Double Entry Journal #11

When the author says "Learning doesn't work well when learners are forced to check their bodies at the school room door like guns in the old West," he's basically saying that children learn better when their bodies are involved and the lesson is treated more as a cultural process.  People understand more and understand better when they can relate to what it is that is being taught.  The author also states that the best way to gain a large vocabulary is not to just read a lot, but by experiencing the "worlds" in which the words they are learning refer to.  A word is given a specific meaning when the person learning the word "plays the games" the word is used in.  Basically, they learn specific meanings by experiencing the word.

According to the author, the work of childhood is play.  To a degree, I agree with this.  Part of being a child is, well, being a child.  That is, getting to have fun and play.  However, childhood cannot only be about this. There is a great deal of learning and educating that must take place during childhood.  Granted, children can always learn by playing, and that is probably how they learn most effectively.  One thing cannot be solely concentrated on, however.  Children still need to go to school and to become educated.

Many of the manuals and directions that come with video games are very technical and difficult to read.  The author argues that these are easier to read once someone has experience with the game.  I have to say that I agree with this statement.  I have found from experience that sometimes reading the manuals that accompany the games are confusing and don't always make sense, but once I've played the game a little, it becomes more clear.  Knowing the literal or general meaning of words does not lead to strong reading skills.  It is the context in which the words are taking and an understanding of this that would lead to strong reading skills.  This makes good learning.

I think that if children learn best by relating the information they learn in school to real-life situations, then they need to learn the information in that context.  Peer to peer interactions are also important for children.  When they talk with their peers, they are more critical in their thinking.  They are more reflective of their thoughts.  They also get another perspective on the world and new and different ways of how to view the world.  Because children learn better by interacting with their peers, I think that I would probably apply this by doing group-based activities, so that they will be able to interact more often with their peers.

High Quality Assessment Blog Posting

Formal assessment is a multitude of formal and informal assessment procedures.  It can take many forms, but it always emphasizes quality of student work over quantity, giving guidance over grades, avoids comparing students, emphasizes understanding rather than just presenting information, encourages multiple iterations of the assessment cycle, and provides feedback that engenders motivation and leads to improvement.  One of the best practices in formative assessment is providing feedback, which is a research-based strategy.  Formative assessment would be used to gather feedback to guide improvement, such as when a teacher makes constructive comments on a paper the student has turned in.  A summative assessment is used to evaluate success or proficiency, such as a students final grade on a test.

Double Entry Journal #10

At home, children are exposed to a variety of different forms of language.  Things that parents do, such as telling stories and playing games with their children, ultimately effect them when they reach school.  Children learn the more academic and literary way of speaking, which is essentially by "storytelling".  Another is that, many video games use complex language and vocabulary that is often above their grade level.  The children develop the skills they need in order to play the game and become excited about reading and learning in relation to the game.  These children develop a love of reading and gain more extensive vocabularies.

Leona tells stories in the way that much African American storytelling is done.  She groups her speech into stanzas and uses a lot of repetition and parallelism.  Leona's specialized form of language is not accepted in school because the teacher's are expecting a story that is more step-by-step, not poetic in nature.  It is not what is expected or deemed "proper" for someone her age, and so she is discouraged from telling stories in the way in which she was taught.

Snow et al. (1998) concluded that students living in poverty end up falling behind despite their initial reading skill.  The recommendations then made suggest increasing these children's initial reading skill level through "early phonetic awareness" and "overt instruction on decoding".  These two reports contradict each other because if children in poverty fall behind others no matter their initial reading skill, then increasing their initial reading skill will not help the problem.

Racism and power is one thing that can also make or break a good reader.  If children perceive a school and/or teacher as hostile, they will not identify with them.  The same can be said if their home identities are oppressed.  If this happens, they will not feel they are valued or belong and will not do as well as they are capable of.  Children can fail to identify with the "ways with words" that is taught in school if it seems distant, irrelevant, or frightening.  Also, the varieties of language offered by technologies (the internet, video games, and texting) are more appealing and interesting to them than those they are exposed to in school.

Double Entry Journal #9

The strange fact about learning to read is that poverty and learning to read are linked.  This fact is strange because poor children are not "less good" at reading than children from a higher socioeconomic status.  All children can learn a complicated system located in a video game, but not all children learn what is taught in school.  School manages to transform children who are good at learning things like Pokemon into children who are not good learners because they use the instructional method of instruction, which is not the best way for children to learn.  Traditionalists say that reading should be taught in a "sequential, skills-based" approach, or that it should be taught in an instructional way.  Progressive educators, on the other hand, lean more towards "meaning-making".  They say that people "learn to read best when they pick up the skills as part of attempting to give meaning to written texts".  The author of this book argues that reading is too new to be a natural process, unlike learning to speak a language.  A natural process is something that is innate, and it is something that everyone succeeds well at.  An instructional process, on the other hand, only a small number of people succeed well at and far more succeed less well.  These contrast with a cultural process, which only a few really master and excel at, but everyone else who needs the skills learns them "well enough".  Humans learn best through a cultural process, however, reading in school is taught through an instructional process.

