Learning Letter

The Teaching Literature to Adolescents class has been an amazing experience. To begin, I want to acknowledge what a great job Dr. Sean Agriss did teaching this course. I believe a major reason it was so great is because he is skilled at connecting and interacting with the students and he does great at making the material engaging and holding our interest. Along with that, the classmates I had made for a wonderful experience as well. Everyone brought a unique experience and everyone offered great thoughts and arguments when discussing the material we were learning. So, to everyone in the class, I appreciate all your hard work and contributions to the class that made for an excellent learning experience.

                I learned a lot through my own personal work in this class. While it is true that nothing can replicate the experience of teaching in your own classroom, the projects and work in this class taught me things about myself that I will be aware of and utilize in the future. My book talk, for which I did George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, made me see instantly that I need to prepare myself as best as possible. This should be obvious, but there is a big difference between trying to prepare and actually being prepared. I created my plan for the book talk, went over it a bit, and then set it aside until it was time to do the book talk. I just thought it would be really easy because I was talking about something I know and was interested in. This turned out to be completely untrue: when it came time to present, I felt awkward and uncomfortable.

                The book talk experience became my basis for my attitude regarding my mini-lesson, for which I taught Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Determined not to repeat the mistakes I made with the book talk, I decided to quickly pick my story and plan a lesson. I started by planning a fifty minute lesson for the story; I included an audio recording version of the story to be played, similar to what had been done for my class when I was a high school student. From there, the lesson essentially played out like I had done in class. For the mini-lesson, I removed the first thirty minutes planned in the lesson and adapted the last twenty to stand on its own. I found this to be an easy way to be in full control of my planning. Once I had it planned, I made sure to practice the lesson; I used my girlfriend as a student and had her participate in the lesson. I bought supplies and prepared everything I needed, and having her to test it out went great. I was supposed to give my lesson the day after the wind storm, but school was cancelled; I instead used that extra time for more practice and fine tuning what I planned to say to the class. Fortunately, this all paid off. I felt extremely comfortable when giving the lesson and I felt that the lesson went very smooth.

                Moving onto the unit plan that was a beast to deal with. I am glad that Dr. Agriss embedded due dates for pieces of the unit, otherwise I definitely would have ended up trying to do the whole thing in the last week. But this also made me realize that to truly plan out these lessons well, I needed that given time. This was my first time planning lessons, and because of that, I had no idea what my pace would be. Unfortunately, I put off the majority of the lesson plans till last minute anyway. It was extremely difficult to create them all in a short time. Now I know I need to better plan and space out my lesson planning. For example, if I had created (or at least attempted) two lesson plans a week, I would have had them done early and maybe just needed to touch them up with new ideas or strategies I learned throughout the quarter. This would have been much more beneficial to me and the end product.

                Of course, those products are not the only lessons I learned this quarter. Most of what I got from this class involved getting students engaged in the material, which is one of the most important, and difficult, aspects. The material we were given at the beginning of the course offered great insight into strategies for and theories on teaching. The chapter titled “Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning” offered great ideas to assess students other than a typical objective, selection-answer test. For example, we can have our students do blog or journal entries to respond to the lessons (like we did) in order to allow them to freely speak their mind without necessarily having immediate student feedback. This can alleviate fear of speaking in class. On the subject of writing, students can also produce a variety of essays that will offer insight into their learning. This chapter, as well as other authors, emphasize the importance of classroom discussion. Classroom discussion is crucial to creating critical thinking in the classroom and giving everyone a voice. When classroom discussion is had, students are able to learn from each other and the teacher is able to learn more than if the teacher just lectures the whole time. Offering many points of view is crucial in education. Another article I found profound was “Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom.” I have always thought that the idea of using popular culture to engage students would be a good idea; I love that I have a reference to back that up. I always found it useful for me in my educational experience, and I agree that is allows students to connect to the material much better.

