| Tina Walker LIST 5325 � Dr. Hirtle Sept. 8, 2005 Session 2 RR&D Article 1 Article 1 � Language Arts: Urbana. Nov. 2000 � Vol. 78 Iss. 2 Making history with a reader What do I want to remember from this chapter that may be helpful to my present or future teaching or to the TExES exam? �Children learn most successfully when they are engaged in activities that are meaningful, rewarding, and engaging.� I try to keep this in mind when I prepare lessons for my students. It�s a given that there will be lectures and discussions in the lessons, but I try to make a point to include some relevant, hands-on, FUN activities. I try to incorporate lessons that they want to learn about as well. �Learning activities should incorporate some involvement on the part of learners around the object of learning.� �The expectation or "endpoint" of learning needs to be present in the learning activity.� The belief that children will come to learn what they need through play is not the only motivating force behind learning. Children need to do things that are relevant and that they can make connections with in order to learn concepts better. Social collaboration is important in the learning process with young children. Children are at a sociable stage in the primary grades and they can learn from each other as well as with the teacher. I make cooperative learning commonplace in my classroom. �Engagement cultivates the learner's attentiveness and sense of purpose about learning. The potential to change the destiny of reluctant learners depends on how well school can engage them in a process of learning.� Engagement is two-way between students and teacher. �Conventional approaches to teaching reluctant learners presume that the locus of difficulty lies within the head of the individual student rather than in the relationship between the learner and the social context.� �Learning success or failure in individuals has to do with diversity in the history of learning experiences-their relevance, the learner's willingness to persevere in the activity, the level of his intent and awareness concerning the object of learning.� How do these readings connect to my prior experience in education? The author of this article was trying to make a point that a child�s cultural background plays a large part in how successful the child will be in an educational setting. Early experiences with learning shape the child�s attitude toward learning. If early attitudes are positive, the child will be open and have positive attitudes in the learning process. However, if those early experiences are negative, then the child will be reluctant to explore in the learning process. To summarize the article, the author�s child had a love for books from an early age since she�d shared books and read to him at home. He enjoyed exploring with reading and writing. When he entered school, this love for literacy changed due to instructional practices employed by his teachers in the classroom and curriculum requirements of the school. These practices included classrooms with abundant opportunities for free exploration and centers, a curriculum that relied solely on phonics instruction, a classroom where expectations to acquire decoding skills were not relevant to the literacy instruction and reading time had very little meaning to the students, and a classroom where students have freedom, but also expectations to acquire literacy skills. The child did poorly and had a negative attitude toward reading at all of the schools until he went to the school with freedom and expectations. He seemed to come to enjoy reading again because it was similar to the experiences that he�s had with his mother during his early learning experiences. They read books, discussed books, had free choice of the types of books to read, were taught how to �interact� with books to acquire meaning, and were required to spend time outside of school reading. This is relevant to my teaching because I have to keep in mind the various learning modalities that I have in my classroom and that I need to meet the needs of al of them. What works for one may not work for all and there are several reasons why this may happen. I teach an ESL class and cultural factors play a large role in the students� attitude about learning. Many of my students are from economically disadvantaged households and their home environment affects their attitudes toward learning. All students are different and they all have different needs and my job is to meet those needs. What questions or comments can I bring forth to help me and my colleagues, extend, expand, explain, question, or clarify issues surrounding this reading? How do you meet the needs of all of your students in the allotted time frame that you have to teach each subject? Do you agree or disagree with the points made above? What are your thoughts about this subject? How can I extend the virtual classroom conversation on this reading by responding to my colleagues� posts? I can extend the conversation on this reading by sharing my philosophy of teaching as well as techniques that I�ve used in the classroom that seem to work well with my students. I will also be open to suggestions and ideas provided by my colleagues. |