Week One: Introduction to course: "Hi and welcome to our course!"
Assignment #1: Introductory paragraph. Please post your introduction to the course blog in the blog archive under the posting: Week One: Introduction - Please tell us a little about yourself. Where do you teach? What grade and how long have you been teaching? How many students are in your class and do you have instructional support? What does your current literacy program look like? (If you aren’t currently teaching let us know what your educational background and experiences are.) What is your knowledge/training in the area of literacy? Does your district provide literacy training? If so, what exactly have they offered? Also, let us know a little about you outside the classroom: Interests/ Hobbies/ Family Life.
Also please read: Classroom Instruction that Works - Chapter 1 – Applying the Research on Instruction: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
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(Please Note: In addition to posting your first assignment (Introduction) to the blog, please email it to us. This is to enable us to contact you individually should the need occur. Please also make sure that you label your assignment with your name when posting to the blog to ensure that you receive proper credit for your work.)
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12 comments:
Hi! My name is Carrah Gifford and I teach kindergarten at Menlo Park Elementary in the David Douglas School District. I've been teaching at Menlo for 4 years now. This is the first job I've had since I graduated from grad school and I've been lucky to have landed in a building with plenty of amazing teachers that I truly respect.
My approach to reading instruction is pretty balance between Whole Language and Phonics instruction. I love using authentic literature to guide my teaching. I want children to LOVE reading. With this in mind I struggle to learn how to use our new reading adoption (Houghten M) without getting sick on the scripted routine. I'm getting there, learning how to pull from my toolbox to enrich the program.
My school does a great job at sending us to workshops, creating book groups to read new researched strategies, and also giving us venues to work together and share our ideas. The only problem is that there isn't much follow-through. I feel like I get great information and I'm jazzed and then something new comes around and the binder of great ideas goes on the bookshelf and now they want us to incorporate the "newest" idea. Usual teacher frustration from what I hear on the street. My plan is to be open-minded and listen to my students. See what works with MY students and stick with that. I hope this doesn't sound too depressing because that's not my intention. I love teaching and I also love learning new things. I just wish there was enough time in the day to explore all the things I'm exposed to. There is a lot of great information out there and I'm excited to see what this book has to offer.
On a personal note I'm 34, single and have been living here in Portland for about ten years. I moved here from a ski town in Montana. I was born in Dallas, Texas and moved to Mt. when I was 8. I am a world traveler and enjoy learning about new cultures. I love being outside and especially enjoy biking, hiking, and skiing. That's about it!
My name is Kay Lybeck. My husband, my five year old son, my three year old daughter and I are working on turning our recently purchased older home into our “family home” in the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon. Wall papering, painting, planting grass seed, the list is endless, but my husband and I love the reward of a loved house. We have lived in Northeast Portland for the last 8 years (two years in our “new” old house) and are looking forward to raising our children here.
After earning my bachelor’s degree in Education I substitute taught for three years. I learned so much in that time period. After substitute teaching I had a full time teaching position for Portland Public Schools. I taught one year of first grade, and five years of fourth and fifth grade (looping). When my son was born, I made the decision to stay at home. I am currently a stay at home mom. The school I taught at had a literacy block (1 ½ hours per day) where the children were broken into smaller groups, school wide, and we all focused on reading and writing. I generally pulled together (from many different sources, old and new) my own books, and lesson plans working with the whole language method. Planning my literacy block always took the longest amount of time, compared to other subjects. I always felt like I was inventing my own literacy program, putting in new ideas as I learned them. As a school we were all trained in Junior Great Books, and were trained in taking and scoring running records. We also had a group of teachers that read professional books and gathered to discuss them monthly. The last book we read was: How to Get Your Child to Love Reading by Esme Raji Codell. I don’t recall a district wide training as far as literacy was concerned. It was mostly training that our school decided to take on. I felt like my literacy teaching abilities were the most underdeveloped when I began teaching, the hardest subject for me to tackle, and also the most exciting to teach well!
I plan to return to teaching when my youngest enters school. Therefore, I am taking classes to keep my license current, and keep up to date in the world of education. I enjoy running, playing tennis, and spending time with family. I dearly miss teaching, and am excited to return in the next year or two. I hope that by the time I return to teaching there will not be quite so much house remodeling taking place!