                As a whole, I got a lot out of taking this class. I found it great that Dr. Agriss provided the edTPA lesson plan template from the beginning. I was able to look at it from the beginning of the quarter. I also took Foundations of Classroom Assessment this quarter, in which we looked at steps one through nine as a class. By the time we were doing that, I already had experience with the template. Furthermore, at the end of the quarter we were instructed to create a full lesson plan without instruction on pieces ten through fourteen. Fortunately, thanks to working on the unit plan for ENGL493, I was prepared and practiced in making lesson plans and was able to fairly easily design a lesson for my Assessment class. Similarly, I learned about standards-based grading through the ENGL493 class. I am interested in this idea and will be looking into it more as I got forward in my studies. I want to see if it would be a better method for my classroom that other methods currently employed by many teachers. Overall, the many things I learned in this class have already begun to affect how I view teaching and how I plan to teach. For that, I am appreciative and grateful for an overall education, useful, and fun experience.

Lesson Plan for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"

1. Teacher Candidate	Kendrick Bishop	Date Taught	11/30/2015
Cooperating Teacher	Dr. Agriss	School/District	EWU
2. Subject	English Language Arts	Field Supervisor	N/A
3. Lesson Title/Focus	Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”	5. Length of Lesson	20 Minutes
4. Grade Level	9th Grade

6. Academic & Content Standards (Common Core/National)	CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
7. Learning Objective(s)	·         Recall story details after reading and listening to the story ·         Cite textual evidence and draw inferences regarding why the narrator committed his actions ·         Identify a theme or central idea of the story
8. Academic Language demands (vocabulary, function, syntax, discourse)	·         Inference ·         Theme/Central Idea Students will need to understand what inferences are and how inferences are made. From there, students will be able to make their own inferences about the text and conclude their own ideas. This will go with the idea of the theme, which students will need to be able to determine.

9. Assessment

Story Activity Formative Students will be given strips of paper with plot details and must organize them in chronological order Measures comprehension of the events of the story. Class Discussion ·         Formative ·         Planned Questions: o   Describe the narrator in detail. What is your first impression of him? o   What specifically is it about the old man that troubles the narrator? Why does it trouble him? o   What does the narrator do every night? Why? o   How does the narrator feel after he commits the murder? Is he worried about being caught? o   Why does the killer confess? o   Name 3 details, descriptions, or actions that the author uses to create an atmosphere of horror. ·         Measures understanding of story details and allows students to create inferences. Scene Drawing ·         Formative ·         The Tell-Tale Heart Drawing Activity allows students to reinterpret story details as a visual as well as in their own words.

10. Lesson Connections

·         Presenting objectives so students are aware of expectations and why they are learning the material ·         Variety of delivery methods and methods of interaction to suit different ways of learning ·         Prior knowledge of plot, setting, protagonist, antagonist, conflict ·         Students must be able to read ninth grade material and attentively listen to the material in order to fully participate in the planned lesson. ·         Instructor will also make references to Poe’s “The Raven,” which students may have read in previous classes, during the introduction.

11. Instructional Strategies/Learning Tasks to Support Learning
Learning Tasks and Strategies ·         10 minutes: Story activity and discussion ·         7 minutes: Drawing activity ·         3 minutes: Share drawings and explanations
Teacher’s Role ·         Teacher introduces story activity and hands out envelops. ·         Teacher gives instructions for the story activity. ·         Teacher monitors students. ·         Teachers brings class together to discuss the correct order and writes on the board. ·         Teacher collects the envelopes. ·         Teacher transitions to class discussion questions. ·         Teacher hands out drawing activity and explains activity. ·         Teacher monitors while students complete activity. ·         Teacher prompts students to share pictures and explanations when time is up. ·         Teacher collects the students’ work. ·         Teachers asks if there are any last comments or questions on the story.	Students’ Role ·         Students receive envelops. ·         Students listen. ·         Students work on activity. ·         Students provide their answers. ·         Students return envelopes. ·         Students receive activity and listen to instructions. ·         Students complete activity. ·         Students share pictures and explanations with the class. ·         Students turn in their activity. ·         Students ask questions or provide commentary if desired.
Student Voice to Gather Students will observe objectives and produce evidence of meeting objectives through discussion and class activities.

