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.