ESEC 419 Journal Write: Discuss Traditional Methods of Teaching Vocabulary Based on Your Personal Experiences

When I was in elementary school, I remember having in fourth grade pronunciation tests in which the teacher would show us a list of words and we needed to read the words aloud and “correctly”.  I probably would completely have forgotten this except for one vivid memory surrounding the word “coyote”.  The “correct” pronunciation of coyote, according to my teacher was kai-oh-tee.  And I knew that.  I never missed words on the pronunciation test.  But I decided to experiment on this particular test with my teacher.  I had seen a movie recently, a western, where the speaker had pronounced the word without the final “tee” saying just “kai-oh” and I decided I would mimic his pronunciation just to see how my teacher would respond.  I knew this wasn’t the pronunciation he expected or wanted, but I had just had to see what would happen.  He never made a comment about the pronunciation at all, but simply gave me a minus one on the test, the only word I was to “mispronounce” the entire year.

This was my first lesson in dialect, my first lesson in linguisitic difference.  I learned that day that there were indeed multiple “right” pronunciations even if some refused to acknowledge certain pronunciations.

 

ESEC 419 Journal Write: How can you determine the ability of your students to read and comprehend the textbook and written materials for your class?

Text books can sometimes be important to a class and sometimes not depending on how the teacher utilizes in a textbook in their class. In Math, I rely heavily on the provided curriculum and texts and I think that is the result of my inexperience with math and math teaching. In the beginning of the year, I worked exclusively out of the provided text, and only recently have made a move away from the text, increasingly relying on my own devices. I’ve created many in-class packets over the past weeks to supplement the text and replace various sections.

I think part of the problem with textbooks is that oftentimes there is a disconnect between the needs of the class and the textbook. For example, the math textbook I presently use really fails to provide enough sample problems for students. It offers one or two basic problems, and then a handful of more complex problems, often leaving my students far behind. My students simply are not ready for those complex problems without more practice with the easier problems. In conclusion, I would argue that it is essential that it is the teacher who determines any class and not a textbook. A text is a teacher tool, but never can supersede the role of the teacher.

 

ESEC 419 Journal Write: How does literacy fit into your content area?

Language arts is centered about literacy.  But its fundamental for language arts teachers to extend the understanding of literacy beyond mere fundamental literacy and extend their teaching into critical literacy.  We have an obligation to our students to teach them to read their world, to read literatures, involving not just literature with four syllables, but all types of literature that fill a student’s world, and to read those “works” with a critical bend, always questioning the things the come across in their lives.  This type of literacy is one that extends well beyond the language arts classroom and into students’ larger world pictures.  Students must learn to ask how has the power to write what they do and who authorizes that writing, what power structures exist that make such writing and literature possible.

 

Pi Day Friday

For those of you not in the loop, today is a very special day.  Every March 14th is Pi Day!  And since I’m teaching math, and its a Friday, this is reason to celebrate.  All of my kids today made a number or two of pi in their most creative fashion (on a paper plate) and we are putting the plates up around the room in order.  Need to know Pi?  Look no further than room 19!

Happy Pi Day Friday everybody!

 

My New Project: Teaching Dream through Art

I have a lot going on right now, but my main project is working on a unit plan that teaches “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with an emphasis on reading the play through both Shakespeare’s text and the many paintings inspired from the play. Its a combination of efforts, rooted initially in my NCTE proposal, but I am also using it to fulfill some coursework for CSUSB where we need to write a unit plan.

The gist of the project is that there is so much art inspired from Shakespeare that this art can become an important critical study of the plays. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” lends itself to such a study, because so much has been created from this play, likely because of its fantastical elements. I think that teaching the play through the lens of the art it has inspired can really unleash new perspectives into the play and entice students to Shakespeare, especially those visual learners, and with so many students being visual learners, this is important. I really think art can open up the play in new and powerful ways.

Right now I’m working on a detailed three week unit plan. I also am planning a part of my website to house the unit plan and the accompanying images required for the unit. It will become part of my main website. I also am working on writing a critical justification for the unit which will come later and be more research-based, though I’d really like to have the entire project finished in the next couple of weeks. I’ve been working hard on this the past two weeks and am going to kick it up a gear this next week to get it finished up.

I’ll be sure to post some links here as they become available.

Peace out everybody!

 

Passed the CSET

I found out today that I passed all four subtests of the CSET!  Yippie!

 

CSET

I took the CSET English exam last Saturday – an important test for earning your teaching credential in English in California. Its a five hour test made up of four separate sub-tests, and I had to drive three hours each way to take it, making for a very long day last Saturday. It feels a bit as though 2008 has been coming at full speed mostly because of that test changing last weekend. I put a lot of other things off – personal and professional – for a few days in order to study a bit, and that left me with a lot of catching up to do. As I sit here this weekend, though, I feel finally that everything is almost caught up and put back in order. Almost! By next weekend, I’ll be able to lay back and chill a bit.

I find out the results on February eleventh. I’ll be sure to post it here how I did.