12. Differentiated Instruction

The lesson includes several methods of delivery and learning including discussion, writing, drawing, kinesthesis, and visual delivery. The handouts are printed with enlarged font to allow easier reading for students.

13. Resources and Materials

·         Activities from or influenced by Valerie R Bos’ lesson plan eighth grade lesson plan for “The Tell-Tale Heart.” o   Accessed at: http://lessonplanspage.com/latelltaleheartdescriptlanghalloween8-htm/ ·         Instructor will need: o   textbooks with “The Tell-Tale Heart” or copies of the story for students o   documents and related materials for handouts (envelopes, paper, scissors) o   coloring materials (markers, crayons, etc.) o   any assistance tools requested by students or school officials ·         Students will need: o   pen or pencil

14. Management and Safety Issues

·         Students must feel safe to share their creations with the class ·         Establish that students are not being judged for artistic ability ·         Establish that disrespectful remarks or attitudes regarding any student work is unacceptable.

15. Parent & Community Connections

Instructor will send home a letter at the beginning of the quarter explaining materials to be covered and what may be uncomfortable or upsetting in class, including the use of a horror story (“The Tell-Tale Heart”).

Lesson Materials

Story Activity

The narrator plans to murder the old man.

The narrator opens the door on the old man’s closed eye and leaves.

The narrator is driven to kill the old man by the sound of the old man’s heartbeat.

Dismemberment of the body.

Hiding of the body.

Three police officers arrive.

A ringing sound disturbs the narrator.

The narrator breaks down and confesses.

The narrator tears up the floor boards and reveals the body.

The Tell-Tale Heart Drawing Activity

You work for a newspaper as the staff’s artist. One of your coworkers comes to you with a great story on Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and asks you to illustrate it. For this news assignment, you must do the following:

·        Choose a memorable scene from the story (example: the murder scene, the confession scene, etc.) and illustrate it in color.

·        Give an explanation of the picture – what is happening in this scene? Be as specific as possible.

o   Describe what happened right before the picture happened.

o   Explain what we see in the picture.

o   Use details and words from the story to explain the picture.

·        You will write your explanation below and use as much space as desired on the back of this paper to illustrate your scene.

Readicide

Readicide is a great reading to go hand-in-hand with Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It. Looking back at I Read It..., that book discusses student difficulties with reading and the barriers teachers face to bring reading into the lives of students. Readicide complements that book perfectly, defining the death of the love of reading and the education system's destruction of this love of reading. Having these two books in my possession is wonderful and I am grateful for the opportunity to have read these.

As far as Readicide itself is concerned, it's a great read and provided a lot of great detail about the breakdown of reading education in the country. Being given back story, as far as the Paige theory and relation to the implementation of high-stakes testing, was nice to have. One of my favorite sections of the book was "What You Can Do To Prevent Readicide." I feel this is an extremely useful section for a new teacher; I want to be aware of these problems and have tools to address them when I start teaching. These tips go well with Tovani's advice to encourage and improve our students' abilities and attitudes towards reading.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It

From the moment I saw the title of the book on the list of book I would need for this class, I was interested. Not just because it will help my future students, not just because I want to learn strategies for teaching, but because the title describes my reading history extremely accurately. Unlike Tovani and several of her students, I do enjoy reading. For me, it was not a matter of never enjoying reading or never being able to read anything well. Throughout middle school and high school I understood most of our texts pretty well. I did great on many things and comprehended most. Going into college, my struggles really increased. In several of my literature classes, I had the most difficult time deciphering what people like Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill were trying to tell me. Yes, in my defense, they wrote difficult texts. But in my class, I could not help but feel stupid when everyone else in the class seemed to grasp and understand the essays and I could barely even summarize a paragraph within their work.

The subject of Tovani's book is personal for me, and that experience is going to drive me when it comes time to help students learn how to read. I appreciate this book on several levels: for reminding me that others struggle with different levels of reading as well; for providing strategies to teach students how to read; and for giving me strategies to improve my own reading skills. I can better help my students when I can actively make use of different strategies, and then I can later manipulate, mold, and structure them as needed for the needs of my future students. As an immediate response, this book made me (further) re-evaluate my calendar for the three-week unit for ENGL493. My planned schedule is pretty heavy on the reading, and I did not take into account the fact that many students may not be able to keep up with that pace of reading. Maybe I just expected it to happen, similar to cranking through endless stories and essays for college literature classes.

