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.