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Journal Article #1 Summary: Student's identities are formed through their social interactions and their literacy experiences. Literacy identity is often narrow: "good reader", "poor writer", etc. These are very inflexible descriptions and can lead students to be stuck in roles instead of growing their literacy skills. This article explores the development of identity through both students social interactions and their literacy experiences. Through three studies, it shows how these two concepts are interconnected. This article also discusses how literacy is a form of language and communication, how people interact because of literacy and the way that people define and construct themselves in order to accomplish life goals. This article also explores the role that teachers have in forming their students' literacy identities. It gives examples of three different and diverse classroom experiences with teachers who have different approaches to teaching literacy.  Link to PDF: http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1218&context=gse_pubs&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fstart%3D30%26q%3Dliteracy%2Bschools%2Beducation%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D1%2C23%26as_ylo%3D2010%26as_subj%3Dsoc%2Beng#search=%22literacy%20schools%20education%22 Citation: Hall, L. et al. (2009) "Teacher Identity in the Context of Literacy Teaching: Three Explorations of Classroom Positioning and Interaction in Secondary Schools." Teaching and Teacher Education. Vol. 26(2). p. 234-243.

Fascinating paper! Could you identify with any of the stories related in the paper? What will you take with you into your own teaching?

Great interactive reading activity for a Spanish classroom! 

Very often students, and even some adults don't understand the what is in the food they are putting in their bodies. This site gives an explanation of what a nutrition label is, along with have an interactive nutrition label. The interactive label gives you the ability to scroll over various macromolecules that are on a label and gives you an explanation of what they are and how much of these you need. This would be a good site to incorporate into a lesson on nutrition. I am actually starting one this week, so I am planning on using this site.

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This article is about teachers developing positive peer relationships in the classroom. Peer relationships and the experiences associated with them are an important aspect of the development of a children and adolescents. These experiences happen on different levels that include general interactions with peers, friendships, and in groups. With friendship it can serve the function of providing self worth, affection, building of relationships. Having supports help with personal problems, parents, being active. Peer groups are intimate groups of peers who interact regularly. Many peers groups according to research have shown to have similar GPA's, college aspirations, time spent on homework, and general engagement in school. Sociometric status is unique because it concerns overall peer acceptance. So if a child or adolescent is popular, average, neglected, rejected, and controversial has a major effect on one's peer relationships. All of these levels one's peer relationships such as the ways they develop, the experiences that come from them, and the types of pressures associated with them.

Literacy

Weekly features include Cartoons for the Classroom, Front Page Talking Points, Geography in the News Quiz, Audio Webcasts, Interactive New Quiz, Topical News Videos and Discussion Prompts, Use the News lessons, Words in the News Vocabulary Quiz.

Barrett-Mynes, J., Moran, M. J., & Tegano, D. (2010). Supporting struggling readers using interactive read-alouds and graphic organizers. Voices of Practitioners, 5(2), 1-12. This article discusses a four week study that was done in order to determine the effects that collaborative discussion and child-created graphic organizers used during read-alouds had on children's comprehension. Over the course of the study it was found that: 1. The children need less guidance from their teacher and became more collaborative with their peers in their discussions. 2. The use of graphic organizers became more child-created and required less teacher guidance. 3. Students in the study received higher scores on standardized tests. The article concludes that both collaborative discussions and child-created graphic organizers enable students to construct new knowledge and begin to organize their thinking in response to the comprehension of text. It was also found that by depending less on the the teacher for guidance, children were able to take more control and ownership of their learning. When I taught first and second grade, I loved using graphic organizers and read-alouds to help build reading and comprehension skills. I liked the fact that graphic organizers can be as creative and/or as structured as you would like. The most important factor for me is that graphic organizers can be used with any subject to help a child organizer their learning in a way that is helpful for them as learners.

I agree, it seems like the student's in the study would have had to have some prior experience with graphic organizers to be able to create their own. I loved using graphic organizers in my classroom, although with 1st and 2nd graders they were primarily teacher guided, I think that they were helpful for students to organizer their thoughts and be able to have a visual representation.

In first/second grade it is absolutely appropriate for the teacher to guide and scaffold the student use of graphic organizers.