Teaching Social Justice in Theory and Practice

I read an article titled "Teaching Social Justice in Theory and Practice" written by Caitrin Blake. The article appears on Portland's Concordia University website. Blake discusses social justice in context of what it would look like in a classroom, why it should be taught, and how it can be taught.

This article was a great read, especially for someone like me who is "diverse" in many ways. Social justice is something that matters to me and I believe should be taught to students. The major issue with teaching social justice is that it is, arguably, teaching morals. While I think it matters, other teachers, administrators, and community members may not. This is not to say they don't want students to eradicate bigotry and discrimination, but they feel that the school environment is not the place. I believe it is a perfect place, under the condition we are not simply doing a unit of social justice. This teaching needs to be incorporated within an existing plan. For example, if you're teaching Huck Finn or To Kill A Mockingbird, the idea of teaching social justice presents itself in a perfect way. Of course, you must still figure out how to do so, but this article presents great ideas.

First, it is important to build a classroom culture that establishes a respectful environment. Students need to feel safe to share their thoughts, questions, and experiences. As teachers, we must model what a respectful area looks like and how it works. Furthermore, we must teach students to treat each other as partners and cooperate while they navigate school. Do not pit them against each other. We must also integrate diverse experiences, material, and backgrounds into our teaching and classroom. It will be near impossible to destroy bigotry and ignorance if we do not show these students what they do not have to fear. Why would they believe us if we have no way of proving what we are saying?

At the end of the day, what we say needs to relate to them in the real world. We must put emphasis on why racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bullying, ableism, relationship problems, and any other such issue are true and real problems. And when we do that ,we need to encourage our students to be living example of social justice.

Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom

I found this text to be an interesting read. I really appreciate the author's intent and effort on engaging the students in their own education. An important section for me is "Teaching Hip-Hop Music and Culture." Connecting Hip-Hop music to a poetry unit is a great idea to get students more involved. It also gives teachers a chance to learn music they may not be familiar with and give another way for teachers to relate to their students. This opportunities encourages students to really work with the educational material and form an understanding and appreciation for it.

I also enjoyed that the use of film was done in a way to ensure educational purpose and not simply entertainment. The author, in a way, made a "lecture" out of the film and then had a discussion on it. Students are then able to truly be critical of what they are learning and engage the material.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Paulo Freire's text creates an interesting thought about how we teach our students. In a stereotypical view, I believe education is largely viewed as the banking education model. Not necessarily because it is truly that way, or because that's how we want it, but because that is an experience many people have been through and a model that can, in a generalized view, dump the most amount of information into our students. This is wrong. While it very well may be that a teacher finds it easier to pour buckets of information into their students through endless lecture and fact-spewing, this does not guarantee the students are retaining any of it.

The problem-posing model is much more well-suited for genuinely educating students. We need to make this type of model the image people have of education rather than the banking education model. Problem-posing education better ensures the involvement of the students and makes them feel like they are a factor in their education as well as a relevant piece of the classroom. Making your students feel like an object, a depository really, does nothing to encourage students. The best you may get is a students who writes down your lecture word-for-word and memorizes it. They didn't learn on their own, they didn't acquire anything, the student simply memorized a speech. If they want to regurgitate it at an assembly or conference, that's great. But good luck applying that speech to real-world applications.

Assessing and Evaluation Students' Learning and Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook

The article "Assessing and Evaluation Students' Learning" acknowledges a legitimate problem in classrooms: the struggle between different types of assessments. Some students do best with an essay test while others struggle to pass an essay test. The same applies to objective tests. The suggestions for alternatives to "'correct answer' tests" are useful and valuable. While I do agree there should be alternatives, correct answer tests have their use too. I, personally, would prefer a test that uses multiple methods. For a test, I would mix in some objective questions and some essay.short answer type questions. For shorter assessments, the recommended journal/blog writing is a great idea because it allows students to formally or informally respond to a prompt in a comfortable way. If you do a blog, it gives a public voice to the students and they are then able to share their opinions with others without having to do it face-to-face. If they prefer a more private writing, a journal works great and the teacher can later collect their work without any fear of judgment from peers.

