SCED 4200 Synthesis

This has been an extremely informative course, and it will prove to be important in my career as a teacher. Having a history major and an English minor, I have always planned on incorporating literacy into my history classrooms, but this class has taught me how to critically do so. I love the idea of scaffolding writing activities into my classroom as often as possible. Through these activities I will focus on comprehension as well as many other traits. To incorporate comprehension I will give my students multiple opportunities to handle information in a variety of texts and formats.

Throughout this class I learned many impressive techniques that will help me in the classroom. The vocabulary strategies we learned will have a particularly significant impact on my teaching career. In history vocabulary is important, and I want to use strategies that will help students remember important terms long past their quizzes and exams. I will give my students multiple opportunities to work with new words in a variety of activities, and I will try to help students make personal meanings.

Besides explicitly teaching writing and vocabulary skills, I also want to teach my students to effectively use oral language in the proper tone for the class we are in. I will do this by structuring discussions into my class whenever possible. In these discussions I will probe for students to participate in authentic dialog by asking them quality questions. I will also make students feel like their opinions matter by practicing uptake. I am going to remember to make sure to incorporate my students’ responses into our following discussions.

Oral Literacy: Facilitating Effective Discussions

I enjoyed reading the article by Rick VanDe Weghe on holding discussions in the classroom. After I read the article, I reflected back on my own education, and I tried to remember some of my favorite classroom discussions. Thinking back, I could not remember many meaningful discussions from high school, so I will focus this blog on some wonderful thought provoking discussions I have had in college classes. Before I get into that, I want to mention that I may have had some decent high school discussions, but none of them have stuck out to me over the years. Part of that is due to the fact that I do not have the best memory, and part of it is due to the fact that most of my teachers’ lectures and discussions (from what I do remember) were teacher centered.  

At Utah State University, I have had many exceptional professors who are great at leading effective dialogic discussions. One teacher in particular teaches most of his class through discussions, and he requires students to have read all of the material before class, so everyone can be active participants in the discussions. I have had this professor for two separate English classes (English 3520 and English 3375), and I have been involved in multiple beneficial discussions, throughout both classes. In VanDe Weghe’s article, he mentions five elements of effective discussions: Authentic Questions, Uptake, Level of Evaluation, Cognitive Level, and Question Source (4-5). In our English discussions, Professor Straight guides our discussions using many of the five elements.

Our discussions are extremely effective because they are open-ended and they do not have one right or wrong answer. One aspect of Professor Straight’s discussions that I particularly like is the fact that he practices “Uptake.” He often brings the discussion back to a point that was made by a student. He is also great at remembering student’s comments from one class to another, and he comes back to their questions and comments, when applicable.

Professor Straight also facilitates the discussions effectively by having the students come up with some of the discussion questions. Throughout the semester, all students are required to lead a discussion and come up with the discussion questions of the day. This practice follows VanDe Weghe’s point: “Of all five indicators, student questions seemed to be the most significant contributor to dialogic episodes” (5).  

As a teacher, I am going to follow the advice from the article and the example set by some of my professors, and I am going to facilitate authentic dialogic discussions. I want my students to learn to think beyond the normal remember and recite process. I want them constantly asking questions and digging deeper. By taking into consideration the “five elements of effective discussions,” I will be able to create the learning environment that I want. 

Critical Literacy in the Social Studies Classroom

Before I begin discussing the prompt for the week, I want to mention how fabulous the article "A Critical Literacy Perspective for Teaching and Learning Social Studies," by Lina Bell Soares and Karen Wood, is. The article is a must read for all teachers, but it is especially informative for Social Science teachers.

Now that I have mentioned the awesome article I am discussing, I will unveil the prompt I chose to tackle: (2) How do you define critical literacy? What ideas do you have for fostering critical literacy among your students after reading the article? 

Before reading this article, I would define critical literacy as the ability to dissect what you read for bias and purpose, or to read for deep and sometimes hidden meanings. Luckily for me the article has a more precise definition. According to the article, "The term critical literacy describes a pedagogical approach to reading that focuses on the political, sociocultural, historical, and economic forces that shape young students' lives. It is an approach that teaches readers to become critically conscious of their own values and responsibilities in society" (8).

After reading the article, I have blended my response of analyzing texts for bias, purpose, and multiple perspectives, with the idea of encouraging students to become critically conscious of their own values.

The article gives excellent ideas of how I can apply critical literacy in my classrooms. The article presents "Ciardiello's (2004) five themes for enlightening readers on issues of social justice: examining multiple perspectives, finding an authentic voice, recognizing social barriers, finding one's identity, and finally, the call to service" (10). For all five themes, the article gives ideas about how a teacher can foster critical literacy.

One concept that really stuck out to me was the importance of examining multiple perspectives and looking for bias. This is extremely important in studying history, and I am glad that this article spent some time explaining that finding multiple perspective is paramount in social studies. According to the article, teachers who practice critical literacy need to "Provide opportunities for their students to understand that no one text tells the whole story" (16).

