Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning Blog post #4

The chapter from this reading was all about helping your students learn how to evaluate what they read and also learning how to evaluate your students' learning. A student teacher, Heidi, had some goals for her students: "to help them learn to use freewriting and journaling as a means of engaging with texts and grappling with characters' motivations" (224). She talks about wanting her students to have fun with reading and writing. There are ways to approach writing and reading in the right way especially through the main activities that she believes in: journaling and freewriting.
Heidi also wanted her students to think about the text they read. What they would do if they were in a specific characters' position and what factors would influence their decision.

This chapter also talks about the different notions of learning literature. Why is it important? What does it mean to learn literature? (225). The text says it all depends on what kind of "assessment tools" you will use when you are evaluating your students. It refers to tests, quizzes, worksheets as ways to assess your students' knowledge. There is also the importance of having "knowing that" aspect of learning literature. If your students can tell the different between certain aspects of literature. For example, first person and third person.

I like what this chapter had to offer overall. This chapter stresses the importance of if your students know how important learning is but also that the teacher knows what they are looking for when they evaluate their students too. It is the job of student and teacher to help each other our in the education process of learning.

Blog post 3: The CAL state common core standards

The standards in the Cal state common core template were very helpful as far as I could tell. This is because the template outlined step by step how to brainstorm ideas for a paper, how to get started with a paper, how to go about writing a paper, how to edit and revise and much more. The way the template is set up made it easy to read and comprehend.

The one area of this template that I found the most helpful was the section about logos, ethos, and pathos. The word choice in this section made it easy to figure out what the questions were asking. This could be very helpful when you are trying to analyze what you read and ask yourself the questions this template provided.

I also thought the section about revising a draft as helpful as well. Responding to feedback, for example, talks about your students being able to take what the teacher has shown them they need to work on or fix in their writing and being able to work with their teacher and figure out what they are having a hard time with. Minimal marking is also another good idea. It helps the students not feel so overwealmed. The template suggests only asking two questions about the draft you have read: "what is the best thing about this draft?" And "what is the biggest overall difficulty with this draft, and how could it be improved?" These questions are simple yet able to get to the point rather than marking all over your students' paper.

My Response to “The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12" handout

After reading our handout,  “The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12", I thought it was a very interesting read. The reason for this is because of the limitations that exist in the education system and it talks about why these limitations exist. Also, the examples that were provided about teachers deciding on what to teach in their classrooms and how to go about figuring out what to teach were very helpful to read about.
The first thing that stood out to me about this article was when it talked about the economic issues having an affect on student performance and also the problem with not acknowledging cultural diversity. I like that this article mentions both of these topics because I think they are a couple of the more important ones to address.
The one example that stood out for me was when a teacher was starting to teach about the book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She saw the issue with teaching this book when the white students in her classroom started asking the one black student about the character Jim and racism. I thought what the teacher did next was a good thing. She started researching and found different ways on how to teach more multicultural texts in a predominantly white classroom. She also did surveys of her students and found out that the majority of them "would like to read about different cultures more often."
Overall I thought this handout was very helpful because it touched on some important aspects in education and also brought up the issues that are present in education too.

Discussion as a way of teaching - Blog Post #1 - January 18th

This article that I read for today's post was written like a list of how to create discussion with your students. I really liked some of the methods that Brookfield talks about. There's not just one way to do something, there's multiple ways! The method that I think would be the most helpful is when Brookfield talks about the Conversational Moves with the 3x5 index cards. I like the specific moves that are listed to help the students become more engaged with each other and be able to make conversation with each other. The conversational roles were also a good idea. It gives the students something to do in a discussion and a way to contribute to the group discussion. Everyone has something to contribute so no one can be left out and their voice is heard. The common claims for discussion is also helpful. They give good reasons as to why discussion helps students and how it helps students with their learning process. A few of the reasons include: hear other views (or explore diversity of perspectives), leave with questions (or increasing awareness of, and tolerance for, ambiguity or complexity), and attending to others, inclusionary, emphasis (or developing habits of collaborative learning). Overall I thought this article was very helpful; especially for future teachers. It gives you ways to help your students not only succeed with their learning but hopefully get along with each other and get to know each other. I think this can happen even when you’re having a discussion that is related to what you’re learning in the classroom. This is what I took away from the article and it will personally be helpful to me in the future.