Anita\’s Blog

The NY Times article I read was “Human Error Cited In California Oil Spill” by the Associated Press.  I found this article interesting because it has to do with the recent oil spill in California that affected the lives of animals within the ecosystem.  This article would be able to be applied into a science or living environment class because it killed many sea birds and harmed other animals as well.  This applies to the topic of the ecosystem and how humans can effect the environment and the animals that live in it.

Instead of attending activities during four freedoms week I attended the STANYS conference in Ellenville, NY with Dr. Guarino and Melanie.  We left early Sunday morning to be there until Tuesday to attend workshops and conferences about science.  The conferences that we attended applied to teaching strategies and ways to adapt lessons to be at the levels of your learners.  I learned a lot about what it is like to be a science teacher, as well as received many good resources and contacts for when I am teaching.  One of the conferences I attended dealt with incorporating lessons across contents.  This applied to our literacy class because we work on interdisciplinary lessons.  I felt this was a great experience and I am glad I was given the opportunity to attend this.

I found the New York Times article “Effort to Save Everglades Falters as Funds Drop” by Abby Goodnough to be interesting. This article is about us being seven years into an 8 billion dollar plan to help restore the Florida Everglades and the federal money is slowly stopping. I found this to be interesting because it could be applied to a lesson about ecology. Students could read this article and then come up with ways that the loss or gain of the Everglades could affect the state, world, and animals that currently inhabit these lands.

I found the readings about book clubs and independent reading to be very informative. When I was reading about these types of book clubs and independent reading being applied to many different disciplines besides English I was skeptical at first. However, Tuesday in my Methods class I was in an 8th grade science class that was having independent reading once they completed their test. The teacher had set up an abundance of articles all applying to genetics, which is the topic that she will be covering next. The students were instructed to pick up articles that they felt would be interesting to themselves and read and summarize the article. Many students did not understand the article and they had a difficulty reading them. I felt that if this activity was set up more as a book club that they would then have each other to discuss the article and troublesome vocabulary with each other. This experience helped me to realize how both of these strategies can work and ways to improve them to adapt them to work in a science classroom setting.

The New York Times article I read was “Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web ” by Katie Hafner.  I found this article interesting because its about how many research libraries turned down offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books.  This is because of the restrictions they place on the companies that books they scan in.  Many libraries are instead going with a non-profit organization that makes the books more readily available to as many people as it can.  This applies to what we are learning in class because many times students will only go to the resources found on the Internet or in electronic form and ignore books on the subject.  By having more books placed on digital format it will allow students to use their literacy of computers to find the information they need.

I found the self assessment to be a good way to review all the different strategies that have been learned so far in class.  By keeping the knowledge of these strategies in the front of our mind it will allow us to remember them when we are making lesson plans.  I also found it helpful to think of ways that I need to improve because reflecting always makes us better people in the end.

The article I read was “U.S. Cancer Death Rates Are Found to Be Falling” by Denise Grady.  This article was interesting because it is about how cancer rates are falling from the use of early detection strategies.  This would be a good supplemental text for science beacuse you could use this to then tell about what cancer is and what is used to detect it.

The journal that was assigned to read was much easier to read with the guide-a-rama and the vocab. tree.  This would be a good way to use a high level reading assignment in reading such as a journal and allow the students to be able to read it with the assisted scaffolding.  The guide provided good strategies that would help assist the student in reading.  In science it would be good to have these strategies because the journal articles are mostly written at a high level.

I found that the reading assignments and statistics on poverty were surprising and interesting.  The information on the poverty of people in the united states applies to the educational system.  Teachers should be interested in poverty because many students within a school district may be impoverished and that could lead to problems in the classroom.  Teachers should realize that students may be below the poverty level and not be able to afford food to eat which could lead to a loss in concentration.

I read the article “Little-Observed Holiday Poses Problems for Parents” by Patrick McGeehan.  This article has to do with the fact that most parents do not have off Columbus Day, although most children do.  It poses an inconvenience for parents because they have to find a place for their children to spend the day since most employers do not offer this holiday off.  I found it interesting that in S. Dakota they changed the name to  Native American Day in 1990.  I also found this article to be interesting because it said that in California public schools do not have off this holiday but workers for the department of education do. 

From listening to the podcast of Dan Brown & Jonathon Kozol I learned that it is important while teaching in your content area to have civil discourse.   It is important as a science teacher to give different perspectives of a topic.  I also learned that it is difficult to listen to something if you are unsure of what you need to get out of it.  In a classroom it will be important to teach the students how to listen.  This will apply for state tests that require students to listen and then write from what they listened to.

The reading that I did this week was the first part of Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man: A Memoir. I enjoyed the way that the book seems to flow in a novel type style.  I felt that the  feelings that McCourt felt his first days teaching is relevant to me since next fall I will be student teaching.  I feel that many of the things we are learning to help us aid in teaching are only aids.  We must learn when to implement them and use them within a lesson.  Teaching is testing what works best for a group of students and then changing and adjusting the lesson to fit the group in the class.  I like how McCourt explained his feelings as a new teacher, and how he slowly was starting to change his  perspective to be that of a teacher and not so much of a student anymore. 

I found the reading from Daniels & Zemelman to be very informative.  It demonstrates how supplemental texts are important to both high school and middle school readings.  This reading showed how incorporating readings other then the text in every content area is important.  I also agree that students should be able to pick some of their readings because it allows them to learn the skills to be good readers as well as being able to find good things to read.  This will help set them on the path to be life long readers of many contents.  I found it a good idea to use “jigsaw” activities with some of the readings because it allows the students to become “experts” in certain parts of the reading and teach that part to their peers.  This helps them to learn to work well in groups which is important in biology because usually you work in groups for researching.