage students even when they miss behave. I think the tips on this website tie into the Student Behavior topic in chapter six.

This was by far my favorite chapter in this book. After reading the stories from the teachers I found a lot of advice that I could use in my career as a teacher.

In the first story called The Expectations by Adam Kennedy who is a middle school teacher, he states about half way through the first part of his story saying “we must be willing to meet them on their own terms”, I think this is a powerful statement for students wanting to become teacher to read. It shows how as teachers we can’t force student to learn the way we want and sometimes we have to change things to make sure every student understands and that sometimes that means meeting them half way. That really stuck out to me and I thought I was important to understand the concepts behind his meaning.

Along with the other stories these teachers put a huge emphasis on reaching out and connecting to students. Whether it is finding out what time of music they like or even movies and making connections through that. I think that giving up ten minuets during your night to listen to a couple songs or even watch a movie while grading your papers is well worth it if it helps you make a connection with students and keeping them engaged during class.

In the last story in this chapter Tracy Meinzer talks about how she had a student who refused to understand the importance to reading books. They student wouldn’t read anything during the silent reading time she gave them. So she took it upon her self to help this student understand. She found out his interests and went to the library to find a boy that would peek his interests and toward the end of the story she says that he sat silent during reading and actually read the book. This just shows that it is worth your time to find connections if it will help your students in the end.  

Teacher Identity

Before reading Early Career English Teachers in Action I never really thought about the different aspects that have to be put in to find a teacher identity. Honestly I never really thought about teacher identity at all. In Chapter 5 it talks all about finding your teacher identity within yourself and within others around you like other teachers, family, and even the students. I guess it makes sense now thinking about how different those all are.

The way you act with your fellow teachers would be completely different from the way you act around your students in and out of the classroom. https://ed.psu.edu/englishpds/inquiry/projects/yerkes04.htm this link is written by Krista Yerkes during her first year teaching and in she writes about how she found her teacher identity. During the paper she splits it up into different questions she was to answer. Two of the different questions are the difference between who Krista is and who Mrs. Yerkes is. Although it is the same person she is talking about they have to be separated and different when it comes to being a teacher. The way we interact with our friends and family is completely different than the way we should act with our students. Of course we can use personal stories to tie into what we are teaching but there are time when we have to realize our boundaries and what is an appropriate way to act in front of the students.

I liked reading the stories from chapter five, I think it was a good thing to read about new teachers and how they were on their first day and how they struggled with finding their identity. It was refreshing learning about how everyone isn’t perfect, and that some people do fail. But then other who don’t and make it past five plus years of teaching who have found what works for them and found their teacher identities.

 

Nothing But The Truth

I just finished reading Nothing But The Truth by Avi, and I loved it.

This was my first multi-genre book I've read and I really like how it was written. All the different aspects of conversation, memos, emails, news articles made it a really fast and good read.

While reading there was a couple of things that I didn't agree with. First I didn't agree with the suspension of Philip. I think that it could have been handled differently. I also didn't agree with the Principal when she moved Philip out of Miss. Narwins classroom. To me I felt like they just gave into what he wanted and you cant do that for every student.

Another thing that also bothered me was that it was all one sided until the end when a news reporter wanted to get Miss. Narwins side of the story. I think if this happened today people would be pushing more for both sides and not just one.

I wasn't a big fan about the ending. After reading the book I couldn't see Miss. Narwin just giving up like that and leaving. I also couldn't picture Philip crying in class, it just didn't seem realistic.

Overall it was a good book and really enjoyed reading it.

Hi Everyone I'm Kate! I am a second year student at Western Michigan University with a major in Secondary English Education and a minor in Secondary History Education. Before this semester I was an Athletic Training major but, then I realized my passion was in teaching. I love reading and writing and my future dreams are to teach literacy classes in High School. I would love to teach in an inner city school some where in Chicago or maybe Detroit.

I moved to Michigan last year from Chicago and I absolutely love it here. I am a huge sports fan, more importantly I am a huge Chicago sports fan! Anything to do with sports catches my attention. I can't wait to learn more about teaching this semester, and I'm excited to grow more into a teacher during the rest of my career as a Bronco!

RTB!