Function
3A: Importance of content, the teacher was very knowledgeable of “power point”
content with the intent of a meaningful interaction.
Function
3B: Communication with students, teacher walked around the room making positive
comments to selected students as she checked progress and enforced the no
talking or collaboration.
Function
3D: Student engagement, detailed instructions were made available to the
students in a written format with varying fonts, styles, and grammar usage.
Function
3E: Use of assessment in instruction, the activity was submitted for a grade
regardless of completion and added a follow-up quiz on general “power point”
knowledge.
Function
3F: Flexibility and Responsiveness, the teacher at no time offered any
flexibility to the task / activity
In general, this activity did not
adequately meet in of the criteria outlined in this Professional Teaching
Standard. Based on the rubric that identifies the descriptors necessary for a
minimal score on all accounts the score would be UNSATISFACTORY!
While doing my Where I am From, I remembered how culturally diverse the area I grew up in was. Living in Southern California you are exposed, most especially to the Latin/Hispanic culture. It is everywhere you go, from the language to the music and especially the food. In these areas language can be a real barrier to the learning process when most of the parents are immigrants with no or almost no English skills and Spanish is their first language. In this sense being able to bring that language into the classroom allows the ability to break that barrier and bring a connection to the two languages. The same can be said about Appalachian English and "Standard" English. They need to be taught that their speech is not wrong but show them the connection between the two and how to code switch when needed.
"The researchers in Moll's study urged participating teachers to abandon the standard, drill-based approach so often used with working-class and poor students. In its place, Moll urged them to help students find meaning rather than learn isolated facts and rules. He also advised them to use activities that "involve students as thoughtful learners in socially meaningful tasks" (Gonzalez, Greenberg & Velex, 1994).
Many time teachers do use a cultural deficit view when it comes to teaching in areas they are not from or unfamiliar with. Upon moving to West Virginia I was at a disadvantage having never experience the Appalachian culture and knew little to almost nothing about it. For some people coming into a new culture especially one with the stigma of poverty and backwoods they would look automatically at the language as ignorant and wrong and bring that into the classroom and try to teach them "right". Instead they need to look at the situation as a cultural difference view; not that how they speak is wrong but showing them another way to speak they may have not been exposed to.
"Most teachers believe students need to learn SAE so that they will have the communication skills which will enable them more opportunities in the future, and there are numerous studies that support this position... who found that speakers with a heavy, non-standard English were less likely to be hired. It is from this belief that many teachers have developed a negative attitude toward minority dialects as forms of incorrect English. According to Wheeler and Swords, “[i]t is clearly the case that when an urban teacher tells minority-language students that their language is wrong and error-filled, she creates a seriously deleterious effect in the classroom"(Rowland & Marrow, 2010).
Teachers can overcome this Cultural Deficit View by becoming familiar with the student, their culture community and families. Knowledge is the best key to any situation and fixing said situation in a proper manner.
"In response to the research discoveries about her students, Hilda developed an instructional unit around a topic of interest to them: building and construction. She took a big risk, since construction was a topic she knew almost nothing about. Hilda did know, however, that her students, their families, and many other people in the community knew quite a bit about construction. (Gonzalez, Greenberg & Velex, 1994).
Some strategies to teach non-standard English speakers in a "Funds of Knowledge" approach would be to take what they do not understand and put it in a context they would understand. This type of strategy can be seen in some Language Arts classes where Old English Shakespeare is translated into a modern form of a language to be better understood and comparable. Another strategy would be using a Cultural Capital approach and putting in a culturally familiar aspect they can identify with. For many in the Appalachian culture bringing a subject to hunting, fishing, or camping may help put a subject into a familiar aspect of their life they can relate to and make a connection to a topic they may be unfamiliar with.
"Even as they move towards more widely-used English, it is not necessary to or desirable to wipe out the ways their families or neighborhood of origin use words. The teaching of excellence in writing means adding language to what already exists, not subtracting. The goal is to make more relationships available not fewer" (NCTE, 2008).
The Where I Am From project allowed our fellow students a glimpse at who we are and why we are that way. It shows us how much we have in common and can connect us together in ways we never knew before, as well as showing us a way to know and listen to each other. It allowed us to see a culture we may not be familiar with and create another teaching tool to what is already taught in schools and bring it to a personal level; a level students may not have been on otherwise. It brings a face of a friend or fellow student to a culture they may be learning about or will be learning about, and allow them to ask questions or have questions answered.
