Using video games in the classroom

I didn't get around to posting after we had the speaker on video games. It is hard for me to grasp using video games in the classroom since I have never been a big fan of them, but I can definitely see how using them would be fun for the students. I absolutely agree with incorporating their interests and hobbies into the classroom to make it more enjoyable and relatable. I am not sure how I would do this though. I think this will be my biggest challenge.

Reflection on Teaching Lit

This class was very helpful to me. I am nervous about creating lesson plans that are going to be interesting for my students and I feel like everything I have learned in this class will help me to put together more meaningful plans. All of the handouts that we were given are so helpful and I plan on keeping everything for futher reference.
I really felt like Mrs. Pytash was a great teacher and I am so happy that I got to have more than one course with her. After this class I feel more confident taking on student teaching.

Presentation on Autism

The presentation from Michele Cahoon was very interesting. I know that I will be interacting and teaching students with Autism, so to get a deeper look at what that means was very helpful in preparing me for what is to come in my teaching career. After listening to Michele talk about the different types of Autism, the different ways that each student with Autism learns, IEP's, 504's, and how students with Autism need to be told what to do and what not to do in the classroom I felt overwhelmed. At first I thought, wow this is going to be hard. But then I realized that there are going to be so many of my students on IEP's and some will have behavior problems, some will have emotional problems and so on. I need to stop looking at these students as challenging and start looking at all of my students as challenging. Every child learns in a different way and I am not only going to have to try to accommodate students with Autism and behavior issues, I will be working with students who will all need some kind of accommodation with their learning.
I am going to volunteer this summer at Rotary Camp because I feel that the experience I will gain from interacting with children with Autism will help me to better understand what is helpful and what is detrimental when teaching students with Autism.

Chapter 7 of Jago

The first line I underlined in this chapter was, "Assessing students' progress toward these standards makes sense. Unfortunately, too often exit exams punish students for the failings of their schools" (page 148). I agree. When I was in school I did not write analysis papers. I could crank out a research paper with no sweat, but if I had been asked to analyze a character and relate it to my own life or experiences I would have been lost. I would have felt like the students Jago had who were always asking why they were reading about old men. I feel that if we want students to graduate having learned these benchmarks we have to pay attention to what works. This goes back to the Gallagher article and how he allowed students to keep improving. Finding out what students' weaknesses are and building from there is a good way to find out how best to help each student.
The second line I underlined was, "As students grapple with the decisions characters make they explore their own values" (page 150). Again, I agree. Having students relate a character or entire novel to their own lives is a great way to get them to understand it better. It may not relate entirely, but there is some aspect to every novel that can be related to the reader personally. If the student has never been in a similar situation, doesn't know anyone who has, hasnt't watched a movie or television show where the characters can relate, etc. the student should be able to put themselves in the shoes of the characters in the novel and recite how they would react. Why? How? What elements in the novel would change?
This goes along with the last line I underlined, which was, "Students will graduate abel to read and understand the best that literature has to offer. They will be exposed to ideas and values outside thrie realm of experience" (page 160). This is a great goal to live up to as a teacher.

Naruto vs. American Born Chinese

I have only read one graphic novel and that was Beowulf. I am not a fan of graphic novels, but I did like American Born Chinese. When I first caught on to the way it was written (all the stories continuing one at a time), I thought it was going to stay that way and have three different endings. I really liked how the ending brought all the stories together and explained them. I really did not see that coming! I think the book can teach valuable lessons about how youth are treated in general. Everyone is different and no one should be punsihed for their differences.
As for Naruto, I wasn't a huge fan. I actually hated how it had to be read backwards. In the beginning I caught myself so many times immediately reading from left to right. The story was not as interesting to me either. It is inspiring to read about a mischievous child who ends up being great, but I think there are other books that can send that message.
I definitely liked the panels in American Born Chinese better as well. The crisp look of the pages made it easier to read. I never found myself stalling to find out if I was going in the right order. In Naruto, the black and white scenery did not spark much interest. I felt like the scenery was all over the place. I preferred the smaller panels in American Born Chinese. I think there was a lot more action in Naruto, which may have been the cause for the confusion when it came to the panels. There was too much going on and with no color it was not as easy to interpret and was not as engaging.
Both novels were filled with a variety of shots, long, meduim and close up. The characters in both novels were likable, but I still feel that the characters in American Born Chinese were more realistic. Again that could be the neatness of the illustrations and the fact that they are in color.
All in all I would definitely recommend American Born Chinese to students. I would recommend Naruto, but I would probably tell students that both are good, but in my opinion American Born Chinese flows easier.