In my own class, I am going to provide my students with plenty of opportunities to read texts about an event from multiple perspectives, and I am going to find relevant texts from voices that are often left silent.

Another strategy that I am going to take from the article is allowing my students to dig deeper on their own, by structuring open ended questions that force them to read critically.

Principles of Integrating Writing Into all Content Areas

I have always believed that writing plays a fundamental role in the learning process, and I plan to use writing as an integral learning tool, in my history classes. The power point and readings for this week strengthened my views on the absolute need for a well thought-out, varied, and deliberate approach to writing in the classroom.

I found many aspects of the power-point helpful. One idea I found especially powerful was the concept of "establishing a climate that fosters writing."  This really hit be because I believe that the environment we create in the classroom is one of the most influential aspects of our teaching careers. If we construct an atmosphere that encourages writing as a positive and creative process, our students will embrace writing and learning. Contrarily, I believe we can harm our students perceptions of writing, if we use it as punishment, or if we treat it as a negative activity.

I also liked learning more about the different level of writing assignments, and how we need to make sure that we are using a variety of assignment often. I like the lower level writing activities because they give students opportunities to practice writing, with the worry of having perfect conventions.

I am going to use what I have learned by making sure that I am continually instructing students to develop their writing skills. I really enjoyed some of the activities presented in the reading on writing in the social studies classroom. I will emulate the idea of having students use concept maps and journals, to build towards larger writing assignments.

(Blog Post 2) History Texts: What are they? How do we understand them?

A multitude of texts can be used in the study of history. Most of them are broke down into the following two categories: Primary and secondary sources. Primary sources can include anything from diaries, letters, and speeches to novels, photos and videos, as long as they come from the time under study. Secondary sources are also valuable texts in the history classroom and include resources that analyze or interprets a historical event.

In order to properly understand some history texts, students need to have some previous knowledge of ideas and terms. Before diving into historical texts, a teacher should make sure that students understand concepts like bias, purpose, and audience. Teachers also need to address any unfamiliar vocabulary that my be present in the reading.

Unfortunately, I do not have many memories of my pre-college educational classrooms, so I will discuss some techniques use by one of my favorite history professors.

In one of my history classrooms, we were learning about the industrial revolution, laissez-faire policies, and immigrant workers. For one of our sources on the time period, we were assigned to read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. The professor did an excellent job of pairing this text with other activities. He front loaded the unit with lectures/discussions, vocab, KWL, and note outlines. In our discussions, we talked about current politics and the role of government in business.

These discussions triggered some of our previous knowledge and gave us a starting point for our lectures. I was impressed with how the teacher was able to quickly discuss some important vocab terms. It is important to not only understand the terms, but also how they are used in the media you are studying.

The professor also paired our main reading with other texts including videos of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, documents of labor complaints, and lectures.

By engaging in proper scaffolding activities, I was able to develop a deep understanding of the text, and I was able to analyze the time period and take away enduring understandings.

I will use some of these strategies along with others from the Buehl text, in order to make sure that my students are learning how to read through a history lens.

Introduction

Hello! My name is James Barney, and I am looking forward to getting to know you all this semester. Some of you know me all ready because I have been taking classes here forever (or at least it feels that way).

I am married to my beautiful wife, Brandi. We are the proud parents of three children. We have a three year old daughter, a eight month old baby boy, and our lovely eight year old niece. Even though we only have temporary custody of our niece, we consider her one of our children. The youngsters make college a little more difficult sometimes because I would rather play with them than do homework, but with the support of my wife, I have been able to find an effective balance.

Besides my family, I also have a couple of other hobbies, even though I rarely have time for most of them. I enjoy golfing, hunting, fishing, hiking, and most sports. I am an avid sports fan, and I love playing and watching almost anything. Currently, I coach a 7th and 8th grade basketball team. Basketball is by far my favorite sport, and I enjoy teaching others how to play the game the right way.

As far as teaching goes, I took the long route to gaining my education, but it has been an interesting and worthwhile road. After high school, I spent four years in the army, before finally beginning my education. After my generals, I decided that I wanted to teach history. While in classes, I realized that I also loved to write. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to take English as my minor. Anyone who knew me in high school would be extremely shocked to see that I am going to be an English teacher. Even though it took awhile, I have fell in love with English, especially writing, and I am extremely excited to share my new found passion with others. Sometimes I still fee inadequate with my English skills, but I am working on them diligently, so I can be an effective teacher.

I am excited for this class because literacy is extremely important in all disciplines but especially in mine. My history and English classes will all evolve around literacy.

To me, literacy not only means to read and write, but it also means the ability to communicate effectively in the forum you are involved in. Literacy in history is different than literacy in science, but they are both equally important, when you are discussing that particular field.

I love how well English and history go together, and I am looking forward to teaching literacy in both of my contents.