Blog #6

Prompt- Field experiences relating to content literacy- observations, interactions, and questions. Response to Readicide. Suggestions for seminar topics on 3/08, progress with literacy explorations and strategy lesson, reflection for how to avoid readicide in your content area.

I am finding myself somewhat at a lost for discussing content literacy in my field experience. For the past couple of weeks, the only literacy that I have witnessed at all has been directly implemented by me. My host teacher simply does not bring in outside examples of literacy to the classroom. In his defense, this is a Math classroom and for two-thirds of he day, he is teaching either AP or Accelerated classes. The students in these calsses are highly self motivated and are often reading literature on their own. This is my his first semester teaching any Support calsses in a long time and I truly believe that he does not feel a need to implement other literacy. On the other hand, I do see that the teacher holds a high standard for communicating Mathematically. He continually requires the students to explain steps to example problems using Mathematically appropriate language. I find this strategy very meaningful and I have tried to use it myself in my TWS unit.

I thoroughly enjoyed Readicide. Although it can be very discouraging to read about how schools are contributing to students low reading achievement, it is also nice to have some pointers about what can be done better. I also really like th part in Chapter 5 that talks about how maybe we are fixing the wrong things. Professor Yong Zhao points out that although there has been a scare about the United States being "Math and Technology Illiterate" that we still manage (at least for now) to produce a considerable amount of teachnology and Math to the world.

Seminar topics ideas: I was hoping to just hear about other literacy engagements and how they are coming for others. I have found it difficult to find five different opportunities to implement strategies and I would like to know what has worked.

Speaking of literacy engagements, I have completed two more since our last class meeting. One involved an Article of the Week type activity where we read the article together as a class and I tried to model strategies for reading mathematical literature. The other engagement involved a graphic organizer to assist the students' understanding of some pretty tricky vocabulary terms. I actually like this much better because I actually heard the students reference the organizer later when preparing for a quiz over the topic.

As far as avoiding readicide in the future, I can onlyhope to balance between overteaching and underteaching. This is something that I have found is a difficult balance for me in general. One of my negative critiques from my first observation was that I shouldallow for more "wait time" and allow the students to have a chance to answer.

I hope that everyone is surviving all of this and I will see you Monday!