Success Journal Reflection

When I look back on things that I feel like I am successful at in the past week. I start to understand why we did this assignment. Sometimes we as teachers think about things that we our not good at and never give thought on things that we might be successful in. I feel like as teachers we need to always have  a positive attitude in our teachings. Having a positive attitude gives the students a sense of confidence in you.

When I see on the things that I am good at I could understand that I am good at working with students. Trying to have a good attitude in the classroom is important to me. I want to make sure that my classroom is fun and interesting to my students. I been in boring classrooms and to me it was hard to stay entertain and I feel like the learning experience was not very successful for me. I am usually full of energy and you can tell it brings a better mood in my students. Overall, I feel like this was a great assignment and helps me understand that I will become a good teacher one day in the future.

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Reading Text

The subject area that I’ll be doing is Animal science and the content is agriculture based. The textbook to evaluate is Animal Science by James R.  Gillespie. The reading level for the textbook according from WordsCount website was Smog Grade: 9.99. From the website Readability index Calculator it calculated Flesch-Kincaid Grade level  10. On the website of Edit Central the reading level was automated readability index was 45. The Automated readability index was 8.7. The reading level for Flesch-Kincaid grade level was 8.1. The reading level for Coleman-Liau index was 12.5. The reading level for SMOG index was 8.8. The reason I feel like these reading levels are different is because through the years reading has become a subject that is an opinion of difficulty in schools. There are many schools that have higher standards of reading then some other schools have.  For being just a basic knowledge in animal science, I feel like the reading level is perfect for the students. It pretty much at the level that they are in school and some of the scores at a middle school reading level for being a freshmen course.  I feel like the contribute to the difference of the readability level and the assigned grade the textbook is meant for is so that we understand the difficulty of text we assigning to the class. I feel like there a judgment call on if you want higher difficulty of text in the class or having easy text to read in the class. When using the textbook in the classroom, the strategy I would use would be to assign some pages or one chapter to read before class. Then I would ask them questions what they learn and ask see the students if have any question over the text. Another strategy I would use is give them assign some pages or one chapter to read before class. Then have a quiz over the information they learn. I would make sure the quiz was not too hard because know that some of the students have trouble understanding information from the text. Then I would go over the text after the quiz and answer any question that the students might have. In the textbook, I like how they had pictures of all the different breeds of livestock. On each picture of the breed, they would have a brief description over that breed of animal. The book also had great descriptive graphs on grazing systems for livestock.  I feel like this makes it easy to learn each breed and understanding the explanation on how that livestock appearance.

Reading Strategies and History

Hello, Everyone!  I'm Julie Wilkinson and I'm majoring in History.  Reading is extremely important for my field, and students must be able to comprehend what they read.  This can be especially difficult if the student does not find the text relevant or interesting.  It is important to use reading strategies that relate the text to the student and the student's previous knowledge.  Strategies such as the point of view guide allow students to consider the text in new ways.  There are many points of view in history and it is important that students are able to discern them in their texts.  I can also have students write to learn the content, so that they review their thoughts of the content, and organize their understanding.  Another important aspect of history is understanding how to read visual information such as pictures, political cartoons, or flyers used at various points in history.  Using the "getting the most from visual information" strategy, I can have students review the visuals presented and draw conclusions.

Reading Strategies

Now that I began my observations, I have noticed the importance of reading strategies in the Spanish classroom. The teacher seems to incorporate the read aloud strategy in her classes. In one of the classes, the teacher instructed the students to pair up and read a conversation found in the book. This allows them to establish a connection between reading, speaking, and listening in the Spanish language. By reading aloud, students will gain a better understanding of the content. Although the students should constantly use this strategy, it is important for teachers to practice it as well. In order for students to efficiently learn the language, they must be exposed to it through a proficient reader and speaker. As I observed, I noticed that the teacher would read aloud several texts and information during one of her lessons. This gives the students an idea of how to use the foreign language, which allows them to make a connection throughout the learning process. Reading strategies are very helpful in every classroom.

Observing reading in the classroom

I have been observing at Irion County ISD. I observe a sophomore U.S. History class and an eighth grade social studies class. In the sophomore class nobody ever reads out loud. Instead, they all read to themselves and do the worksheets by themselves. This leads to certain students finishing a lot sooner than others and then having nothing to do but sit down at their desks and be quiet. The students that take longer on the assignment are taking longer to read the passage as well as the questions. They also have to ask more questions than the students that read quicker and finish sooner. However, in the eighth grade social studies class they take turns reading their sections out loud. The teacher will choose a student to read then tell them when to stop and he picks someone else to start reading. I have only observed twice but each time the students are motivated so much that they are volunteering to read out loud and asking him to choose them. Once they have read together they answer questions by themselves then discuss their answers with each other to ensure everyone has the right answer when it’s all over with. The students really get involved and they seem to take a lot away from the lessons. This past Friday the students answered questions before they read, about what they thought the statements meant. They were reading a letter written by a southerner right before the election of Abraham Lincoln. They discussed what they thought each extracted statement meant then read the letter together out loud. Each student got to answer a question out loud about what the statements actually meant once they were able to put everything in context. They also read passages about major politicians during the Civil War. They split into groups of three and each group read about one individual politician. When they finished reading they had to state the main points of the paragraph. Then the class as a whole filled out a Venn diagram comparing the three politicians. The students really seemed to enjoy this. I look forward to learning how the teacher motivates them to enjoy reading as much as they do. I have looked online for different ways to motivate students to read and there are twenty-five great ideas on how to motivate students of different ages  at http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson035.shtml.

Field Observations

I had my first observation for the semester this week. I'm observing an algebra II class and the students range anywhere from sophomore to senior. I've already begun to notice that this wide range makes a big difference in the classroom. The teacher however already began mixing up her teaching techniques. Within two classes I saw her implement one-on-one help, math games, notes, peer tutoring, and reading out loud exercises. This might sound hectic but it worked quite well. I think the best part was how interactive her classes were. Talking about the problems and questions out loud helped both the student asking and many of those around them. She also handed out a mixed problem worksheet. This was great because it allowed the students to work on the same type of problem but in several different formats. Seeing the problem in various formats allows the students to deepen their comprehension of the content.

Field Observation

Last week was my first field observation. Although I only observed for two hours and although all I did was observe, I still learned a great deal. The two hours were back to back so I was able to witness the teacher having to teach the same thing twice. I saw that she did almost the same thing in both classes, from what she said to what she wrote. I know that is very important because you want to try and make sure every student is getting the same education. Though this is a math class and though not much was done during my observation, I was still able to recognize where reading strategies could be used and should be used. It being a Geometry class there is plenty of material such as formulas and definitions where reading strategies could be used.  As for the students I was able to identify certain personality types that may or may not be associated with their confidence in their ability to answer a question. As a teacher I feel that although it is hard, you need to be able to shift though the garbage to uncover those who need help. I bet I will learn much from this experience and I am actually looking forward to getting to the part where I get more involved in the classes I am observing.