• We will not be having regular scheduled class next week. Attend July ‘64 on Tuesday Nov 6 6:30-8:30 in CoP Conference Room (2nd floor of

  Campus
  Center)

• Attend Utopian Society Art Exhibit on Wednesday Nov 7 11:15 – 12:10 Basil Lobby
• Talk to at least 3 students about their learning and work. Take notes.
• Blog about Frankenstein Conference
• Read news
• Comment on partner’s blog

Moving on from that, we discussed the Frankenstein Symposium on October 30th. Volunteers were called for to teach mini-lessons at School Without Walls, a great teaching opportunity that excused one from blogging before, during, and after the symposium (hurrah). We then discussed reading the book – the audio being available online for those of us that prefer it.

Next, we went over the Anticipation Guide, the Vocab Awareness chart, and Split Note-taking. We talked about the purposes of each strategy, the positives and negatives of each, how and when to use each, and how to subtly teach students to use each strategy. For the Anticipation Guide, the purpose was to activate prior knowledge and make connections between previous assumptions and new knowledge; for the Vocab Awareness chart, the purpose was to enhance a student’s comprehension by expanding their vocabulary (also, reading comprehension comes easier if you know the meanings of all the words); and Split Note-taking organizes thoughts and main points, as well as “chunks” the information into pieces that are easily remembered.

A brief review of Systems of Meaning-Making was followed by a few group activities. First, we were given words and phrases printed on pieces of paper, and our job was to organize them into categories and then name the categories. This was a great opportunity to work with the other students in the classroom while having a little fun. The second activity was just as fun: decoding “Di Tri Berrese”. With no prior knowledge, we were told to “translate” the story; turns out it was a more modern version of “The Three Bears”. We paused after this activity to discuss how the “Three Bears” activity related to the Systems of Meaning-Making: when did we use Semantics (word recognition)? Syntax (word association)? Pragmatics (prior knowledge)? Graphophonics (”sounding out” words)?

Finally, we read our literacy stories aloud to prepare for our podcast scheduled for next week. Group members (or in my case, partner) commented on things they liked or enjoyed, things that may have confused them, and things that could be expanded on or taken in a new direction. It was especially helpful to read aloud, as most of the revising can be done by the writer as they find mistakes or extraneous information.

Assignments for 9/25:

Read: Chapters 3&6 in Z&D, Tovani (online), and an article from the NY Times. Blog it.
Revise: Literacy story for podcast. Rehearse reading it out loud.

Next we reviewed some literacy strategies that we’ve thought about in class so far this semester. We discussed how a Anticipation Guide, Vocabulary Awareness, and Split Note-taking help with reading. For example, for the Anticipation guide, this helped us with reading because it makes you think about what you’re going to read, it provokes prior knowledge about the subject, you can focus on main points, and it opens you eyes to prejudgements you may have.

After reviewing the three literacy strategies, we discussed the Systems of meaning Making. These are strategies or skills that help us get meaning from what we read. These are put in four major categories: Semantic, Syntax, Pragmatic, and Graphophonics. Semantics has to do with words (i.e. Whole word recognition,Cognates). Syntax has to do with grammar (i.e. association), Pragmatic has to do with knowledge from the outside world (i.e. Prior knowledge, common phrases, story grammar), and finally Graphophonics (I like this word!) which has to do with letters and the sounds they make (i.e. Sounding out).

After some intense learning, we did a sort and organize activity. This involved going into groups and sorting out some word chips (cut out typed words ) and coming up with a category for each set of words. The group I was involved in made about 4 or 5 groups. Others made similar amount. This activity was fun and gave students a chance to interact with others.

A second activity that we did involved three bears. Well it was a comprehension activity which involved reading a story that was written in another dialect (I don’t think this would be considered another language, so that’s the best word I could come up with). This dialect was weird because some words you were able to figure out by the way the it sounded reading it and other were just funny sounding. With our prior knowledge of the English Language and information in general, our same groups from the sorting activity tried to figure out the story that was written. For example, the title was “Di Tri Berrese”…which meant “The Three Bears.” After picking and prodding at the words and letters of this story we were given the solution, which was actually a funny story. We then applied what we learned about Systems of Meaning Making and discussed what strategies helped us to be able to read the story and figure out what category that strategy belonged to.

Lastly, we stayed in our groups and took turns reading our literacy stories aloud to one another. This was fun because it gave us a chance to give positive and maybe not so positive feedback about our writing, which I definitely feel is important to get peer feedback. As each person read their piece, we were to tell them one thing we liked, words and phrases that stood out, things that confused us, and place we we’d like more information. Based on the information given, we are to make revisions. Which is exciting because next class we will be starting our Pod-casts, so everybody bring your revised copy of your literacy story to c lass and also practice reading it out-loud. Our professor showed us her podcast that she made about her literacy story. She introduced us to a program that she will be using to record our voices.

This is a review of what happened on Tuesday’s class, other details and notes you can get under wiki in “class notes and powerpoint presentations”

Due next week (9/25):

Take notes using sticky notes rather than writing in the margins & underlining. This is a simple tool you can teach students who use books they can’t write in.

1) Read Daniels & Zemelman chapter 3 & 6.

2) Read Tovani Chp 3.pdf 

3) Read a news article you think is interesting.

Writing

1) Use your personal blog to reflect on what you read. Refer to the assigned readings as well as the news article. Make connections as is appropriate.

2) Revise your nature of literacy piece. Rehearse reading it out loud. Bring it to class – do not upload it to your blog. You will be recording it during class time.

 We had a discussion based on the comments we made on our index cards about the readings and we went off of this and discussed the material further. Dr. Jacobs introduced us to other books that we can choose to read for a review that we’ll be doing in groups – don’t forget the book has to be read by October 23rd.

We covered the beginning stages of our literacy story as well that will be used with our Podcasts later. We concluded by discussing next weeks homework assignments and reviewing the reading and learning how to develop our own “nature of literacy.”

Virus possible cause of killing honeybees You’ll need a free subscription to the NY Times to access the article.

I think this article is interesting because it really captures the interconnectivity of things. First, honeybees are not indigenous to the U.S.. They are imported. They were brought into the U.S. a long time ago. The other interesting thing is that many of the foods that we take for granted are dependent upon the honey bee (such as apples). Without honeybees, our agricultural system suffers a great loss. If our agricultural system suffers, so does the whole U.S. economy. Apples and honeybees are also a huge part of national identity (think of the story of Johnny Appleseed). It’s also a example of globalization. The world is so interconnected and one thing affects another. Of course there’s also the biology aspect of it with the virus, and the science aspect: how the virus has been isolated as a possible cause. And that pulls in math. So, as you can see, in this one little article there are so many cross curricular connections. Plus, it’s current, and just plain interesting. Students might not get it at first, but with guidance and scaffolding it could become part of a lot of really interesting lessons.