Final Synthesis Blog

For almost all of my classes this fall, I have been asked to reflect on my semester. Now that it has actually come to an end, I can easily say that I have learned more just this semester than my entire first two years of college. At least that’s what it feels like. I remember not having much of an option when registering for classes and then looking at my schedule before walking into LLED. Content Area Literacy, hmmm. I thought to myself, I hope they didn’t give put me in the wrong class. The first day of class I’ll always remember the way Dr. Robinson took the time to greet each and every person to really start building student teacher relationships from day 1. Hearing about having our own blogs, for me, was a bit scary for me at first because I knew I wasn’t a strong writer, and I didn’t enjoy writing at all. Obviously by now that has changed. This class has helped me improve my writing skills without the pressure of writing an essay, and has really showed me how important literacy is no matter what subject you teach. I hadn’t realized that I was going to have students who wouldn’t be able to read, and hadn’t thought about how it would affect their math skills as well. So, how can we help our students to understand math better without the appropriate literacy skills? Literacy strategies seem like the best option if we want to improve a student’s understanding as well as their literacy. I found this blog called Math Geek mama a few weeks ago when I was looking for a resource, and she really laid out some effective strategies that could be used while teaching math. https://mathgeekmama.com/using-literacy-strategies-to-teach-math/  

Another huge assignment that I really gained a lot from was the Text Set. It seemed really overwhelming to do, and was given to us early on to ensure we wouldn’t wait till last minute, but really the only thing hard about it was finding the actual texts. For me, I actually enjoyed doing this assignment because I knew that one day I could actually use it in my classroom, and would have an entire class worth of texts sets to take with me. The strategies and lessons about the strategies also gave me a good basis of knowledge that I can take with me into my classroom, but the text set really tied everything together. I had a good understanding of the strategies, but after completing the text set, I was aware of how to actually implement them in my classroom. Finding pre, during, and post reading strategies for each text, and providing a rationale required me to think through what I was picking for each and why. This assignment also showed me how important it is to be able to teach students with different learning styles. I had mentioned that I hadn’t been exposed to podcasts at all before this semester, and it just leads me to believe there are so many ways to teach. So why should we just use one method? This text set was a valuable end of the year project, something that will benefit all of us, and our future students. Going from thinking I was accidentally put into this class, to now hoping everyone gets a chance to learn about content area literacy like I have this past semester seems like a crazy transition. But that’s just how much this class has affected me. I am now more prepared, and confident about my future in the teaching profession than I ever have been.

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The Unknowns Podcast

Textbooks or Podcasts?

In my past academic career, I hadn't been exposed to as many podcasts as I would've liked to be. When I hear others talking about how much easier they were to pay attention to, I always wondered if that would apply to me as well. Being given the option to either read your work, or hear it should definitely be something that all teachers do. I remember learning about the Universal Design of Learning at the beginning of the semester, and how important it is to have multiple means of expression and engagement, and even representation for educators. This idea has been so essential to just me while learning how to teach students with different abilities and skills. I was thinking about how teachers used to say reading aloud helps with your literacy and comprehension, but that led me to think about why hearing texts isn’t more beneficial as well? I think that all of this does end up depending on the individual specifically, but still something to think about. It could simply be the fact that some students dread reading, or vice versa. It was upsetting that there were minimal positive results found in the study, but I believe it’s still important for us to acknowledge the different ways that our students can learn.  If we don’t continue to adapt to how students learn, we won’t be as successful as we can be while teaching them.  

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Mathematics in Art

The universal design of learning was created to make learning as flexible and fitting for every individual student as possible. As educators, it's important that we give each student their own means of representation, expression, and engagement. Every student varies in the way that they learn, and even in their assessment skills. I hadn’t thought about how I would find different ways to teach my students until I realized how many things that don’t seem to have any similarities are intertwined. When I saw the painting in class that we had related to pyramids, it led me to think of other ways I could use art in my classroom.

While I was making my way through all the collections in the museum, I found a painting that stood out to me. Although the painting itself didn’t look intricate but just like a collage of rectangles, it gave me the idea of using it for teaching perimeters of rectangles in my classroom. Giving students a visual different from the norm would automatically grasp their attention at first. To keep them interested, I would then use some rectangles that have missing pieces to help them learn how they would then find what the missing piece equals. Just by bringing one painting into a classroom, we can teach concepts in ways that we might not have thought of.  Getting students to learn, and understand material in a variety of ways will only help students academically to be more accepting of other methods of learning, and by doing that we can only hope they will start to apply some of that to real world scenarios.

By: Pierre Daura Untitled Street PICIRII 3

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Resource Blog

This week I found a resource called howtosmile that will help teachers and students search for science and math activities that have been handpicked from other sources. The unique thing about this website is that it actually shows the time the activities will take to complete, as well as the cost of the activity which can be a great tool for new teachers to think about as they do their lesson planning. This resource will be especially beneficial for me because I think I’ll have a hard time coming up with science activities as well as activities that are just different from everyday classroom ones. It also allows you to search by grade level to help narrow your search for the appropriate grade level. The best part about this website is that its all available for free, and all of the activities have already been done. It’s such an easy access website, and can be great for really any educators that need ideas for their classrooms or parents that may be homeschooling. 

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