Communication is the Key

The final strand we explored in our literacy class is teaching students effective ways of communication. Here are the overall expectations as outlined by the curriculum, students will:

1.  Listen in order to understand and respond appropriately in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes
2.  Use speaking skills and strategies appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes;
3.  Reflect on and identify their strengths as listeners and speakers, areas for improvement,  and the strategies they found most helpful in oral communication situations

The explored resources in this section of the curriculum highlights that students need to become efficient communicators. That requires them to understand and process the information by becoming good listeners. It is especially important to teach highly effective ways of communications when dealing with ELL learners as their needs will be addressed in a modified way. Educators need to strategically plan and scaffold the learning of students that struggle with communicating in class. Some students have high levels of anxiety when it comes to presenting in front of the class; this means teachers need to differentiate the method of presenting for the student and slowly scaffolds them to the degree in which the student can confidently present in front of the class.

Some resources that I found helpful include; showing TedTalks to model to students the power of communication and the steps that make an effective communication possible. Another resource that I chose to explore was an article on teaching students to debate. Now this may seem like a negative concept to introduce to students, but it actually liberates the mind to think in ways that may have otherwise been impossible for them. It helps students organize their thoughts, opinions and evidence in order present and stand-up against the opposition, and at the same time making them good listeners in order to reply appropriately to the opposition’s questions, remarks, and accusations.

Overall, it is important to make students effective communicators, and to build them up to that level, we need to educated students on what make good listeners. Simple classroom management ideas such as getting students to repeat the task or strategically picking students to answer your questions can keep students alert during the instructional time. It is highly important that students become good listeners in order to become effective communicators. 

1,2,3.....Write!

Power of Words
(Litterio, A © 2011)

“Either write something worth

 reading or do something worth writing.”

 – Benjamin Franklin

Since I was going through a writer’s block, I thought I would start with a quote. These sayings by wise people always get me thinking about their deeper meanings and make a great prompt for me to embark upon my writing journey. It is important for me, that as a teacher candidate that I am continuously writing in order to improve my writing skills. Journaling is a great way to not only reflect on the successes and improvements for the day, but also helps in refining my writing skills. When I first got into journaling, I would have a really hard time starting the writing process, but soon I discovered an app that had writing prompts that which help start off the writing process, for example, “One teacher who has had a lasting impact on my life is…” Coincidentally I came across this prompt which was related to teaching when I opened up the app. In previous week’s resources, I have found out that Pinterest is also a great resource for such prompts available for student use when they feel they are unable to write, or to help them practice their writing skills.

It is part of the curriculum that teachers introduce to students the writing process for various forms of writing. The process includes teaching students what goes into the pre-writing or the planning stage, drafting or the organizing stage, re-thinking and revising stage, reflecting stage, final editing stage and publishing stage. Until this process of writing become innate to students, they must practice selected forms of writing and the IMSCI model is a great tool to be used within the classroom. The IMSCI model is an approach of teaching different forms of writing by dissecting the specific genre of writing. The model is an acronym that stands for, “Inquiry, Modelled, Shared, Collaborative, and Independent.”

The IMSCI model is not only specific in teaching and scaffolding a student’s abilities of becoming good writers, but is model I have personally seen used in other subject areas such as math. Inquiry, allows the teacher to ask supporting questions to get students thinking and noticing the characteristics of various forms of writing. Then the writing is modelled by the teacher to use as an example for students when they produce their own work through use of graphic organizers. Students then work with the teacher using a sample piece of writing to add notes to the graphic organizer in the shared aspect of the model. Students can now work in groups to collaborate, share their ideas and read aloud text to then add and modify their writing. Finally students work independently to finalize and publish their writing. This is great, for teacher candidates to use this model to scaffold the learning of the students and to release the responsibility gradually.

Here is a link to the article which goes into great detail along with examples to explain how it was used in the classroom: https://lms.brocku.ca/access/content/attachment/EDBE8P24D07FW2016LEC003/Forums/62346283-9c94-4aa3-b323-06a733d15f2d/Writing%20strand%20-%20Read%20et%20al.pdf

The four overall expectations are summed up within the curriculum document to indicate what makes effective writers: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/language18currb.pdf

1. Students are able generate, gather, organize their thoughts, ideas and information in order to write for an intended purpose and audience.
2. Students can draft and revise their writing, using a variety of informational, literary, and graphic forms and stylistic elements appropriate for the purpose and audience.
3. Students are able to use editing, proofreading, and publishing skills and strategies, and knowledge of language conventions, to correct errors, refine expression, and present their work effectively;
4. Students reflect on and identify their strengths as writers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful at different stages in the writing process.

The use of writing strategies helps students internalize the writing process in order for them to become effective writers. When the teacher says, “1, 2, 3….write,” students can use their knowledge on writing to be the ink with which they convey their thoughts into writing that is worth reading. 

The Reading Nook

My Dream:

To begin with my personal experience as a reader throughout school would be defined as someone who would not willingly pick up a book and read. While I was in school I did however enjoy most of the books given to me for assessing my understanding of the text. Since I am not such an avid reader, it is something that I would want to encourage in my future class. Reading and understanding text is foundation to understanding the other strands of language arts such as writing and oral communication. As the eyes gaze upon a written text, the mind reads, deciphers and forms meaning behind the text. Hence training students to be exceptional readers can lead to comprehension in other areas of language arts. As we have learned in class, to be good teacher in the reading strand, we need to ourselves read. To see my goal through, I need to envision a goal for myself as the teacher. That dream is to one day own a library that holds my personal collection of books.

