Reading Response 2/25

Leu 5

Tricia Abernathy 's classroom scenario shows us how we can learn from others about Internet usage. New curriculum resources are being developed by students and teachers and are being posted on classroom webpages.
Internet Project provides possibilities for cross-curricular integration and cultural understanding.
The Internet connects listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Central Directories for literature and authors were cited, as well as directories containing full texts and poems for perusal.
Central directories for student writer support and student publishing were listed. Student work can be published on a class weblog or homepage. There are other locations on the Internet that will publish student work also.
Grammar websites that explain and engage students in interactive grammar lessons were explored in this chapter.
Using Internet workshop for enriching literacy by linking fiction and non-fiction, by studying fairy tales from around the world, by studying indigenous peoples' literature, and by focusing on a certain author's work were mentioned.
Internet Project helps teachers organize learning around Internet projects with other world wide classrooms. Examples of Internet project language arts websites were listed.
Webquests that concentrate on language arts were explained.
Websites that integrated Internet inquiry and Internet workshop in the Language Arts and Literature were listed.
Instruction in the effective use of the Internet such as citing electronic sources is vital to avoid plagiarism. Complying with copyright laws is an important issue as well.
Websites are posted which address how to cite resources and gain permission to show work on the Internet.
This chapter gave me some good websites and project ideas to use with my Kindergarten students. We do ABC books in the spring so I can take my Kindergartners to the computer lab and look through websites to choose a theme for their ABC book. Once a theme is chosen each child can organize and print their ABC book from the Internet.
My Kindergarten children have a fairy tale unit in the Spring where we expose the children to various fairy tales. At the end of our unit, we have a fairy tale ball with fairy tale dust, dancing, and food.
There were several website references in this chapter for fairy tales from around the world, and fairy tales for younger children. I could add these resources to enrich my fairy tale unit.
I liked the website where stories are read to younger children.
I am trying to get my three older computers hooked up to the Internet so I can use these websites on a daily basis instead of twice a week in our overscheduled computer lab at school.

Xu 4

This chapter explains how Lark integrated students' interest in rap music and the book "Holes" to meet literacy standards for 6th to 8th graders. In order to do this task Lark conductedf research on adolescent popular culture shows and cartoons.
Lark had his/her students play a truth shuffle game to uncover their popular culture text interests. Rap music was the top interest for the majority of his/her students.
Each student chose a favorite rap artist and identified a theme from one of their songs by using a 4 box journal. Profane words were replaced by symbols.
Students then wrote their theme on butcher paper. Most of the themes were about bullies, oppression or getting justice.
Lark then linked rap music to other text genres that had pertinent information regarding the rap business or oppression.
The class shared their concept of bullies and investigated how characters in books handle bullies and get justice. Students chose to produce a text related to the book "Holes" as a whole or about the main character Stanley. They made a bubble map of possible bullies and wrote questions for a short story and discussed them in small groups. Next they made a flow chart that depicted events in the story "Holes" to show the various story lines.
The culminating project involved comparing the book "Holes" to the movie "Holes," completing a major themes worksheet, finding interesting words from the book, writing a rap about the charaacter Stanley, and completing an artistic collage.
Lark says that because the students were interested in the subject matter they produced a vast quantity of quality work while addressing the state standards at the same time.
I think that the teacher did a great job of finding out the interests of his/her students. The research and planning that went into this rap unit was impressive.
The lessons from this chapter include the importance of planning curriculum around student interests, doing your research, and linking different social literacy genres while complying with state literacy standards. This formula is a win win situation for teachers and students.
I have taught middle school students and they are a hard sell sometimes. This teacher used student interest to sell his/her curriculum with great success. This is an important lesson for all of us as educators.