Jago chapter 4

I like how the author explains the different elements of a story. I actually have never heard of the tone. That is probably wierd. When I read about the tone of a story I thought of The Great Gatsby and what the tone of the story is. With the examples given, ironic, nervous, excited, calm, detached, suspicious or wary. I came to the conclusion that I think the tone of the Great Gatsby is suspicious and ironic. Suspicious because the narrator, Nick, seems suspicious of everyone he talks about especially Gatsby. He pays great attention to the detail of all the characters. Ironic because you would think the rich man with the beautiful shirts would win the love of the spoiled and greedy woman. Also, you would not think that the rich man would be killed by the poor man. There are more example that could be given or debated. I like the part on literary devices and how important they are to a story or poem. On page 67 Jago says, "What students don't understand is that understanding how literary devices work gives readers power over text. The more clearly students understand how a writer works his magic in a line of poetry or prose, the better able they will be to analyze that line." The background is important, but students need to be able to relate the piece to their lives or at least to situations around them to understand what the writer is talking about.

Jago chapter 5

Poetry is one of the hardest genres for me. When I was in high school I read a book about living in a Utopian society (I cant remember what it was called) and that was it. Needless to say the curricullum at my school was not very hard or challenging and when I got to college I understood nothing! When I read Wordsworth, Chaucer or Coleridge I had no clue what to make of the literature. I completely understand students wanting to give up and blame the poem for being too hard as the reason they don't understand it. Poems can be hard to understand! It is hard for students to understand authors like William Wordsworth becuase they do not understand the language. But, like Jago says, students spend hours a day listening to song lyrics that express the writer's feelings just like Wordsworth did with his poetry. If you don't understand the vocabulary the poem does not mean much. I like the idea on page 76 about the students coming up with their own vocabulary words to work on. I also agree with the statement on page 77 that "young readers don't have a place to store this information ((background of the poem) until they have made some sense of the text for themselves." Until students can relate the literature to their own lives they are unable to make a connection. I feel this is a huge part of making poetry work in the classroom.

Jago Chapter 2

In the beginning of the chapter Jago talks about how vocabulary is one of the biggest challenges litereature poses on students. I completely agree! I remember the first time I read Chaucer and I think had I had a good teacher it may have been easier to understand, but I had a very hard time learning some of the classic literature. I agree with the statement that children who read more will have bigger vocabularies, but many of the students are not into the classic literature. For example, poetry by William Wordsworth is not something that a student would pick up and read if it weren't assigned to them. Therefore, I think it is true that reading broadens vocabulary, but it does not make it easier for students to understand all vocabulary. A lot of the old english is very hard to understand. Most students are interested to Shakespeare, but it is not until college that many of the old classics are introduced. At least that is how it was in my high school.

I heart novels

This is crazy to me! The fact that people can write their thoughts on their phone and have it turn into a best seller is amazing. I can't imagine how they have time to type everything in that way it seems to me like it would take forever. I may be missing something, but it just seems nuts, but at the same time really cool. The cell phone novel:
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2005/03/66950 .
It is really cool how the site carries more than a million copies. I really wonder how long it takes someone to read the whole novel this way. It is also cool that the person who invented the site is the one who in the end has a deep effect on other's who have novels on the site (i.e. Kiki).