Engl 493 Teaching Literature to Adolescents

After reading the book, I found it to be very interesting to read. Tovani talks about how it's important that students learn why they should read certain texts and how they can go about doing it. I like that she talked about the struggles she had as a teacher when teaching students how to be come better readers. One of the tactics she used to get students' attention is to talk to the students about her own struggles with reading. This helped the students understand that even good readers have to take a step back and look at what they have read. I liked that she talked about the fixes one can do when they have read a text and don't really understand what they have just read. When this happens they should try to make connections between the text and themselves, any prior knowledge, and/or another text. They can make a prediction, they can try to visualize what is happening and retell what they have just read. These are just a few things students can do to help them understa...

So of course the article talked about making good choices for edTPA lesson plans. This was very helpful for me because as I was writing my lesson plans there were plenty of times where I was wondering if I was doing things right or if this was even going to be an effective lesson. But in the article it said to keep in mind time management, students needs, and to also make sure to know your rubric, and that is what I have been doing for the most part with my first lesson plan. I feel like right now the best I can do with my lesson plans is to plan out the whole unit and write out lesson plans for each day. I'm currently not placed at a school, so I don't know the needs of certain students. My goal is just to learn how to best write a lesson plan or a whole unit plan. The guidelines have been very helpful. The sections I struggle with are assessment and incorporating students' voice into the lesson plan. But I think the thing that I think about the most while I was writing ...

For this post I looked a an article that explains how a teacher could teach the core subjects while also integrating high-level thinking about current social issues that students should be well informed in. It says that it's important for students to be well informed about the issues that may direct or indirectly affect their lives after high school. It's important to enforce your own views in these discussions. It's better for students to learn for themselves how to be well informed on an issue and learn how to defend their own position on said issue. The article also said that we as teachers and also school districts need to need to change the way we look at social issues in the classroom. The article talked about how social justice issue have often been excluded from conversations in school. Often times it was because teachers don't value those discussions or don't understand how to go about starting those discussions. It's important for when a teacher want...

In this pdf file, it talked about how the hip-hop project. It talked about inner-city educational institutions have used the hip hop project in their curriculum that have resonated more with the students there. The hip hop project is comprised of critical social theory and research related to urban education and urban sociology. I can definitely see this type of curriculum being used. I would argue that it should be implemented in more school districts because the curriculum goes into some issues of institutional inequality which is something that more students should learn about. This would help with leaving the narrative that people of color or people who are marginalized in society need to be the ones who educate those with privilege about their oppression and show those the amount of privilege they have. While I agree that when a group of people are oppressed and want to fight for their rights and want to speak about their experiences, should have that right to do so. The margina...

After reading this chapter, I kind of just thought about the few times teachers taught in a way that was dehumanizing to me as a student. These teachers would think that they are the all knowing ones who need we needed to comply with. Even back then I felt like it was wrong to assume that students know nothing about certain subject matters. Like it said in the chapter, it's dehumanizing. This idea that teachers teach and students are taught is too simplistic for me as well. There is a lot of learning that goes on outside of the classroom that the student can figure out by themselves. And if teachers start giving lectures all the time and students are listening then there is no collaborative work going on. Students at this point are not learning to work together. And this is a good skill that is needed, but it's not taught very well in schools. The author also brought up a point about discipline and being disciplined. I can see that happening in schools were students are alway...