This semester has been an interesting one. I've learned a lot and more often than not operated under the impression that my student teaching would never arrive (since I'm definitely nervous about that!). But all in all I feel like I had a productive semester, and with the final last assignments....this and a revision of a paper...this whole teacher thing is becoming more real every day.
For student teaching I'll be teaching two 11th grade writing classes, and I am hoping that I can utilize some of the strategies I learned in this course in order to help my students become better writers. We will be writing argumentative, expository, and narrative essays. I believe that much of what I learned about digital literacy is going to apply to this class because these students are going to need to be able to tell the difference between a good source and a bad source. I think that it would be really easy to use an activity like we did in class with sources and ranking them from best to last.
I know that I have a lot to learn about digital technology. The class I will be student teaching in has a classroom set of 14 iPods and my cooperating teacher let me know that he utilizes those often. I hadn't thought of that as being a possibility and so I am researching Apps that may be useful to my instruction for the students to use.
Before this class I planned to have a classroom library, but after this class I know more about what kinds of books I want in my library. I want very diverse texts included in my library, many from the text set I created. I want my students to have easy to access books and especially diverse texts.
As a whole I feel more prepared to teach literacy in my classroom and I'm somewhat less nervous to teach than I was in September because I know strategies that I didn't know before.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
The Typical.
I feel as though English majors are one of those majors grouped into the little stereotype of uselessness...like philosophy and Liberal Arts.
I'm also kind of not happy about my English major status equaling me to being a Shakespeare freak. For the record I don't even like Shakespeare. I think he is overrated and I don't care if Phebe Jensen knows it or not.
This is why I plan on using lots of different texts in my classroom. Including (gasp!) graphic novels. My multicultural American literature class showed me that just because I thought graphic novels were for weirdos that they could in fact be literature. I wish I would have had that experience prior to my freshman year of college, because believe me I think I would have been a lot more open to books if I had a teacher like that.
I plan on being that teacher, the one that shows their students that literature isn't just Shakespeare and Hemingway.
I think my most unpleasant reading experience in English had to be trying to muddle my way through Derek Walcott's Omeros. I didn't even read the whole thing. I gave up on it. I know he won a Nobel Prize and all, but that book was the bane of my existence. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of his other works, including his plays. The guy just shouldn't write an entire book of epic poetry that is unintelligible. I keep thinking that someday I might actually attempt to read it again, just to say I had done it, but then I remember we were supposed to read it twice in my World Writers class (yes it was assigned TWICE) and I didn't even get through it once, so I shoot down that idea.
I think that maybe it would help my students to know that even I, who love English, struggle with texts sometimes. It might make me seem a little more human to them.
I'm also kind of not happy about my English major status equaling me to being a Shakespeare freak. For the record I don't even like Shakespeare. I think he is overrated and I don't care if Phebe Jensen knows it or not.
This is why I plan on using lots of different texts in my classroom. Including (gasp!) graphic novels. My multicultural American literature class showed me that just because I thought graphic novels were for weirdos that they could in fact be literature. I wish I would have had that experience prior to my freshman year of college, because believe me I think I would have been a lot more open to books if I had a teacher like that.
I plan on being that teacher, the one that shows their students that literature isn't just Shakespeare and Hemingway.
I think my most unpleasant reading experience in English had to be trying to muddle my way through Derek Walcott's Omeros. I didn't even read the whole thing. I gave up on it. I know he won a Nobel Prize and all, but that book was the bane of my existence. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of his other works, including his plays. The guy just shouldn't write an entire book of epic poetry that is unintelligible. I keep thinking that someday I might actually attempt to read it again, just to say I had done it, but then I remember we were supposed to read it twice in my World Writers class (yes it was assigned TWICE) and I didn't even get through it once, so I shoot down that idea.
I think that maybe it would help my students to know that even I, who love English, struggle with texts sometimes. It might make me seem a little more human to them.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Affective Dimensions of Reading
I tend to think of myself as a "good reader". I've always loved to read and I don't really remember a time where there wasn't a book I was currently reading. When I was younger I was somewhat closed minded when it came to reading, I wanted to read novels and never non-fiction. As I've gotten older and expanded my horizons a little bit, I have a better idea of the books I enjoy the most, but I rarely shoot books down because of their genre.
I really love to just sit down with a good book and read all day. There is something about reading for hours on end that still seems very productive, even if it is just for pleasure. Lately I've been doing a lot of reading at the gym. Technology is amazing and my Kindle makes it very easy to read while I'm biking without worrying about dragging a huge book around.
I think I enjoy reading so much because it is an escape. I find that I read more when my life is stressful or something is upsetting me. It helps calm me and it sometimes even makes me think about how small my problems really are comparatively.
I want there to be a large library in my classroom for students to explore. I know that everyone can enjoy reading in some capacity, but we need to make sure that students have a variety of genres available to them. My books may be different from what they may find in the school library and since my discipline is English, reading outside of the classroom will be strongly encouraged. I try to avoid forcing kids to read aloud in my classroom though. My dad is dyslexic and struggled through school because he was always nervous to read aloud in case he got words mixed up, etc. I want my classroom to be a safe zone where students feel comfortable reading aloud if they would like, but they are not forced to do so.