According the the author of the book, the cause for the "fourth-grade slump" is caused because children learn to read, but the fail to read to learn.  They cannot take information away from what it is that they are reading, which causes a backwards slide.  A better predictor of reading success than phonic awareness is "early language ability".  "Early language ability" is the ability to recall and comprehend sentences and stories, and the ability to engage in extended, connected verbal interactions on a single topic.  This ability is developed by family, community, and school language environment where children interact intensely with adults and more advanced peers.  The traditionalist approach to teaching children how to read fails because it teaches children to read academic language, which is not what they hear at home.  The parents of poor children, in some ways, are to blame for their children's inexperience with specialized varieties of language before they come to school.  The only exposure children have to language and reading before coming to school is what they gain at home, and if they do not get the proper foundation at home, they fail to succeed when they do reach school.  I had no trouble reading this text.

Double Entry Journal #8

1.  The main challenge being addressed in this book is the tension that is felt by those that feel that "academic and school-based forms of language and thinking that some people find alienating".  This has to do with the type of language that is being used.  Some people enjoy technical language, while others do not.

2.  What the author means by the phrase "ways with words" is that there are different ways in which words can be used.  This is the way in which language is used and that there are other ways besides those that are academic.

3.  The core argument being made by the author of this book is that "people learn new ways with words, in or out of school, only when they find the worlds to which these words apply compelling".

4.  

5.  

6.  

7.  I agree with the author that learning academic language is not sufficient for success in modern society to an extent.  I think it's important to not be too academic.  Someone who is can often be marked off as arrogant or superior in the minds of the mass in society, and they can possibly be rejected by society.  On the other hand, not having some knowledge of academic language can have the opposite effect.  I think it's important to have some sort of balance.

8.  

Struggling Student Interview

Do you enjoy school?

"Yes."

What kind of student are you?

"I do my homework, but I really don't like to."

What do you do for fun outside of school?

"On the computer I like to read this web comic called Home-stark but I like to [also] go outside and play with my friends."

How would your classmates describe you?

"I think they like me.  I've matured since last year."

What do you and your friends do together?

"Me and [friend's name] like to draw and talk and get on get on people's nerves.  And my friend at home, we like to kick the ball and play basketball and stuff."

Tell me a good memory you have about school.

"I remember once in kindergarten, I was so smart they wanted to put me in third grade, but my dad wouldn't let them, obviously."

Tell me a bad memory you have about school.

"In fourth and second grade, my teacher called all of us ignorant."

Tell me about a favorite teacher you had in the past.

"In first grade I had [teacher's name].  I liked her."

So you would say she's a "good" teacher?

"Yeah"

What makes her a good teacher?

"She was funny.  She never gave us homework, even if we had a little bit of work left. We forgot to bring snack, and she had a trash bag full of gummies and crackers and stuff and gave them to us."

What is one thing you wish your teacher knew about you?

"I like to be called Solix."


From what I've observed of this student, she is very quiet and she doesn't often volunteer to answer questions or do problems.  My teacher starts off every lesson with select students coming up to the board and doing latitude and longitude problems.  In the time that I've been in this classroom, she has never once gone up to the board to do a problem.  She seems very excited about school, though.  I can't understand why she would be struggling, and had my teacher not told me that she was, I never would have pinned her as one.  There are several other students within this class and the others that I observe that would seem more likely to me.  Today they took a quiz on latitude and longitude, and she had no trouble finishing it around the same time as the other students did.  She even had time to sit and draw on the back of her test.  She seems to me that she is very smart, so I have to wonder what might be happening that is causing her to struggle.  I feel she is a good student and that she tries.  Perhaps she simply needs to apply herself more, but I honestly don't know.

Double Entry Journal #7

What are some challenges to inquiry approaches to learning?

One challenge of inquiry-based approaches to learning are that teachers don't understand the complexity of this approach.  When they do not have this understanding, the project they are doing is more likely to come apart of become unsuccessful.  Chances are, the instructor has not provided "proper scaffolding, assessment, and redirection" which leads to the failure of the project.  Another challenge to inquiry-based learning is that often times the students lack sufficient prior knowledge.  Sometimes students also have insufficient support and modeling from their teacher.  Teachers must learn how to incorporate and deal with the responsibilities and implementations that come with inquiry-based learning.  One such example of this is time management and classroom management.  Lastly, teachers must design lessons in inquiry-based projects that meet a variety of criteria, which is often difficult for them.