The handbook made many good points, but I have trouble agreeing with the handbook regarding giving students zeros for grades. I do agree that the drop in grade can impact motivation and does not provide an accurate description of the student's learning. However, if a student does not do an assignment, that should not be overlooked. If a student turns in one of four assignments and gets a 100% on that one assignment, why should I give the student a 100% grade in the class when they only did 25% of the work. We must remember that often times, grades in school do not reflect learning, but the amount of work done. There needs to be a different way of handling grades if you expect to not punish students for not turning in work.

California's Common Core Assignment Template

This template was a great read that provided me with a lot of insight. It is a great reminder, and instructional/guidance piece, on how to teach reading and writing to our students. The descriptive break downs of pre-reading, reading, and post-reading are great for showing what the Common Core standards are striving to accomplish. And from personal experience, I feel these steps are great ways to teach. I remember going through these types of steps during my time in K-12 and it helped me with my reading. The same notion applies to writing;being able to connect these reading tasks to writing is critical.

There are several great ideas the template mentioned that I believe I could make great use of in my classroom include marking text with gut/initial reactions, comparing annotations, and providing revision workshops for the students. I think the best thing about this template is that it is extremely easy to read and informational that new teachers can make great use of it.

English Language Arts Common Core State Standards

Until recently, I knew nothing about the Common Core State Standards. I had heard things, mostly negative, about the standards. I began reading the new standards and I am trying to understand my readings as well as find supplemental information. The article presented in class has been a good resource for information and opinions on the Common Core State Standards. I am beginning to form my own opinions of the standards, including the idea that these standards will help shape better teaching in the future. It will be a challenge for established teachers, especially older, veteran teachers, to adapt to the new standards, but it is an achievable goal. As the field of education changes, as technology changes, as our society changes, our expectations, standards, and practices must be able and willing to change at the same time.

The article brings up the limitations of standards, and I believe these are important to acknowledge. Nothing is perfect, but we cannot improve if we do not acknowledge and attempt to work around these issues. A major problem is the idea of "standardizing," which most people do not want to see happen. However, "standardizing" is not the goal of Common Core, but more so to hold educators and students to a higher standards, as the author points out. Furthermore, it is great to realize a single method of teaching does not work for students, teachers, administrators, or parents. Common Core provides room for teachers to innovate and deliver a quality education tailored for their classroom while ensuring the students can meet certain objectives. Adopting the Common Core State Standards will require tweaking, planning, and a lot of effort, but I believe over time it can become an efficient tool for the education field.

“Discussion in a Democratic Society”

I used to loathe whole class discussions when I was younger because I believed I had nothing to the group. As I have gotten older, I have realized that just about any kind of input is appreciated and, typically, beneficial to the conversation. I have reached a point over the last few years that I now love offering my opinions and thoughts on topics in class, especially a topic I have an passion or even a slight interest in. This article demonstrates a major reason why that change occurred in me. I began to learn and process information differently when partaking in whole class discussions in a manner I never did from a teacher lecturing his or her thoughts to us. An important factor in this is that, as a group, you can bounce ideas off each other rather than being told what to think. Going with that, we can hear what our own peers think, which can many times relate to our own experiences over a teacher two generations removed from us.

This tactic for classrooms also sets the stage for conversation in the real world. By doing this, we learn to hold important conversations about our lives, our experiences, politics, international affairs, events, and many other problems that affect our lives every day. Furthermore, we learn how to open up, truly listen, and speak our minds with confidence. This is very important going forward as technology continues to being human interaction closer and quicker. We need to learn to communicate better on a global scale, and this is a great way to start.

When I am teaching my own classes, I will gladly encourage class discussions on many topics. I want my students to feel valued, engaged, and relevant to our society. Their opinions and thoughts matter, and we need to ensure they are aware. We must provide the platform to push these students forward in their education and their lives.