I really love to just sit down with a good book and read all day. There is something about reading for hours on end that still seems very productive, even if it is just for pleasure. Lately I've been doing a lot of reading at the gym. Technology is amazing and my Kindle makes it very easy to read while I'm biking without worrying about dragging a huge book around.
I think I enjoy reading so much because it is an escape. I find that I read more when my life is stressful or something is upsetting me. It helps calm me and it sometimes even makes me think about how small my problems really are comparatively.
I want there to be a large library in my classroom for students to explore. I know that everyone can enjoy reading in some capacity, but we need to make sure that students have a variety of genres available to them. My books may be different from what they may find in the school library and since my discipline is English, reading outside of the classroom will be strongly encouraged. I try to avoid forcing kids to read aloud in my classroom though. My dad is dyslexic and struggled through school because he was always nervous to read aloud in case he got words mixed up, etc. I want my classroom to be a safe zone where students feel comfortable reading aloud if they would like, but they are not forced to do so.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Affective Dimensions of Writing
One of the things that really drew me to majoring in English was the fact that I loved to write. I really wanted to be a writer, but there's not a lot of money there unless you're J.K. Rowling. So I decided to become a teacher, and share my love of writing and hopefully continue to do it on the side.
I've always written stories. I remember the first story I wrote and it had all of my friends in it and I was so sure that it was the best story and was going to be published someday. I was in second grade and the story was about an evil snowman, so needless to say it probably won't escape the notebook it was written in. Today I write a lot for my classes and so most of my creative writing has been pushed to the back burner between school and work.
One of the classes I enjoyed the most was a creative fiction writing class. The entire class was based on the grades received from two short stories you wrote throughout the semester. For each story you had to print off copies for the entire class and they would go home and read and comment on them and then you would come to class the next time and have a discussion about your work. This was terrifying to me, but also wonderful because it helped me get out of my comfort zone. The feedback was validating and helpful. I appreciated that my classmates respected me as a writer and looked at my story seriously. Sometimes the criticism was hard to hear, but hearing the criticism as well as the compliments helped make my stories better. I hope that someday in my classroom I can foster the environment of respect that was in that classroom which allowed people to share their ideas freely and really help students become better writers.
I've always written stories. I remember the first story I wrote and it had all of my friends in it and I was so sure that it was the best story and was going to be published someday. I was in second grade and the story was about an evil snowman, so needless to say it probably won't escape the notebook it was written in. Today I write a lot for my classes and so most of my creative writing has been pushed to the back burner between school and work.
One of the classes I enjoyed the most was a creative fiction writing class. The entire class was based on the grades received from two short stories you wrote throughout the semester. For each story you had to print off copies for the entire class and they would go home and read and comment on them and then you would come to class the next time and have a discussion about your work. This was terrifying to me, but also wonderful because it helped me get out of my comfort zone. The feedback was validating and helpful. I appreciated that my classmates respected me as a writer and looked at my story seriously. Sometimes the criticism was hard to hear, but hearing the criticism as well as the compliments helped make my stories better. I hope that someday in my classroom I can foster the environment of respect that was in that classroom which allowed people to share their ideas freely and really help students become better writers.
Friday, August 31, 2012
A Little About Me
My name is Mikayla. I like snowboarding, a lot. I'm also a pretty avid rock climber (thanks to my husband) and I am trying to enjoy running. A lot of people ask me if my hair is naturally blonde. The answer is yes, and I've never dyed it. Unless you count the time in fourth grade when my friend Megan used hair spray hair color on a chunk of my hair and made it black. It was very difficult to get out.
I love reading and writing, that's kind of why I want to be an English teacher. Everyone says to pick something you love to do for your career and I think I'll be a pretty lucky girl if I get to talk about books and writing for the rest of my life. I think English is important because it is so applicable to every day life. Any book you read you can take away something from it that can illuminate a part of your life. Writing is also important, you cannot survive in our world today unless you can write. I want to instill a love for language and literature in my students' lives through my teaching. I had wonderful English teachers growing up, and that is what they did for me.
My current definition of literacy is being able to read, understand, and think critically about a text as well as understanding to social cues, nuances and underlying intent. For me true literacy is more than just understanding the words on a page, it is understanding that the words are sarcastic or sad, their tone.
Literacy and English go hand in hand. English requires literacy and we teach it directly in English classrooms. English is so much about reading as well as analyzing, literacy is so important to be able to do those things.
I love reading and writing, that's kind of why I want to be an English teacher. Everyone says to pick something you love to do for your career and I think I'll be a pretty lucky girl if I get to talk about books and writing for the rest of my life. I think English is important because it is so applicable to every day life. Any book you read you can take away something from it that can illuminate a part of your life. Writing is also important, you cannot survive in our world today unless you can write. I want to instill a love for language and literature in my students' lives through my teaching. I had wonderful English teachers growing up, and that is what they did for me.
My current definition of literacy is being able to read, understand, and think critically about a text as well as understanding to social cues, nuances and underlying intent. For me true literacy is more than just understanding the words on a page, it is understanding that the words are sarcastic or sad, their tone.
Literacy and English go hand in hand. English requires literacy and we teach it directly in English classrooms. English is so much about reading as well as analyzing, literacy is so important to be able to do those things.
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