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Final Synthesis Blog

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Going into this class, I knew that being literate in content-area courses was an important aspect of students’ learning, but I was not sure what teaching content-area literacy would entail. However, over the duration of the semester, I learned many new concepts and ideas that shape what content-area literacy embodies. Whether we were working with reading or thinking strategies, this course introduced ideas that I will need to be a successful teacher working with students with different learning needs. As a potential social studies or science teacher, I now know that I need to go beyond just teaching content-specific concepts. For students to truly understand a content-area, they must be able to comprehend and think about a given text. As a teacher, it is imperative that I provide students with support and strategies that they can utilize to be successful. In addition to learning about potential strategies, the idea of differentiation resonated with me as an important concept. Througho...
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Art and Content-Area Literacy

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At the Georgia Museum of Art, I found a painting that I believe that I could incorporate in one of my content-area specializations, social studies. This painting is by Isaac Soyer, who was an artist that worked for the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. The Works Progress Administration was a government agency that employed artists during the Great Depression. I believe that I could use this painting in a number of different ways in an eighth grade social studies unit that focused on events after World War 1 in the United States, including the Great Depression. One thing that stands out from this painting is that the color scheme is dark, and the mood seems gloomy for the people portrayed in the painting. This painting displays the harsh reality and conditions that many people faced without being employed during this time period. Potentially, I could use this painting as a pre-reading strategy, such as front loading with images. It would be important fo...
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Book Clubs

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Overall, I enjoy the idea of book clubs because I believe that they are a fun, collaborative way to build reading comprehension and morale in a classroom. When I was in middle school language arts classes, reading fiction books as a class or in a group was always my favorite activity. I enjoyed abandoning traditional assignments and activities to get the chance to read something that would peak my interest and attention. Even though I found that many of my peers did not enjoy reading as much as I did at that age, many of my peers would still collaborate and be engaged in a group environment. In my opinion, doing book clubs in this class reiterated the benefit that reading and collaboration can have in a classroom. Also, I enjoyed that the assessments were low-stakes because tests and quizzes always took the fun out of reading a book in class. However, I saw the benefit of taking notes on post-it notes almost instantly after I started reading our book, Hoot . It enabled me to connect th...
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Strategy Lesson Reflection

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Today, Cody and I presented our strategy lesson about password. Overall, I believe that everything went pretty well. I enjoyed that we got to present about an educational game because it was fun and the class seemed to enjoy practicing it. As I scanned the room during the presentation, everyone seemed to be interested and engaged in the strategy. Also, Cody called a good audible to have everyone work in pairs rather than large groups to make sure that everyone was involved and engaged. I believe that not everyone would have participated as much if they were in big groups. Even though I thought that it might be difficult to demonstrate before everyone played in pairs, the video helped give people prior knowledge or a quick introduction. I really enjoyed hearing possible ways or suggestions to tweak or edit how to best play password with your students. I like that the game can be easily tweaked with a few simple rules or with the use of technology. Also, I think giving a text was a bette...
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Resource Blog #5

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https://www.edutopia.org/article/making-most-class-book-clubs For this week, I decided to do some further research on the idea of having book clubs in your own classroom. This article is from edutopia by Beth Pandolpho, a high school English teacher, where she gives her own perspective on book clubs in her classroom and what it takes for them to be successful.  She has found that independent reading and student choice are significant factors in helping students improve as readers. She provides her students with meaningful book options to read and engaging activities that might spark discussions. I believe that it would be important to provide students with interesting books that they could choose from, while also letting them interact in discussions. Also, I believe that it is important to emphasize that reading is important for all subjects, not just ELA. I would be interested to see how a book club would work in a social studies, science, or math class at the middle school leve...
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Content Differentiation

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This video helped me understand the importance of differentiating instruction for all students in a content-area classroom. Not every student learns at the same rate, so it is important to differentiate the way that I introduce content and ask them questions about the introduced content. In the video, Ms. Maronpot used different differentiation strategies to reach all of her students. She was also given many new ideas from Dr. Royce that she was able to utilize in her classroom. I enjoyed seeing Ms. Maronpot using traditional, hands-on, and visual activities that each student could connect to depending on how they best learn. Also, I liked the idea that Dr. Royce brought up about trying to challenge students to apply what they already know opposed to simply asking students questions based on common knowledge. Application questions allow students to think more deeply about certain concepts that were introduced to them. For example, trying to get students to give examples of certain situ...
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Resource Blog #4

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https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/duk_rollercoaster_music_act For this week, I decided to do research on possible IPM activities that students could engage with and learn from. The activity I found is about creating roller coasters using pipe insulation and marbles. When I was in 8th grade physical science, my class did a similar project where we created our own roller coasters in groups. Creating roller coasters would be a great idea for a physical science class because the activity deals directly with key vocabulary, such as potential and kinetic energy, gravity, friction, and acceleration. Also, creating roller coasters would be a real life application to several challenges that engineers might face when constructing roller coasters. To further enhance the project to reach more content areas, it might be beneficial for students to construct several roller coasters in a created amusement park, and pick out a location and budget the cost for admission on a computer. ...
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