Hi and welcome to both of you! We should be able to have some great conversations, as there will be at least five of us being able to share our ideas.
Carrah, I feel your pain of always feeling like you're on this "teaching treadmill" and can't get off. I'm wondering if Davis Douglas School District is a large district?...Teachers in larger districts seem to feel this effect more often. There's always something new coming in just as you've gotten comfortable with the last new idea. As teachers, I think we just get better and better at sifting through it all.
Kay, it sounds like you and your family have embarked on an awesome project restoring your old house...I give you a lot of credit with a 3 and 5 year old getting it all done (I have a 4 and 6 year old :)). Kudos to you for not letting your teaching license expire...that's a big mistake that many make!
It sounds as though you both have/had extremely supportive schools which offered opportunities for growth as a professional...I hope this course continues your development!
Hello! Sorry for being late in joining, I'll try to catch up as rapidly as my life will permit. I'm a high school Spanish teacher in Sandy, Oregon, which is a rural community outside of Portland. I love it here! I actually live closer to Portland than Sandy, but the commute isn't bad. I've been teaching out here going on 8 years and still love it. I have the priviledge of teaching Spanish 2, 3, and 4, so I get to have the same students for 3 years in a row a lot of the time. This enables me to enjoy closer relationships with my students than many high school teachers get to. It's such a joy to see them grow and flourish in the language! Another fantastic thing about my subject area and the fact that I teach for 3 years sconsecutively is that I really get to see the fruits of my efforts as they go from knowing next to nothing in Spanish to being able to understand and converse at an intermediate/advanced level by the time they graduate, depending on the effort they are willing to put into it of course :) My classes are 10th through 12 gradeers, 6 classes a day ranging from 15 to 28 per class. The demographic in my school is largely caucasian, middle-class. We do have an increasing Hispanic population, so that's giving us a bit of diversity. Right now, we have around 10 percent Hispanic I believe. As far as the literacy program... I'm not quite sure what to say here. I teach language in many forms; reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I try to have students engage in all 4 activities in every class period, but we don't always get to everything I have planned, that's for sure. I'm not really sure if my district provides literacy training specifically, though I assume they do. We have had many different types of in-service trainings, like Carrah mentioned in her blog. I get excited abotu something and then it's filed away and we are on to the next thing. I did attend a workshop in November that got me really excited called "Strengthening Foreign Language Instruction" during which I learned a variety of active learning teachiniques to use in the classroom. It was nice to be able to actually add some things to my toolbox rather than sit around and listen to theories or see things that just don't jive with my personality, philosophy and/or teaching style, or that simply don't apply to my subject area.
Outside of the classroom, I'm a single mom, divorec 3 years ago and I have a wonderful 4-year-old son named Noah who is the center of my life :) I own a home in Gresham and have a roommate who helps me with the mortgage. I love being outdoors, staying active, camping, hiking, backpacking, socializing with friends, planning dinner parties, working out, staying busy in general. I also love to travel, but haven't been able to as much due to monetary reasons:( My passion is speaking Spanish and traveling to places where Spanish is spoken, obviously! I've taken two groups of students to Costa Rica and we had a blast! I have to go get my son now... I ordered the book and should hopefully be able to pick it up tomorrow at Powells and get going on the reading. Going to my D.O. right now to get my tuition reimbursement and mail it in. Thanks so much!
I just noticed that my last segment didn't get spell-checked... I thought I had cut a pasted an error free version there, but see now that I didn't! Just wanted to say that really, I can spell. I was in a hurry and there are a lot of typos there:) That drives me nuts...
My name is Sacha Luria and I teach reading in first through third grades. I am a push-in support teacher and give support for bilingual Spanish students. I normally have between 12 and 16 students in a group. I work with each group for 50 minutes four times a week.
I have been teaching for five years. I’ve worked with every grade from kindergarten through eighth grade. We currently follow the Scott f. literacy program. Depending on the group, I either follow the program or need to supplement it significantly. My second grade reading time looks like this: 1) students do fluency building work for the first 5 minutes with a partner 2) I introduce three tier two words for the day 3) students chorally read a selection and we do comprehension questions 4) students do a pair reading of the same selection 5) students work on writing. I am just a part of the students’ literacy block time and spend the majority of the time on direct instruction.