The teaching of non-traditional English speakers needs to be taken upon a teacher like teaching any child. Make the material relateable and a student will take more of an interest and comprehend better. You have a first grader read Dr Seuss to help show the relationship of rhyming, not Shakespearean prose. I have been in situations were bilingual or ESL children have been the majority of the students in the classroom and during those situations I was familiar with the culture and the language and was able to bring those aspects in to the classroom. By bringing their language and culture into their lessons in the form of books, words used to help explain something, students took more of an interest in that lesson and were able to make a connection. While in my 30 hour clinical I had to teach vocabulary to 8th grade students in West Virginia History, by using examples of local flora and fauna the student was able to understand the difference between the two words. Explaining a deer is fauna (baby deer-faun) and ramps as flora (it grows in the floor of the woods) he was able to distinct the difference between the two.
Works Cited
Committee, t. W., & 2004, N. (n.d.). NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing. National Council of Teachers of English - Homepage. Retrieved February 12, 2013, from http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/writingbeliefs
Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132-141.
Rowland, J., & Marrow, D. (2010). Dialect Awareness Education: The Importance for Watching Our Words. UCS Undergrad Research Journal , 3, .
While watching the videos I got a real sense of how I speak and how I also code switch at times. Also while watching them I got a good sense of Cultural Deficit and Difference. Though I thought that the Code Switching video hit upon both types, it focused more on how African American English is looked upon as a deficit in succeeding in a professional setting. Business English was a large topic and how speaking African American English would not get you a job defines Deficit. A Deficit is seen as lacking something a person needs to succeed or get a head in life.That you had to speak properly to get ahead. The Fox News video was more Difference and that the children explained that they did not know any better because that was all they heard, and once they learned the "proper" way to speak they knew better. This defines Difference as not knowing or lacking the experience with/of something and being able to learn the difference and adapting.
I chose to do my web quest on The American Civil Rights Movement because I feel that this a period in our histroy that we do not study enough. It is taught to our students but not as a huge focus. We all know who Martin Luther King Jr is and Rosa Parks, but do we know about Emmett Till, Medger Evers, or the three young men killed during Freedom Summer. I chose this to help bring these people and the whole movement to the eyes and minds of a new generation who may see this as ancient history. The video "Seperate But Not Equal" was chosen because it introduces the Civil Rights in a way that is visual and intersting. It shows people, places and events that started the movement and as a way to get the students started on the topic.
Which two of example WebQuests are the best ones? Why?
the two best for me were the Underground Railroad and the Egyptian. It could have been the historian in me, but they really grabbed me in the way that it made finding and using the information you find online.
Which two are the worst? Why?
The worst two would be Design and School Greens and Egyptian. The Egyptian was on of the worst for me because when you opened it up the look and layout was different from the rest and took you back and was so cluttered and unorganized that is was almost confusing. It was also very over whelming.
The School Greens was on of the worst because there was no final product that was truly tangible. You had the final project and book and design concept you created but it would be even better if at the end you actually had a garden to create and use.
What do best and worst mean to you?
Best and worst mean that in the end there is something tangible and fun that you were truly able to show. You can create a design but not putting it to use is pointless. You also have to be able to fully understand and follow the directions. Quick and to the point instructions to keep students engaged and interested.
This does require the use of the
web for research and comparison, though it can be done in a library in any
book on plants.
From a Technophile point of
view this WebQuest is lacking in a web use aspect. No strengths for me.
Where
is My Hero?
The use of the internet to
do research on the idea of whom and what is a hero.
No real use of the internet
except for research.
Underground
Railroad
The constant use of the
internet for research and then the interactive game of participation in a
virtual underground website.
No weakness.
Ice
Cream
None that I can find
No use of the internet for
this WebQuest. Too many worksheets.
Would be awesome to design
the poster using a computer/internet tool, site.
Ancient
Egypt
Getting to use Pixie to
create 3 illustrations is great. Keeps me on the computer and allows me to
make things online. Also gives me instructions to properly use the internet
for research
Watching this video brought some intersting issues to the for front that as just a teaching student never thought about. Yes teaching and the process of teaching is messy. You have to think of what to teach, how to teach it and if the process you are using is working. In the area of how to teach; pedogogy, there are so many factors that have to be taken in to consideration as well as content knowledge of the subject being taught. I liked how it said that the best teachers are not always a person who is the subject, such as a mathmatiction teaching math, or a psycologist teaching psycology. Its how you teach the knowlege and knowing HOW to teach it.
It is also getting more difficult to teach with technology advancing at such a rapid rate. Who knows that what we are even learning in this class will be relavent in 3 years. (I hope it is because I a enjoying all this). So we have to think of ways to keep up with it all and then learn it all ourselves and find ways to use it relevently in the classroom in regards to the content we are teaching.
With the new technology advancemnts the idea of learning has changed. I loved the example of Plato and that the gist of the quote was that we are losing rention knowledge because we can just look it up. Who needs to beable to orally relay information when they can just turn on a computer to find our information. In this sence we need to teach students how to weed through the "crap" information and find the truth. In some ways that can go under the idea of literacy technologies.
