Making Connections

First of all, HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!! It is time to celebrate and thank our brave men that fought for our freedom! They are the reason why we can go out and be who we are without getting hurt. I just hope the white house lights up with red, white and blue for the fourth of July!
    
   Don't forget the history of the USA and that we do have rights from the constitution and those rights should not be taken away from anyone.

Throughout the class I have made some connections with our reading, the articles, with the real world. I am Catholic and do go to church every sunday and last weekend I made a connections with one of the readings! I will post a picture up just to see if anyone in the class can point out what I am looking at here.

Well there is a word that we all should be familiar with! Which is "discourse"! Although in the article the main discourse is spelt with a capital "D". So for those who don't know what discourse means here is a little insight into this term. Discourse is explained by Gee is, "Discourses are ways of being in the world; they are forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions and clothes. Discourse is our identity kit". I have to say when I read this I also connect with what is happening on this day and why Fourth of July is very important. Yes there are other countries who have freedom but there are those countries who don't have freedom. And in these countries that don't have freedom people cant have a Discourse or they would be killed. We need to be thankful for our military in order for us, Americans, to have Discourse. But I will stop ranting here because I can go on and on with what is going on and I don't want to get in trouble! haha

So with this ending statement of this blog........

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

Final Thiughts

This is one of my lasts posts about the book, especially since there are only 9 chapters in the book and just reflected on each chapter!

I am visiting my family in Colorado and wanted to get my posts done so I can visit my family and my NEW NEPHEW!! I haven't seen him since he was born and i'm super excited and don't want to be tied down with a lot of homework! Even though I have the :getting practical" assignment to still get done....oh and the last paper on why I believe I deserve an A! Its gonna be tough but I will get all my assignments done but family is very important to me as well and would like to spend time with them, especially since I drove all this way!


There where a few things that I really enjoyed in the book Do I Really have to Teach Reading? and plan on taking some of these strategies to my classroom! I am going to be a PE teacher but I do plan on having my students read certain contents and will have them reflect on these reading. One big thing I took from the book is a double entry diary and having the students write about what they read. I will send home questions with the reading just to help guide the students with the reading.. I will have the students use this all year and I will have checks through out the semester and have them turn everything in at the end of the semester.

Another thing I took from this group is having students get into groups and bounce off ideas from each other to learn more about the content . I, however, don't want to put students in groups that know each other and I want students to become more social!

I will add more blogs up but its FAMILY TIME!!

"Did I Mis Anything?"

If teachers become distant from their own learning they will most certainly become distant from the learning of their students. 
                                                          -Alisa Wills-Keely

This person has made a very important comment that teachers should take in and learn from. We are teachers and we are supposed to be knowledgeable in many different aspects of life and learning. If we, as teachers, are no longer interested in expanding our learning, or just learn more in general, we will fall into a pit. I have personally seen this in teachers that dont seem to care if their content is being soaked into their students brain. But i have seen some teachers, even in their 60's, continue on learning such a variety of content and come into the class ready to teach and ready to have their students learn. Teachers who care really can make a difference in their students lives and make their class fun and exciting!
 

As teachers we still need to stay, yes even after hours, to sit and think about how our class went. And ask ourselves, did i miss anything? There are some content that we can bring up the next day in the class just in  case there was an important thing that we missed. During the class we still need to take notes of the different things that are going on in the class. The interactions that we have with the students and the interactions the students have with each other. We are a community, as students and teachers and we actually will bounce off ideas from each other.


Sometimes our classes become so boring that students end up falling asleep or lose their attention to the class! We dont want this and one thing i really took in from this book is changing around curriculum and do different things for the students to learn. But what we have to know is we wont have the answers to everything but thats why we need to continue on learning.