 

Titus Adronicus

 As I work on reading through the remaining Shakespearean plays I had not previously read, I’ve come to Titus Andronicus.  Filled with murder and deceit, its a story that demands attention, though I’m not sure I like the play.

Titus Adronicus is a bloody, violent play.  Its as though the play takes all of the most awful elements from other characters and plays and combines them into this uber-gore play.  Sons are massacred by the dozens, tongues and hands severed from bodies, a virgin raped and defiled, a mother eats the flesh of her own offspring.  It is about betrayal and backstabbing.  Its about characters who refuse mercy and seek revenge.  Its about coldness and the lack of any loving emotion.

In it, we see a proto-Iago from Othello in Aaron, plotting viciously without apparent cause; even that Aaron is a Moor brings up the racial tension later to be sensed in Othello.  We see a proto-Lady Macbeth in Tamora, as she manipulates her husband’s bride to further her own accursed agenda.  Titus appears a proto-Lear in giving up the emprery and a proto-Prospero in speaking of his age and death when he utters, “Well, bury him, and bury me the next” (1.1.383)  Titus’s madness in 3.1 when he begs the tribunes for mercy for his sons, even continuing after the tribunes have made their exit, is reminiscent of the madness of Lear or Hamlet.  Even the plotting between Demetrius and Chiron to rape Lavinia in the forest feels a bit like a perverted version of the comedic Lyasander and Demetrius from A Midsummer Night’s Dream who venture to the Athenian wood to woo.

Titus Andronicus feels like it borrows every gory device imaginable from other plays and packages them together into Shakespeare’s most violent and angry play.  I’ve read through half of the play how; I’m not sure I can say yet that it was really worth my effort.  But then that’s just me and my own tastes.  I love the comedies best anyways.

 

Happy 2008!!

 

Math is a Journey

Many of you know that I am now teaching middle school pre-algebra to eighth graders in Southern California – a big change from my previous teaching of English at Western Michigan University. I’d like to share in this post today a bit about that.

I’ve been joking a lot at school with my kids about winter recently, teasing about how they don’t know what real winter is like. Many have never seen snow. Only a handful have ever even made a snowman or a snow angel; one girl added with a shrug that she had made a “mud angel” before. They don’t have any idea what its like to ride in a car down icy roads, or much less have to drive on one.

So yesterday, I told them about Michigan. And I talked about my drive from Michigan to California this past summer and explained that, like with solving math problems, there are often several routes that lead to the same destination. I explained that when my wife drove to California with her dad, that they wanted to get here as quickly as possible and avoid they mountains, so they drove south and then west as much as possible, coming through New Mexico and Arizona, a mostly desolate desert drive. Then I explained that I wanted the opposite; I really wanted to see the mountains. I wanted to see something amazing and beautiful. I had never seen the Rocky mountains and wanted to savor it and stop at scenic stops and take lots and lots of pictures; so I took a very different route that took me right through Colorado and Southern Utah.

I used the story of our two different journeys as a metaphor to explain that, just like my wife and I took different routes to get to California, people can use different methods to find the right answer in math. I explained that sometimes a certain method works better for some people because it makes more sense. Sometimes it depends on the problem; some methods just work better with certain problems. I think it eased the kids’ minds to realize that there was more than one right way to do math, and helped build their confidence.

The kids like hearing stories. They like it when a teacher gets a little bit personal and tells about their past. I used to love it when teachers did that. I remember one teacher in particular – my high school Spanish teacher – who told great stories. We always used to try to get him off on tangents, and considered it a great success if we could get him to tell a couple stories and use up the whole period instead of teaching from the book. We used to think we had tricked him to get what we wanted. Looking back, though, I realize that those stories taught me more than the actual instruction ever did. He told stories that really challenged me to think about the world differently (he was very far to the left politically – though I didn’t have any idea about politics at the time) and was probably the most formative teacher I had; he really set a foundation for many of my most core political beliefs I hold today. He told stories about Mexico that really shaped my understanding of Mexican and Hispanic culture and life. He even warned us about speed traps around town that likely saved my a speeding ticket or two after I got my driver’s license.

I think I did something similar with my own kids yesterday. They loved hearing about the snow and white Christmases in Michigan, and I think there was real learning in the telling of it, even if that learning didn’t come from a book or a lecture or a lesson plan. Math is indeed a journey. In a micro sense, it is a journey each time we solve a particular problem, making our way from the problem to the solution – just like I told my kids. But its also a journey in a broader sense, as well. Like all learning, its about getting somewhere important, about achieving a mastery of basic mathematical concepts. And we take different routes – some move quickly along, avoiding the mountains and steep upward climbs; they end up on an easier road right through Algebra 1 in eighth grade and right on up through the advanced math courses. Others struggle a bit more; for better or for worse, we go right through those mountains, up and down those steep hills. We take a couple of years at the pre-algebra level before being ready to move on. For one reason or another, we just aren’t on that same hi-track road. And that’s ok. The goal is to get there. The goal is to make that journey, even if the journey is different for different people. And on we go.

Peace out everybody – hope you have a great weekend!!! Happy Friday!!