How New Technologies are Changing Literacy-My Thoughts...

The reading material and video clip on new technologies impacting literacy is very accurate and makes me think of my own education and teaching experiences as it relates to literacy. Admittedly, I always thought of literacy as reading and writing, now however I am aware that literacy is much, much more. I now know that literacy is reading, writing, and communicating through various other meduims such as pictures, videos, hand signals, gestures, etc.
As a young student my exposure to literacy was through reading books and magazines and writing class assignments, letters, and postcards. As a college student, the type of reading and writing were still in effect but became enhanced as I used the libraries, audio visuals, and typewriter-word processors. I did well in my classes that involved reading and writing so I considered myself very "literate".
Now that I am an educator in this era of booming technology, and I look back on my own education, I might as well have been a Flintstone. Current and ever-advancing technology has changed the face of literacy so, that students today, even those classified as special needs, are considerate "literate", especially in comparison to when I was a younger student. PC are now as common in the home as the telephone or television. The internet is an incalculable source of available information that makes knowledge and data on virtually any topic accessible for student use. Current and ever advancing technology in word processing and assistive technology make reading, writing, and communicating easier and possible to students that were having difficulties or unable in the past. Video games and text messaging are thought to increase dexterity and give students practice writing in a fun context. Video photo technology and video story-telling, blogs, on-line chat rooms, and even "myspace", all provide students with multiple ways to communicate, learn, and share information. With these things in mind, I definitely believe the world has become more "literate".

Reflection on No Child Left Behind (NCLB)

The articles on No Child Left Behind left me in a state of wonder, like I wonder who, what, and where this data mentioned in the articles came from and how valid is it. But just for the sake of clarity I will state that I like the intentions of NCLB, its trying to balance the educational playing field so to speak, between ethnic, social, and financial, and disabled segments of the population. Its implementation, however, as an educator I am not all that thrilled with at this present time. I see the negative effects of the lack of funding of the programs necessary to satisfy the guidelines spelled out in NCLB causes on poorer districts like the one I teach in. I experience first hand this effects this causes as programs are cut throughout districts as funding is taken away from programs necessary for student growth and reallocated for programs tested under NCLB mandated standardized tested subjects.
This leads to my next point, NCLB mandated standardized or high stakes testing. Once again I've experienced first hand the guiding of teachers to "teach to the test" so to speak. Teachers are prompted to place emphasis on students of the importance of passing state assessment as early as October of the school year. Students are drilled and grilled on subjects such as math, science, and literacy from a testing perspective while other enriching and necessary subjects like art, music, and physical education, have their time periods lessened to give more time to test prep sessions.
Testing from state to state as well as the discrepencies and accountablity of materials on the test are also other problems I have with the current version of NCLB. Test are not the same from state to state, be it difficulty level or emphasis of content. Accountability of different groups such as special education accommodation and reporting data is still an issue being worked on. And a final issue to me is the development of state test without ample consideration of all ethnic backgrouds and group in question and test design. I hope the revisions proposed for NCLB addresses and "fixes" a lot of these problems so that we can really stop leaving children behind.

Assessments

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Assessments
The reading of the articles on Assessment and the Routman text took my mind back over my past year as a teacher and the effective assessment process(es) I learned that fit best for my classroom. Yes, as the readings points out, there are two main types of assessments, formal and informal, and it has been my experience that if you want to be effective as an educator, you have to find a balance of both.The formal assessments, basically, the standardized test that are now administered at every grade level for grades 3 and above, are a "necessary evil" so to speak as they not only give state educational agencies data on student acheivement based on "determined" norms or standards, but also provides data on teacher, school, and district performance. They also indirectly affect fiscal outlays for districts deemed needy. At least thats how it works in theory. These test also have an impact on the curriculum, and how it is taught, we use to teach our students as some districts steer teachers to teach students the subject matter necessary to pass standardized test moreso than teaching them what is necesary to go successfully from grade to grade. As part of the balance I mentioned earlier, I used informal assessments to prepare my students for the formal ones.I used various informal assessments in my classroom to thoroughly prepare my students for all aspects of the required curriculum. I preferred the flexibility and adaptability of creating assessments that measured skills after I taught them. I was able to determine the needs of individual students and I was able to pinpoint material I needed to re-teach or teach another way. Examples of some of the informal assessment types I used were projects, group and individual, oral presentations, student teacher-student evaluator. I found that these types of assessments thoroughly prepared my students as I was able to fill in missing gaps in their educational skills as I went along and was able to get feed back from the students. I also used some of the strategies suggested from the assigned readings such as "interest inventories" and "student-class collaboration" in designing outlines for assessing a unit or subject. I am proud to say that the results from my balancing the various assessment techniques was having a high percentage of my special needs students do well on the standardized test this past year.
Posted by rmporter at 3:28 PM 0 comments

