The Art of Reading

Teaching in my content has been an amazing experience. I feel completely in my element. I have five classes that I teach: Drawing, Painting, Fibers/ Ceramics, Photography, and Art 1. In all the classes we incorporate lteracy before we start a hands on project. Usually we pass out handouts that give a background or history of what we are studying. The handouts range from history of techniques to brief backgrounds on artists. Later at the end of the lesson slash project we test the students on the knowledge they have aquired. Besides just giving the students the handouts and letting them read them, we go over them in class to make sure that everyone understands what the handout is about. This helps those students who dislike reading to still get the information. Throughout the lesson we give out other handouts/ worksheets that have the students use and apply the information we have already given them. We also give out vocabulary words every week of words that play a big role in their respective subject. Once again we read the words and the definitions outloud to the students. So my host teacher has stated that since she has been doing this, there has been an increase in the student's grades. Going over terms also helps the students understand concepts in class and causes less questions of what does that word mean. All in all I am very excited about teaching and can not wait to teach more.

A Novel Idea

I can't believe that some people do not know what Al Queda is or who our vice president is. I mean do you not watch the news? I really like the idea of having current event days. As a teacher you could even let the students choose their own article and then write a summary of what they read. This is allowing the student the freedom to choose what they want to read, and maybe encourage them to read more on subjects that interest them.

Anyways it concerns me that schools are taking away novels in English classes. I feel that novels are a great way to explore different types of literature that one might not normally be exposed to. From my own personal experience I did not like all the novels that I read in high school, but I did enjoy some of them and am glad that I read them. Reading different types of novels help people/ students to become more well read and understand different parts of literature (ex. what a metaphor is). It will also expand their vocabulary without the students even knowing it.

This reading is killing me......jk

I took from the reading of Readicide, is that the use of multiple choice testing is killing reading. Students are no longer having to think cognitively and are guessing or word recognizing through their tests. This may boost tests scores, but the students are not learning or getting anything out of teaching for testing. If one really wanted to teach for testing and let the students learn at the same time, then the teacher should ask essay questions. You can tell the students ahead of time the topics that may be covered, but let them know that only a few certain ones will be asked on the test but they dont know which ques. will be asked, so the students have to study for all ques. The book gives examples of teaching for standardized tests not working by mentioning Texa's high scores, and then delving into the omitted details such as high dropout rates, and high retention and special education rates. On a whole the book mentions that there is so much to teach and teachers teach it so fast, it is hard to get students to really read what is being covered adequetly.

My reaction to all of this is that it is our job as teachers to somehow interest students into learning more about our content. A good way to get students to understand what they are reading or the teacher is covering is to relate the content to the students lives ethier personally or everyday life events. This shows the students that they can use this knowledge and motivate them to futher learn and investigate that perticular content.

My personal experiences in school is that I dont remember much of what I learned in highschool. Probably one reason is that I was not that motivated to learn, I was however motivated to get A's and I did. I just do not remember what I learned, which is sad. Maybe if what someone had taught me how the particular lesson affected me and my life, I might have retained the knowledge more.

I plan on helping students read more effectively by taking old artists and relating them to new modern artists to whom they inspired. Also I plan on covering a variety of artists from different backgrounds and cultures, so that all my students can identify with at least one artists. I am also less inclined to use multiple choice tests, and more inspired to use a mixture of fill in the blank and essay tests.