The Curriculum:

At my placement in the grade 6 class it is so wonderful to observe students reading books beyond English class. The grade 6 curriculum highlights these overall expectations:

•  Comprehension demonstrated by reading variety of text
•  Recognition of a variety of text and how they are used to communicate meaning
•  Knowledge of words to read fluently
•  Strategies used before, during and after reading. Reflecting and identifying their strengths and areas of improvement

An interesting way to observe a student’s comprehension is to check to see if students make connections to three things, text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world. Using various texts, (a specific reading expectation such as short stories and poetry) along with comprehension strategies is a great way for teachers to assess student’s understanding of the text.

Resources?

There are a wealth of resources for teachers to use and modify, and I will be looking to these sources to make my students reading experiences engaging and memorable. One resource I especially liked was to see what shared reading looked like and how it can be used in the classroom. This is a powerful tool for teachers to use. It allows students to share ideas and thoughts of what the meaning behind certain text is as a group. For example, students make inferences to meaning of unknown words by understanding the context in which the word is placed. Another great resource is, “read.write.think” that contains various templates for lesson plans and templates for making students thinking visible. Here is a list of resources that can be used for the reading strand of the Ontario Curriculum:

http://www.curriculum.org/k-12/en/ 

http://www.readwritethink.org/ 

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/language18currb.pdf

http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/literacy/classroomlearningK_6/Reading.html 

It is comforting to know that we have various maps to guide us through this journey but the path we shape for ourselves and our students is left to our creativity as long as they reach their final destination, Learning!

Media Literacy for the 21st Century Learner

What is Media Literacy?

Literacy refers to the ability to read, write and comprehend while Media Literacy specifically is understanding the language behind not just words, but also images, sounds, and graphics. ^[1] As students in the 21^st century continue to evolve, so should the way we communicate information.

Why teach Media Literacy?

Pedagogy requires teachers to use a variety of techniques to teach, making it imperative that students are literate in this strand of language arts. Being literate in this strand of language arts means they are able to deconstruct and understand the message that is being conveyed both overtly and covertly through media. Student’s acquired competency in this area allows them to then construct and display their own ideas using various forms of media.

 Credit: retrived from flickr (2009) https://goo.gl/tRjSfW [2]

Advertisements may be used to teach
 how to decipher meaning behind the image      

An example of media literacy used in classrooms is teaching the language of advertisements and what makes them so effective. Once students generate an understanding on what makes a good advertisement, they are assigned to create a product and make an advertisement for their brand. I speak from personal experience when my partner and I had to create a product in grade 12 and make a sales pitch to the entire class. We created a spa theme basket which included essential oils, a set of instructions of how to use the oils and a CD. The CD also had its own label and cover designed by us with music burnt onto the CD. Since this was a grade 12 project, assigning it to my grade 6 students is probably not age appropriate. If I used it for my junior/intermediate classes, I would have to modify the assessment according to the Ontario curriculum requirements for the appropriate grade levels.

Ontario Curriculum Requirements: Grade 6

I chose to explore grade 6 as I will be interacting with students in this age group at my placement. By the end of the students at this grade level should:

• ·         Have the ability to comprehend a variety of media forms
• ·         Be able to extract meaning and context
• ·         Have the ablity to translate the meaning into their own creations
• ·         Reflecting, identifying and strategizing ways to creating an understanding of the language of media

Within the overall set expectations there are various other specific expectations that are explored without having to cover all of them, such as: ^[3]

• ·         What is the purpose and who is the audience
• ·         Organizing thoughts and ideas
• ·         Vocabulary, grammar and punctuation

The project mentioned above would tackle the overall, and would take into consideration specific expectations such as why was the product created and who is buying the product.

Digital Citizenship:

Just as in the real world citizenship comes with boundaries and rules, there are rights and responsibilities students MUST be made aware of at the beginning of the year, making them “digitally literate”.^[2]  Edutopia is a highly effective blogging website where educators and individuals of varying expertise gather and share their experiences, thoughts and ideas. I personally think the layout is easy to follow and navigate and there is an abundance of information in many subject areas, including tackling the concept of digital citizenship. Although Edutopia is an American website, there is a lot of relevant information for me to explore and incorporate into my lesson plans.

Here are a few helpful links I have explored:

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/language18currb.pdf

http://www.edutopia.org/

http://www.edutopia.org/article/digital-citizenship-resources#graph4

http://www.edutopia.org/global-education-canada-media-literacy

http://www.readwritethink.org/

Citation:

[1]Ministry Of Education. (2006). The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1-8, Language [revised]. Ontario.

[2]Flickr. (2009) Retrived from Flickr: https://goo.gl/tRjSfW
[3]Hertz, M. B. (2012, December 3). Digital Native vs Digital Citizen? Examining a Dangerous Stereotype. Retrieved from Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/digital-native-digitial-citizen-stereotype-mary-beth-hertz