T I P Chapters 5, 6, & 7

I found the material in these chapters interesting fromt the perspective of how as I was reading, I noticed some of the theories as being evident in the special education class I just finished teaching this school. The theories I see the most relate to is Holdaway's (1979) Theory of Literacy Development and Paiget's Theory of Cognitive Development (1969).
As a Resource Pull-out teacher I was exposed to a wide vareity of special needs students with varying degrees of reading difficulties. In hind-sight I remember those particular IEP meeting with parents that explained to that they began reading more and more with their child after they realized that their child had a reading disability. These particular children were more open and receptive to my approaches to teach and enhance reading and over the months became my better readers. Therefore I find myself relating and agreeing with Holdaway's theory.
I was reminded of Paiget's theory when I thought back to the approach to designing my lessons to address those students that were in the 6th thru 8th grade but lacked the key building blocks necessary to reading fluency that they should have been given at the various stages of their academic development. So I also find myself agreeing with the Paiget's overall theory.
I only slightly related to the Emergent Literacy Theory of Clay (1985) and Morrow (2001) and and Taylor's Family Literacy Theory (1983, but I did not find myself agreeing at all with the Maturation Theory of Morphet & Washburne (1931) at all.

Language Acquisition

My experiences as a special education teacher working with and observing young children and the knowledge I've gained reading the assigned articles on the subject of language acquisition have given me some insights into language development in children; my years as a computer instructor for adults (largely immigrant poputlation-Haitian & Hispanic) has given me some insight as to how the adult also acquire language.
Children acquire language from incancy to about 7 years old. The immigrant children I've encountered bounce back and forth between 2 language with ease so the assumptions of the readings are true in my opinion. Most children start off picking up language from listening to their surroundings like family and television and the one and two worders we speak directly to them. This also applies to those children in day care. This is the case for the first 1-3 years of their lives. From ages 3 & 4 children have begun putting together basic spoken sentences. Family at this stage has long since stopped with the baby "goo goo" talk and began talking in normal adult language which greatly increases the childs vocabulary and language development skills. At this stage Pre-school is a reality for most American children where further emphasis and enhancement of language skill is taught. Video games and children software packages are also introduced at this stage to most children, another enhancer to language. From ages 5-7 the basis for language stucture is brought into play as almost all children are taught how to speak, pronounce, an pause, as well as how to companion these verbal language with written ones.

Adult acquire language different than children. The adult brain for the most part finds it difficult (but not impossible) to change the way it is used to processing spoken language. Pronunciation and diction are a strugge and must be practiced greatly. Adults that have heard a particular dialect so to speak, or those that have never been taught formal language that they should have learned as a child find learning learning mechanics difficult and may never pick up all that is necessary for proper fluency as the readings insinuate. This is magnified when trying to learn a new language as an adult as this "language barrier" takes great strides to overcome.

1. What did I get from the readings in terms of thinking about reading and literacy?

I was kind of reassured of my thinking that reading was a part of literacy was at least int he ballpark. As I stated in my BlackBoard post, I believed that reading was the "decoding and comprehension" of printed material. I also beleived that literacy was the combination of reading and writing and their applications for communication purposes.


2. What are some of the key issues that stick out to me?

The issues suggested in the article "Silencing Teachers in an Era of Scripted Reading" are very unsettling especially the statement suggesting " that even with the good original intentions of No Child Left Behind", more children are being left behind that ever before" and the not so free teaching of "boxed/packaged education" as I like to call these teaching products.

3 What am I wondering most about?

What can I do as an educator/teacher to help those children as suggested by the "Silencing..." article "(poor children and children of color) that are still suffering academically with No Child Left Behind in place".

Greetings from "The Port"

Hello, fellow classmates. Good luck and happy readings to all during this summer session.