Literacy for the iGeneration

Welcome back to a new semester. We’ve had our first week of class and it was great seeing everyone again. We did a little getting to know each other activity even though we’ve been together for one semester already. At the end of last semester, it became obvious to me that despite my efforts to mix groups and get people talking to one another, there were some people who still didn’t know each other. To that end, I’ve also taken pictures of each student and posted that picture and a bio on our course wiki. We also spent time thinking about what our ideal classrooms would look like, taking a look at the national and state standards, and then coming up with a list of goals to guide this semester’s class. The students came up with a great set of goals, and I’ll be using those throughout the semester to develop instruction. I have a course scope and sequence planned, but it is flexible. It’s a tough balance, as a teacher, to maintain focus on what you know is needed in order for students to develop as teachers but to also use a generative process for exploration. As one wise young woman said to me, “It’s scary because we don’t really know what we don’t know.” So, I guess that’s my job. To take a look at what the students are asking for and then fill in the blanks based on my experience.Next week we’ll be creating wikis which students will be using to collect materials for their teaching. We’ll also be learning about how to assess where students are in terms of literacy skills so that we can better differentiate our instruction and texts. Once we have those two pieces under our belts, we’ll move into addressing the set of goals identified by the students. I hope it will be an interesting and productive semester.Dr. Jacobs