Guided Reading Lesson Video

When pulling small groups, teachers need to perform many of the tasks and ask similar questions that resembled those of the teacher in the video. The first guided reading video spells out how easy it is to guide students as to the different facets of reading that they should be focusing on. The one part of the video that stands out, in my mind, is how the teacher wants the students to predict what will happen at the end of the story. This is a great way to keep students motivated to learning because it keeps them engaged throughout the story. This tactic gives students an opportunity to use their creativity when it comes to reading.

Having students questioning stories and primary sources will keep them engaged in stories and articles and, in some cases, improves their creativity. This will give them the opportunity to put their spin on different stories and characters.

Merit Pay and Tenure

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/education/18teach.html?_r=1&scp=26&sq=education&st=cse

This article was sent to me by a teacher from a public school and the author, Sam Dillon, makes a few good points regarding the topics of merit pay and teacher tenure. In terms of merit pay, Dillon states, "all teachers in a participating school to receive extra pay when that school excels." I am not sure if I agree or disagree with this point. I believe that teachers should have some form of an incentive for excelling in their profession, but I am not sure how schools and administrators should judge if these teachers are excelling. With merit pay, I believe that politics within schools would cause a wave of controversy. Placing students in particular classrooms may turn into a draft. It would allow certain students to be placed in certain teachers classrooms because of their academic ability. This is one of those topics that will always be up for discussion until a better solutions comes to the forefront.

In terms of teacher tenure, there are positives and negatives to the topic. Tenure is necessary in education, but teachers need to be held accountable. Again, I am not sure how you judge if a teacher is being held accountable, but changes need to be made. Maybe solutions to tenure would be to make it more than three years and a day, to six or seven years to earn tenure. Maybe an evaluation by some type of government agency needs to be created to tenure teachers. These are just a few thoughts on two controversial topics. I am interested to hear your thoughts and ideas.

Reaction to MY Access! Writing Program Video

As a Delawarian, it is very refreshing to see my home state get a little publicity at St. Peter's. Red Clay Consolidated School District was not known as one of the upper echelon districts in the state of Delaware, but it is very interesting to see that they are using new technology to improve reading and writing. The program that RCCSD is using seems like a great idea that would benefit many teachers and students nationwide.

With over one hundred students, assigning one five-paragraph essay turns into hours and hours of grading that may take a week to return to the students, or longer. I'm not going to go down the road of complaining about the grading, but the problem that I have noticed is that many of my students only care about the grade on the paper compared to the comments. If the essays are returned a week later, students will briefly look at the comments, look at the grade, and in most cases, throw the paper away. One "perfect world" solution would be to have students read the comments that I have written on their papers and have them see me either before/after school to receive their grade. In my opinion, the only way to improve on writing, is to talk about the writing......talk about the positives and negatives of individual students' papers.

I would love to find more information on this program to see if I would be able to implement it in my school's curriculum. Thanks for the great video.

Primary Sources

As a high school teacher my administration has been pushing the use of primary sources for the past few years. At times it is difficult to find primary sources on certain topics as well as websites that provide primary sources. Believe it or not, the United States Government has a wonderful website that I have listed below that allows access to many primary source documents. There is a good chance that this website will have what you are looking for.

http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/

Reaction to ipod Article

My first reaction to the ipod article is that all technology will have ups and downs, positives and negatives, as well as much room for improvement. The author had a thorough explanation as to how the ipod can be used in education, albeit confusing at times. As a high school teacher, I have seen ipods used negatively in education for the most part. Many students of today believe that their everyday lives must involve an ipod. For example, if students are assigned seat work, many will ask if they can listen to their ipods. After explaining to them that they may indeed work more diligent when listening to their ipod, they are not grasping and comprehending the information, however, Deborah Vess explains that ipods need to be used as tools of learning rather than a learning crutch.

Vess states, "I am a firm believer in using technology only when it allows me to accomplish something better than I can do without it." I completely agree with this statement, however, does the ipod really improve learning that much more? It appears that, at times, the process of using the ipod is a great deal of added work get the information from point A to point B. From what I gather, it seems like a voice recorder could do the same as podcasts. Sure, the podcasts can be listened to on the go or in the gym, but do teachers want their students listening to lectures or discussions in these environments?

In some ways I feel that by using the ipod in this manner only inhibits the learners from interacting with each other, including the professor. It seems like more and more in today's society, people who work in the same school or office would much rather send an e-mail instead of walking down the hall to interact with their superior. Again, the ipods do serve an educational purpose, but I believe that attempting to implement them into the curriculum of a high school or middle school is a great deal of time that is being wasted.

Crazy Professor Reading Game

After seeing the title of the video for the, Crazy Professor Reading Game, I was expecting to see some type of a game format, but it appeared to be more a good idea for a lesson that went bad. It reminded me of student teaching when I would think of great lessons, different types of assessments, and/or activities that seemed like excellent ideas on paper, but then failed miserably when the class executed them.

In theory, this "game" has some merit to it. It looked like the students were reading, but were more concerned with acting out the gestures with their partners. One variation that this teacher should use in the future is to have one student read the book, while the other student is acting out the story with gestures. Then, students could switch roles after every page, or every few pages. It was also very chaotic because all of the students were packed in like sardines. One helpful tool might be to assign different spots in the room for each reading group. This would alleviate some of the noise problems so that students could hear themselves read the book instead of surrounding groups. The last problem that I noticed with this "game" was that the teacher seemed to be in hiding. Maybe this was because she was filming the activity, but an assistant or a para should have been circulating around the room to make sure the students were on task, or simply helping the students with difficult words.

Thanks for the video.