My Thoughts on Things

This texts looks at assessment in a new and way while exploring the options we as teachers have to evaluate students. The author wants to emphasize the point of using more analysis based assessment rather than your typical objective tests. This will give students the chance to show their true understanding of the text and not just an understanding of how to test. One of the ways that the teacher in this text had done this technique was giving her students a simple entry task. She had asked them to respond personally to a question that had to do with the text they had read. She evaluated them on nothing more than engagement with the text. She even told the students of the informality of the assignment by letting them know that their would be no grammar, spelling, or organization included in the grading. This took pressure off of the students' shoulders because they felt as if they could truly write and not focus solely on grammar and phonetics. This text also discusses the very idea...

Haley Cardenas Book Talk: SOLD About the text:             This young adult novel written by Patricia McCormick, is a frighteningly accurate story written about a girl caught in the sex slave trade in India. This book is based on the real stories told by women caught in sexual slavery in India. The story is told by a young girl named Lakshmi who lives in Nepal. She tells the story day to day in what can only be described as diary entries. Lakshmi starts her story by telling the reader she lived in a small village, and explains their customs. She describes her hopes and dreams for her future life as a woman in her village. She tells the reader about her caring mother who is caught in a marriage with a man who Lakshmi hates (he is her stepfather). Lakshmi goes to the market with her stepfather one day and finds herself being sold to a woman who tells Lakshmi she will be a maid for a family in the big city. Lakshmi is filled wi...

After taking a look at this template which is aligned to fit with the California State Standards, I came to the conclusion that it is a very lengthy step by step version of how to use the standards. I thought that this template would be very applicable to a new teacher who really needed the help using the standards because they were newly introduced to them or simply just needed help with comprehension. I personally would not want to use this type of template because I would want to make an original lesson to teach. If I did however, need help understanding the standards, then I would consider looking at the template for reference. I would have to say that the template is more of a specific guideline rather than a reference. It is more of a "how to" template, and not something that is just used for understanding. It has the marks of being a very useful tool in the explanation sections of the text. For example, in the reading for understanding section, it explains the signific...

Common Core State Standards or CCSS are the guidelines for the curriculum that we in Washington must follow.  I personally did not like the idea of the standards before working in the classroom. I felt like they would be holding me back from a teaching style and curriculum that I wanted to create. Since being in the classroom, I have been humbled by the fact that as a teacher I need to be adaptable and flexible with what I plan on teaching. I have learned to work with the standards instead of against them. I have learned to structure my lessons on the standards which has created a guideline for my lesson. Instead of creating a goal to work towards, they are already established for me. This can be a good and a bad thing. I like the structure and the fact that I know that what I am working towards and teaching is administration approved. With creating my very own curriculum, I would have to get all my standards approved and could run into a lot of problems with admin. For the current...

When I think about the use of graphic novels being used within the classroom, I think of the success that they have yielded and all of the different ways it can help student growth. Ever since I have wanted to be a teacher, I have always wanted to incorporate graphic novels in to my teaching. If we as teachers decide to take away graphic novels in grades as low as first, we begin to stifle creativity in students. If we based all our teaching off of simply words and eliminate pictures from the equation we basically stifle students minds from thinking of a story in any other creative way. The pictures in a story can oftentimes gives students a chance to grow from their initial thoughts on the book. It can provide s creative and new way of thinking about a character or scene in a novel. It can also help visual learners better grasp the ideas, themes, characters and more within a story. For those particular students, so much growth can happen and creativity can begin to flourish. As far as...

This read was a particularly interesting one for me in several ways. I first thought that the reading would be more than a bunch of strategies to use for discussion based teaching. I initially thought that the text would display the problem and how to solve it using a more student lead discussion base model. This however, was a pleasant surprise because of the lack in filler content and a straight to the point model of helping the reader. I was able to spend more time looking at the models and less time reading extra thoughts and ideas on why discussion is better using the argument of "because I like it best". This text had step by step instruction and variation for a reader to choose what technique works best in his/her classroom. For me personally, I did not find any techniques that worked for my style of teaching exactly. I found some techniques that could work for me if I edited them to fit the interactive style that I possess, but as of the strategies being the way they ...