Class 2: Cambourne's conditionsWhy did I choose to submit this item?
I chose this item specifically to see how I have grown regarding my understanding of concepts and the language I use in activities. I thought that seeing this growth would be very beneficial to see to analyze what I have learned and accomplished throughout this course. What course goal(s) does this item address? The course goal that this activity addresses is "What is literacy? What does it mean to see literacy as a social practice or multiliteracies?". What course concepts/ideas are represented in this activity? I think that this assignment provided a basis of different concepts that were further discussed in more detail throughout the course. Throughout the course, we learned how to create environments for learning that were engaging and anti-oppressive. We learned how to manage our expectations and how to make sure students understand what we expect of them. We learned about the importance of demonstration and giving visual examples to allow students to understand what is expected better. We learned about our responsibility as teachers and students responsibilities to remain accountable for their learning. We discussed how to give students opportunities to express their learning. In my opinion, we learned one of the most important things, that students are going to make mistakes and that they need to make these mistakes in order to learn. Finally, we learned about the importance of interaction through questioning and discussion. How has my thinking changed over the semester? What more would you like to learn about this activity? I don't think that my thinking has really changed over the semester about these topics. Instead, I think that how I would practice these conditions has changed, In this assignment, we listed very vague ideas of how we could practice this but now, we have been given many different strategies to develop literacy and I believe that if I was given the opportunity to complete this assignment again, I would be able to dive into the chapters and pull out all of these ideas to use in practice. I think that a lot of these conditions are interacted with as a physical learning experience and we learn what works and does not work for each different group of students. Saying this, I would like to discover how to transition these ideas between different groups of students and how to organize practices in a way that benefits all rather than just some. Link to Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ji8jbcKMJY1FBvUGsPR8YFPZU6vqKS977OMZBwHiGbw/edit?usp=sharing
Work done with Katie Turnbull CLASS 6: Writing AssessmentWhy did I choose to submit this item?
I thought that the Writing Assessment activity that we completed in class 6 was very interesting to complete because it gave me a sense of what I will be seeing when students turn in assignments. It caused me to have to begin to think critically about what I would be looking for and what I need to start looking for. The chart that entailed all of the information of what is expected from each grade level was extremely informative because before that, I was purely guessing what these groups are learning and what they should already know. What course goal(s) does this item address? This assignment falls under the categories of “What strategies can I use for assessment in ELA?” and “How can I use the Saskatchewan K-8 ELA curriculum and curricular resources?” In this assignment, we were encouraged to look at the Saskatchewan curriculum and the ELA growth curriculum to find ideas for areas of growth. After doing this, we were instructed to create a mini-lesson that would be beneficial for one of the sample pieces. This needed to be appropriate for the grade level that was chosen and be applicable for their areas of growth. What course concepts/ideas are reflected in the activity? This activity allows us to engage with the formal assessments discussed in Chapter 10. By looking at samples of students writing, we are focused on the more product-based form of assessment. We use the ELA growth curriculum to determine students areas of growth regarding their writing. It allowed us to engage with the idea of being "mindful that writing is a complex and sophisticated process that involves effective utilization of syntax, organizational strategies, vocabulary, transcription tools, and ideas" (Heydon, R., McTavish, M. & Bainbridge, J.) that vary depending on purpose and audience. How has my thinking about the activity changed over the semester? What more would you like to learn about this activity? I am quite excited to see how my thinking about this activity changes over the semester because as of right now in October when I am writing this, I am already creating different understandings. For example, I would like to really dive into the curriculum and attempt to make my own list of areas of growth that expand on what is provided in the ELA growth curriculum. I think that the creation of said list would be beneficial for my students so they have a more complex and thorough form of assessment and they have the opportunity to expand their knowledge to an even wider extent. I hope that over the rest of the semester we can compile a list of easily adaptable mini-lessons that will aid in the teaching of these areas of growth in order to create the most confident and competent writers. Link to Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TVGji0cNaeC-HszOdS16wn_FBZ3dRJrND6dssFXA6A8/edit?usp=sharing
Work done with Katie Turnbull Class 10: literacy assessmentWhy did I choose to submit this item?
I chose to submit this item because it allowed me to analyze some of my beliefs regarding my philosophy of assessment. In addition to this, it gave us the opportunity to brainstorm practices, strategies or tools to address these beliefs. I think that a very important aspect of this activity to notice is that Katie and I did not choose any repeating principles. We challenged ourselves to utilize different strategies. We did this activity in partners, which I believe was partially difficult because of some conflicting beliefs. Therefore, I chose to discuss this item to give myself the opportunity to identify some of the beliefs that I would and would not have added to the list. *Note: I chose to discuss only three of the beliefs.* 1. Learners should master letter sounds before reading sentences and stories.
