Morgan Welsh @morganwelsh92-blog - Tumblr Blog

Markings for Miscue Analysis

Boldt - Kyle and the Basilisk

"For Britton and his colleagues, the goal was the growth of intellectually, emotionally, and socially healthy citizens. They valued reading and writing as a way for students to explore and give shape to their experiences. For Britton, such undertakings by children served two important functions: to help children learn to use texts to mediate between personal desires and experiences and the realities and demands of a social world; and to immerse children in the social world, thereby providing them with the motivation and modeling necessary to develop the conventional skills needed for reading and writing publically."

I think that this perspective that Britton and his colleagues take is how teacher's should begin to view the writing process and how children learn this process. School is not just about the distinct functions of writing, or as Boldt states, "writing as a means of learning necessary writing skills." School in general allows children to experience different unique social interactions that help shape their skills and can even shape how they view writing. Learning grammar, spelling, sentence structure, etc. is important in life, however cut and dry lessons can be substituted for much more useful ones. Exposure to what you want the child to learn is the very basis, and building upon this with different ideas and examples can allow the children to absorb the information and learn on their own.

melissazuccarini-blog

Crafton

Marcia took the idea of dog sledding and went crazy with it! She was able to expand on the children's interest so fluently by using so many multimodal ideas. She starts with the simple book "Stone Fox" to set the tone of the entire inquiry unit. She has them think of characters and how their perspectives change; if they have the same questions about the race that they do as students. She then even incorporated an actual dog race into their lessons! She had students root for their favorite and listen in to the race standings. She also had many unexpected helpers in student's families and fellow coworkers. They added so much more to the project and it really showed how involved the students were once they involved their families. They were probably talking about this project at home and gushing to their parents about how much fun they were having with it. She included so many different elements with the same topic and students could hopefully identify with at least one of them. Inquiry can be such an amazing project, I think because you can integrate so many subjects as well. I see such similarities in this project with the Poptropica project! Take something your students feel passionate about and run with it!

daniellelonglled-blog

Dictation

www.kidwriting.homestead.com

#LLED 401

melissazuccarini-blog

#LLED 401

melissazuccarini-blog

Helpful Website

animated-literacy.com

This article by Bissex follows a child, Paul, on his literacy journey as he learns how to spell. This picture shows his thought process while spelling the words "directions." It starts when he is five years old and seven months and ends with Paul being eight years four months old. It is so easy to see the transformation of knowledge and his thought path. When he is young, it is amazing that he can use the sounds of letters to write out what he believes the spelling of "directions" is. English is a language, and children who are writing out what they hear are doing a great job of spelling. Their spelling might not follow the "rules" that we use in society, however it still completely does the trick.

http://thankgoditsfirstgrade.blogspot.com/2012/09/inventive-spelling-freebie.html

This website features a letter in which the teacher sends a note home to reassure parents that inventive spelling is great and normal for their children. It would be an interesting idea to have the students write out the letter to give their parents an example.

#LLED 401 #Bissex

Doake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re2X3EW9yag

This video of a mother reading to her daughter with the “Speak With Me” book series corresponds with the section where Doake describes the four participatory strategies in reading. He shows how children advance their strategies and move through the levels as they gain more independence in their work. The video shows a mother reading to her daughter and I think that her stage is not completely represented in Doake’s ideas. The mother allows the girl to ask questions and interact with the pictures and the story even after they have read the words. Children’s learning to read cannot be classified on a continuum in which every child travels through. This idea applies to my whole outlook on education. Every child will have a different educational path in which they follow and will arrive at certain areas at different times. Stage theories classify great ideas and milestones that children should reach, however no one child will reach it at the expected time at the expected level. I feel that if theories are classified by stages, they should give a broad range of motion and age that allows for much differentiation among the children who have completely different backgrounds and experiences.

#LLED 400

Dorothy- Beyonce

Scarecrow- Steve Jobs

Tin Man- 50 cent

Lion- Nittany Lion

Toto- Blue Ivy

Glenda- Barbie

Wicked Witch- Chris Brown

Wizard of Oz- Morgan Freeman

“The Wizard of Oz”

Once upon a time in a far away valley

Beyonce got jumped in a dark alley

With Blu Ivy at her side she woke up far away

She met Barbie, the good witch, who came to save the day

Beyonce cried out “There ain’t no place like home”

Barbie said, “Girl twerk down dat yellow brick road, don’t roam”

Down the road she goes, hoping it won’t rain

She ran into Steve Jobs looking for a brain

Down the path they find 50 who ain’t got a heart

Yo boy come wit us we bout to depart

Lookin for some courage, the Nittany Lion comes along

He joined their group and rapped the Penn State fight song

“I’ll get you my pretty” said the wicked Chris Brown

The krew yelled back “Yo woman beater, calm down!”

They arrived at the hood of the Emerald City

Out comes Freeman, granting their wishes real pretty

Wearing dem red boots lined with the fur

Beyonce and Blue Ivy twerked home in a blur

#LLED 401

Xu: Integrating Popular Culture Texts in Primary Grades, Superheroes Are Not Just Boys And Big: Jean's Unit on Superheroes

"teachable moment"

"She decided to tie this learning experience with addressing one of the reading and language arts standards for first grade - identifying character traits"

"brainstorm the super heroes they knew"

"her students were leading the discussion"

"did not plan this unit on superheroes"

"balance between her school district's mandated literacy curriculum and her student's interests that motivated her students to participate in critical literacy practices"

I decided to focus on Jean's Unit called "Superheroes Are Not Just Boys And Big" because it really relates to what we have been doing in class with our picture books. It all starts when she overhears her students discussing superheroes and she decides to dig deeper. She decided to create a whole new unit on this topic to allow the students to connect their interests and bring their hobbies from home into school. Jean had her student brainstorm superheroes, list their characteristics, and she brought in comic books for the students to read on their own. I think that these activities are amazing and Jean's ability to connect pop culture to a standard is genius. Although standards are not always a teacher's best friend, they are inevitable and when we are able to find fun ways to teach them, it really helps the children. With a superhero unit, I would have transformed my classroom around it. Students could decorate different parts of the room with different superheroes and where they live. To build community, I would have table groups pick a superhero name and use that during lessons or discussions in every subject, not just reading and writing. It would be easy to incorporate real superheroes from history into our unit and compare and contrast them with pop culture heroes. We could learn about the history of comic books and how they are transformed into movies, and compare and contrast superhero stories from different countries. We could also brainstorm on the powers that the superheroes have and test their validity to learn about fact and fiction. Incorporating their interest into every subject in school can keep them engaged and excited to continue with their research. I love these types of units because there is so much room for fun and learning to be combined.

#LLED 401 #Xu