This article is about teacher-student relationships. The student-teacher relationship is one of the most important factors of teaching that can be neglected. The article found that enhancing teacher-student relationships is necessary to raising student achievement because that achievement is linked to adolescent's need of having secure attachments. This is like students attachments to parents, but only with teachers. Thus research has shown that students with secure attachments do better in school. It also offers some ways in which teachers can improve teacher-student relations. Some of these methods include having an increased sensitivity and have positive interactions with students, to be well-prepared for class and hold high expectations for students, be responsive to students and provide choices whenever possible, and help students be kind, helpful and accepting of one another. By understanding the roles in which teachers have in their relationships with students will help educators become more effective.

Resources for K-12 science lessons!  This is awesome and has everything from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Animal Farm reading with science. 

I found this really cool website from the University of Michigan that provides apps that help students who struggle with reading and writing. Apps like this are great because they are interactive and fun. Some of the apps are free on this website and some of them cost money. I think these apps would be a great way to supplement a lesson. With the majority of students having smart phones now, having your students work on this in class once in a while would be a fun lesson too.

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This site has interactive lessons to promote oral language in kindergarteners. It has slide shows and activities with pauses for discussion with a partner. I have used it with some of my kindergarten students I have in my oral language group. The categories covered are: families, friends, transportation, food, animals, neighborhood, weather, plants, amazing creatures, and I Know a Lot! It also incorporates some classification and matching games in some of the lessons.

We know oral language development is critical for early literacy. However, it is important for teachers of all grades to remember the importance of talk in learning--even for adults! +2

I really enjoyed this book, and it gave me great insights into how students are wired. How do they take in information and how do students use that information. There are four styles of students. The book goes into different ways of working with students and talks about how students concentrate, remember, and understand information. I liked the book because it provided useful information and tips on how to interact with students. I realize that learning styles have gotten a bad rap by some educators. Now having said that learning styles do present an interesting piece of the puzzle to how students learn. It is important to note that a learning style is a preference rather than an ability to learn. Individuals have a tendency to like information or processing to be done a certain way because there is a familiarity and comfort level. The awareness of a learning style can assist educators in setting students up for success by phrasing information in certain ways or pointing out that this information may be more uncomfortable for individuals to learn because of the way it is presented. The book is organized by learning style category and then by subject areas like concentration, understanding and remembering. The first six chapters focus on learning styles, and the remaining six chapters delve into specific topic areas as each relates to learning styles. The main topics of the book are learning styles, and three central topic areas related to learning. The topic areas are concentration, remembering, and understanding. The overall message of the book is that every person may have a dominant learning style, however each person has a certain amount of each learning styles' characteristics. Moreover as students, parents, and teachers become aware of their learning style it is meant to help them achieve and adapt to others who are not wired that way, not to be used as an excuse for poor performance or I can not do something.

You raise some important points, LeAnn. I think also it is important to help students (and ourselves?) learn to tap into other styles to further develop them.

INSERT is a strategy with several uses. Students mark a text (with pencil or sticky flags) with symbols such as +. -. !, ? to monitor their comprehension during reading. These marks can then be used by the teacher to help students engage in discussions, and clarify understanding. Students can also use the marks to make notes after reading.

This is a great website that I use often. 'Read, Write, Think' is excellent because it provides useful resources for grades k-12. This site provides teachers with classroom management resources, professional development, parent and after school resources, and learning objectives. My favorite part of this site is under the classroom resources tab they provide a plethora of lesson plans (great place to get ideas), and terrific interactive lesson plans too! I hope you enjoy because this is one of my favorites :)

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This is the cutest website ever! If I taught elementary school, I would use this starfall website. There are different links from the main page that will help guide a young students learning. I looked at the first topic which was about teaching the sounds of the alphabet to students. I loved all the graphics and how the announcer sounded out each letter clearly. Very great tool. Check it out!!!! Starfall.com opened in September of 2002 as a free public service to teach children to read with phonics. Our systematic phonics approach, in conjunction with phonemic awareness practice, is perfect for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, special education, homeschool, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL).

This past week I watched my three year old nephew Brady. We tried out the Starfall website together, and Brady loved it. He knows most of his letters in the alphabet, but he really enjoyed the picutres that came after each letter. Great website and it was wonderful to see Brady so excited to interact with the picutres.

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