The course goals that this activity addresses are "What strategies can I use for assessment in ELA?" and "How can literacy learning theories be applied in the classroom?". What course concepts/ideas are represented in this activity? This activity allowed me to reflect on the idea of assessment discussed in Chapter 6 where it discussed the purpose of assessment being, "assessment should be to obtain and interpret the information learners and educators need to co-create pedagogies and circumstances that, as we've been saying, creates opportunities for capability." (Heydon, R., McTavish, M. & Bainbridge, J.) When completing this assignment, I had to constantly think about if I thought these beliefs would create these opportunities for capability. In the Text-to-Self Box 6.5, we are provided a list of useful questions that we can as ourselves when we are deciding how to assess and our beliefs regarding assessment: "Questions to Guide Assessment
I believe that my thinking and beliefs of assessment has greatly changed over the semester. Initially, I thought of assessment as a standard to judge learning for all students. I believed that students were required to complete forms of assessment that were all the same and that they were all supposed to be used as summative assessment. Now, I believe in adapting assessment to support the idea of valuing equity among my students. I believe in the idea of adjusting how I assess my learners based on how they learn. What I would like to learn more about, is how to make these adjustments regarding assessment without students complaining about it being fair or not and how to properly challenge my struggling and high-achieving students. I think that I will be given plenty of opportunities to experiment with this question once I reach my next semester, especially when I get to engage in my three week block. Link to Google Doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19ejighNd7KKIyVhNv8n4FJUmOmmE_Ge5HQGJ8SAtJ-E/edit?usp=sharing Work Done with Katie Turnbull |
Class 4: Oral LanguageWhy did I choose to submit this item?
I chose this item because I think that it addresses important aspects of literacy such as semantics, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics. Many of these aspects are topics I have not heard of or ones that before this lesson, I would not be comfortable with expressing my knowledge upon. I liked having the opportunity to play both roles as describing what the teacher would say and what the learner would say. Finally, it ended with an opportunity to connect it to language and literacy goals. What course goal(s) does this item address? The course goal that this item addresses is "What instructional approaches are useful for teaching readers and writers in elementary contexts?" In this assignment, we are given the opportunity to consider what the teacher would say when teaching one of the brainstormed activities. Thus, we are given the opportunity to consider which instructional approaches would be useful in the situation. What course concepts/ideas are reflected in this activity? In this activity, we are instructed to consider the concepts of semantics, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics. When brainstorming activities, it was important to consider these concepts to provide students with the opportunity to use this story and the activities to engage in these concepts. Chapter 3 covers these different concepts:
How has my thinking of this activity changed over the semester? What more would you like to learn about this activity? Reflecting on this activity, I think that it was executed well. Saying this, now that I am more comfortable speaking about literacy, I think that in the "what would the teacher do for this activity?" section, I could have commented directly on the concepts of semantics, syntax, phonology, and pragmatics. I think that different strategies such as word walls could have been mentioned in this section. I think that using the charts in Chapter 3 provide excellent examples of how teachers can apply these concepts in lessons without lecturing. Link to Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BUnxy2ZLRfA5nEIfHfT7yYOfrGe0FO5vw232OTc9Xno/edit?usp=sharing
Class 9: Reading PedagogiesWhy did I choose to submit this item?
I chose to submit this item because I think that it was very beneficial in my attempt to develop learning activities that help develop syntactic knowledge, semantic knowledge, pragmatic knowledge, and graphophonic knowledge. I think that this activity helped me think about how I can make reading a much more engaging learning tool rather than how I saw reading being purely a chore. What course goal(s) does this item address? The course goals this item addresses are "How can literacy learning be applies in the classroom?" and "What instructional approaches are useful for teaching readers and writers in elementary contexts?" What course concepts/ideas are reflected in the activity? In this activity, we see the ideas of the four different pedagogies for supporting word solving: syntactic knowledge, semantic knowledge, pragmatic knowledge, and graphophonic knowledge. We were instructed to create learning activities from the different categories:
Looking back, I think that in addition to naming the activity (ie/ KWL, Word Wall, Word Parts, etc.) I would put the pedagogy. I think that if I would have done this prior, I would have been able to see the direct relationship and how the activity relates to the pedagogy at hand. I believe it would be beneficial to incorporate what we did in Class 4: Oral Language where we describes what the teacher does and what the learner does in detail. I think that when we discussed this topic in class, we covered it perfectly. I did not have any lingering questions when the class was finished thus, rather than wanting to learn more about the topic, I want to use the content discussed and learn from it as I begin using the strategies. Link to Google Doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZjSHc7Kx5Upbm1RkJLVo8e3sye1-l7Kay8nbfYOXIHs/edit?usp=sharing References:Heydon, R., McTavish, M. & Bainbridge, J. "Chapter 3: Language Learning and Oracy" Constructing Meanings: Pedagogies for Literacies K-8. Seventh Edition. Top Hat.
https://app.tophat.com/e/217978/assigned/ Heydon, R., McTavish, M. & Bainbridge, J. "Chapter 10: Assessment and Conventions of Writing" Constructing Meanings: Pedagogies for Literacies K-8. Seventh Edition. Top Hat. https://app.tophat.com/e/217978/assigned/ Heydon, R., McTavish, M. & Bainbridge, J. "Chapter 6: The Nature and Assessment of Reading" Constructing Meanings: Pedagogies for Literacies K-8. Seventh Edition. Top Hat. https://app.tophat.com/e/217978/assigned/ Self Reflection Linkhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1HDZ3wahN4cpIYTxxI9pTy6sTe1fIXUwvSBEYMC3P6cA/edit?usp=sharing
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