Beach Reflections

Film or Video Clip:
I really like the idea of showcasing poetry through film. Poetry is meant to be heard, so students should hear it from the voice that created it. Using video clips of poets reading their own work is a way to bring life to a text. It gives students another perspective of the text besides the written form. This can only make the analysis of a poem more real and comfortable for students.


News and Documentaries:
I LOVE the idea of using documentaries in the classroom. I have done this in the past and it is so engaging for students. We watched Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars in a class that I taught about intercultural communication. There were some very graphic images in the documentary, but at the end of it the students wrote and wrote and wrote. Their reflections of the film were thoughtful and empathetic. It was my first success to elicit that reaction from the students. I think that students are so used to seeing things in a visual format that when you give them that in the classroom their responses to the “text” are much more thorough and thoughtful. Viewing film is something that students are comfortable doing and are therefore are more willing to stretch themselves from.

Burke Reflection

Smart users of social networking software need to have skills to prioritize information. They need to be able to identify the important items to click on for a given task. Students also need to be able to write in effective, short blurbs. They need to be able to understand idioms and figurative language. Symbolic language ;) More than anything else, I think that students need to understand the ethical issues involved in social networking. The scary thing about the internet is that you can get a lot of courage to say something that maybe you wouldn’t ordinarily say because you will never see the other person’s reactions. It is very important that students acquire the skill of ethical judgment. Students need to consider whether what they are putting out in cyberspace accurately represents who they are and how they respond to people.

Letter to Ernest Morrell

Mr, Morrell,
I have just finished your introduction to Linking Literacy and Popular Culture and I truly admire your perspectives on education. I appreciate your argument for the need for popular culture to be included in classroom curriculum. At the base of your argument is the necessity for teachers to connect their curriculum with popular culture as a way of making, “authentic and powerful connections between students’ worlds and the demands of the classroom” (7). You cite this as a uniting factor between the classroom and students’ lives, but also as a uniting factor between the huge cultural and generational differences between the teachers and students. I think that this is essential. You highlight the void that often occurs between teachers and students and I would argue that this is one of the most key reasons that students are not engaged in the classroom. You also refer to literacy as it is traditionally considered and the importance of including literacy through the lens of popular culture. I also appreciate that you compel teachers to include “techno-literacy” in classroom instruction across content areas. I think that often teacher leave the technological literacy as “someone else’s job” but your introduction makes a strong case for the necessity of teaching these skills in our own content areas. Not only is this engaging curriculum material, but it is truly essential for our students’ successes in the future world; you also allude to this on page 3.

Finally, I found your encouragement of teachers to be radical, activist, action-researchers to be incredibly inspiring. As you say on page 16, we truly are the only ones who can advocate for the realities and necessity for change in the classroom. Action research is a way for us to do this in a way that proves our feelings and thoughts. We must advocate for our own success and the success of our students. I truly appreciate your perspectives. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the text.Sincerely,Sara Boeck

Burke Ch. 7

Modeling!! This one is huge! In middle school this is absolutely essential in teaching writing.
Process is a product. This is one thing that I do consistently and emphasize to the students, but at the end of the unit I always feel like I took too much time on the process and included too many steps. I suppose there is a way to become skilled and efficient at this, but I haven't mastered it yet.
Starting with paragraph instruction seems great and an be used with writer's workshop.
Editing is one thing that I do not spend enough time teaching. Students think that this is a check for spelling and punctuation errors. Perhaps some of the suggestions for sharper writing could be used for editing too.
6 traits seem great. And the rubric is also very useful.
For journals: the liability is something very very real. I had a student share some extremely personal information with me in an assignment. This was something I was unprepared for and is really important to consider.
Using news events for writing is an excellent idea. It gets students involved in their communities and the world and gets them reading a different genre. It also does a great job of prompting students to think about deep and relevant ideas.

A Mode of Writing I Want to Teach

I'm a big fan of non-fiction texts. Expository writing is one mode that I would like to teach. It is what I have been teaching during the past 12 weeks at Sullivan. One specific type of writing I would like to teach students to do well is email writing. Emails are one of the greatest forms of communication currently. I have read so many emails from people that are full of broken ideas or inappropriate language for the situation. By having this skill, students will be able to function in society by knowing how to phrase their ideas to fit a situation. For students to acquire this skill they will need to know the situations that email could be used for, what type of tone is appropriate for those situations, the role of word choice in writing and the basics of email.

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

This digital scrapbooking seems like a great way for students to collect multi-genre texts on a theme. Students always love looking for pictures on a topic. I recently assigned a project for students to find a range of sources and this would have been the perfect way to put it together. Plus, the digital thing helps with interest. I love that this idea validates photographs as a form of study. Coupled with some media literacy and instruction in reading this could give students really powerful skills.

Things 27 and 31: Twitter and More Twitter

YIKES! That's a lot of communication! And it goes wherever you are. I'm still unclear on how this could be used with students in an equitable way, but I am hoping the discussion tomorrow will help.