This year I was trying to implement the daily five with some of my students. I now have students do partner reading (from The Daily Five) if I need to break the group into two smaller groups.
Outside of teaching, I love spending time with my two children, cooking, and gardening. I have a 7 month old and a 2 year old, so I stay very busy after school. I am working part-time this year to spend more time with our children.
Welcome both Karen and Sacha! Karen - what a cool course load you have - being able see your students grow in their Spanish language over three years of coursework with you. Sacha - you said that you "push-in", with a group of 16-20, how many students are in the entire class? Those are big groups. Are you happy with the Scott Foresman Literacy program? I was actually using it for a Kindergarten intervention program, but wasn't very fond of it. You did mention the Daily Five - and I love their structure for reading!!!
Again - Welcome to you both!!!
The classes each have around 30 students, and my intervention groups are rather large. In first grade, I split them up into two 6 children groups. For second grade, I work with all 16 at the same time and in third grade I am considering working with 8 at a time, or two groups of four, depending on how the students work together.
When I run a group I have the students work a lot with a partner, so it works ok to have a larger group some of the times.
As for Scott F., I think it is a good Basel program. It does not work well for kids that need strategic or intense intervention.
I like that many of the texts were written in Spanish, instead of translated into Spanish.
Hi.
My name is Suzie Kabeiseman and I am late at getting started with this class. Please let me know if that will be a problem. I will try and catch up.
I have taught 4th, 3/4th & 6th grade. For the past 8 years my primary roles has been that of mother to my two boys, age 7 & 9. While the boys were small I completed my Masters in Ed. I also worked part time at the local jail, helping inmates get their GED. I just recently went back to work teaching in an elementary school, part time. I was hired to work in the computer lab with a focus on literacy. Consequently, I am forever searching free web sites to offer my student, grades 1-5.
My goal is to go back into the regular classroom. After so much time off, I feel as if I need all the practical help I can get to give me that confidence to take on the role of classroom teacher again.
Hello. My name is Hank Huff, and I teach 7th grade science, computers, and wildland fire science (my elective) at Cedar Ridge Middle School in Sandy Oregon. This is my 5th year teaching.
My class sizes this year are relatively small compared to years past, with sizes ranging from 25 to 32 students.
I have support in one of my four science classes. While this support is funded by SPED and is intended for my IEP students (this is a "cluster" class with 9 students on IEPs), the aide does give limited support for my general ed students.
As a science teacher, I am a bit fuzzy on exactly what our literacy program looks like. I know the LA classes focus a LOT of writing conventions, and use of different writing styles.
There has been a huge push the past couple years to bring more reading/writing into the content areas, as our state scores in these areas are not very good (30-40% meeting).
In the past couple years, we have had Larry Lewin come in and give some in-service sessions on reading across content areas.
We have also made large 2'x4' posters of common writing and reading expectations to be placed in every classroom with the hope that students will see consistent expectations in these areas.
As I science teacher who doesn't use a text book, I have had to create a handful of reading/writing based assignments for the kids to do throughout the year. While they do some reading for comprehension on labs, the writing is very limited, and has been supplemented with creative writing assignments that trick them into writing in science.
Outside of school, I'm married to a wonderful wife of 2 years, and am expecting a child in September.
Hobbies include anything computer related, running (I coach track at the MS here), spending time with my wife, and working on our house.
My hobbies in the near future will include hustling myself in this class to get caught up!
Hank-
A small world side note:
I enjoyed reading your introduction and was suprised to see Larry Lewin's name. He was my fourth grade teacher in Eugene, OR. He was a wonderful teacher, I have great memories. I am sure you will catch up in the class no problem.
Welcome to both Suzie and Hank - you will both be able to "catch up" with the course work with no problems...that's one of the benefits of taking a distance learning course! :)
Suzie, it sounds like you've had some interesting experiences while you've been out of the classroom! I'm sure that this course will help you reflect on practices that will support your future classroom practices. Hank, it's awesome to hear how you are working hard on incorporating reading and writing into your courses. It is a shift from the way many upper level courses were being taught,but in trying to keep up with state standards, and "No Child Left Behind", all teachers need to begin to take responsibility for our students' reading and writing growth.
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