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.