Building a Bridge

6/29/2019

I have learned so much so far on my journey through this program and this is only the beginning. Entering the program my biggest want to know focused primarily around engagement. The designs, models and authors have given me so much insight and ideas on how to grab the interest by activating background knowledge/thinking of my learners and how keep their attention through accommodating their individual thinking process with helpful visual and/or technology tools and offering plenty of support to gain students confidence and celebrate their victories.
When I think of SITE Model and it's goals on how to design instruction for my learners and myself as a learner one thing that inspired me was the comparison of literacy vs. mediacy. It discusses reading to learn rather than learning to read. I think I often get caught up with my main objective being my students have to leave the first grade knowing how to read which is very important but there is so much more than that. Through my experiences it is just as equally important to teach students reading is a part of the learning process to help them gather so much more valuable information. I teach them reading is their pathway to getting their brains smarter!

3 Comments

Lisa Marie Smith

6/30/2019 11:07:50 am

Alexis,

Your blog this week is evident that you have spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on your teaching practice, and are embracing various strategies to improve not only your teaching practices but the learning that will take place in your classroom. Your students are very fortunate to have a teacher that is going above and beyond to improve her teaching and their learning. I wonder how your reflection a year from now will show that you have successfully activated the " background knowledge/thinking" of all of your students.

Warm Regards,

Lisa Marie Smith

Karling Skoglund

7/1/2019 10:11:20 am

Alexis,

I can see where you are coming from with your focus being on getting to the point where your students can read. This seems like such an enormous task and I can only imagine how that feels as a teacher. I feel like the pressure you probably put on yourself outweighs so many other things including what you said about teaching them that the reading itself is how they can gather information.
This leads me to think about how I am so focused on getting my students to the point where they can read a word problem in math and then make a decision as to what type of operation or process they need to use to solve it. So much growth happens between one grade level, let alone five, and even though we might have different ages, or subject areas we have so much in common.

Golden Williams

7/1/2019 10:19:19 am

It’s crazy how far we have came and its only half way part . I feel that we are getting a lot of tools that will help use become better teachers. I’m interested to see how all our research changes over the process of going through these classes. It’s going to be fun taking what we have learned over the summer into our classrooms when we get back from summer vaction.

EDUC 791