Paolo Friere

I liked the Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I had to read this book for a few other classes of mine and everytime I read it I find something new about it that I liked. He makes a valid arguement about the oppressed and the oppressors and makes it so everyone can relate to what he is saying. By reading this book, as teachers I feel it makes us all more aware of our classroom atmosphere and surroundings.

Kuma Chapter 13

In this chapter of the book, Kuma talks about monitoring teaching acts. The part that I am going to discuss is the part in the chapter where he talks about product-oriented models, vs. process-oriented models. In product oriented models, a description of the teachers behavior is necessary in order to build a classroom behavior profile of the teacher. The things that they would look for in these observations are if the teachers asks questions, their tone in voice, whether the teacher gives direction, etc. These models are good for a partial understanding of classroom activities. On the other hand in process-oriented models, the observations are based on the assumption that an interpretation of classroom acitivites is necessary in order to understand classroom processes and practices. They focus on classroom input as well as interaction. They treat the classroom as individuals and not as a collective mass. These types of models have strengthened our capacity to understand classroom events. I believe that both of these models are useful but in different ways. If I was to go into a classroom and observe the teacher and how she or he runs the classroom and what types of things they do to make the classroom run I would use a product-oriented approach to observing that classroom. If I wanted to understand the processes of the classroom and the fine tuning of how it was run and works together and look at specifics about the students I would use a process-oriented approach to observations. This part of the chapter was intriguing to me because I have been in the classroom plenty of times to observe and I always know what I will be looking for but I guess I really didnt know that there were specific models for the different types of observations you can do. It was news to me.

Kuma Chapter 11

This chapter of Kuma deals with Ensuring Social Relevance. Social relevance is real important in the education system. Kuma makes a point to tell us that a classroom isnt an island, it is part of a bigger picture which is the society it is in which influences it and is a reflection of the world around it. It talked a lot about language and how the languages in the society around the school influence highly what the students come to school speaking. This is not a bad thing, we have to embrace it and accept the differences of our students and tend to their needs no matter what because language is only one part of education. Also from other readings and hear say, I know it is important to make the children aware of their social surroundings because most of the politics in education is the society around them. If you can incorporate the society into the classroom it makes learning more meaningful for the students because they can see themselves in the learning and it can reflect their lives. A students social relevance to the society is an important part of their education. The microstrategies for this chapter were also very interesting and seem like something I could do with my own classroom.

Progress on the Final Project

To date, Tina and I have everything done that we can. We have our observations done, and our lesson plans are done and have been checked by Kasia. We set up the dates for our workshop, the first one is tomorrow. The next two are Nov 19th and Dec 3rd. Im excited to start doing the workshops because we have put a lot of hard work into everything so far the workshops are going to be such a reward to do.

Kuma Chapter 10

This chapter was entitled "Integrating Language Skills." In L2 learning and teaching we have to integrate the language domains: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Traditionally we did this through interactive scenarios, problem-solving tasks, content-based activities, project-based activities, whole-langauge activities, and experiential activities. These activities provide students with a degree of conceptual, communicative, and linguistic challenge that can be monitored and maintained on all levels of proficiency. This chapter was really interesting to me being that I am a bilingual major and integrating language skills into the classroom everyday is what I will be doing for the rest of my life. I also found the microstrategies for teaching very useful in this section of the book because they had some good examples such as describing some sort of text that they read, and what was most incredible to me was their idea of "reality TV" and see what they thought it was and explain and make a lesson out of it because Tina and I are kind of doing something similar at the ELI for our final project where we are putting on our own News Broadcast where everyones going to play a role and we will learn news broadcast dialogue and key words and phrases. It was cool to see that it was one of the examples but we had already been working on it all semester without even knowing this was an example of something you could do to incorporate the language skills in a lesson.

Waiting for "Superman" movie

LOVE LOVE LOVED this! Such a moving/thought provoking movie. I really liked the effort that was put forth in this movie and I thought it was done really well, but I didn't like how they put such an emphasis on charter schools and put them in a light that made public school systems look horrible because though public school systems arent the best, their are some that so work and do show good potential and have student's being successful in them. It's sad to think that there are schools that when children enter them they have this idea that they can't succeed and can't go to college just because they feel their educational system is going to disappoint them. The teachers in these schools need to be more confident and passionate about what they are doing to promote a better ideal of the school they're representing.
As far as the article goes, Shor's arguement is mainly about how this is a poor portrayal of the public school systems because it doesn't take into account the budget cuts and annual testing regimes that the charter schools don't have to worry about. It only shows the viewer what they want them to see to glamorize charter schools but not giving us the whole facts about why the public schools are failing and what feeds into that. I agree with what he says because these charter schools are very selective and take only children who are succeeding to begin with, they don't have to take any child that could be a "challenge" such as children with needs or children who speak other languages. The charter schools create their own success in results because they only allow students who can succeed more easily into their schools and if they fall behind, they can kick them out because they don't want their test scores to fall. Public schools on the other hand are required to accept all students no matter what kind of educational support they need. I liked this movie a lot and I thought it was well done for the purpose that they wanted but I felt that it left out a lot of main points and ideas to make public schools look way worse than they are.

Open Mic Poetry Night

AWESOME! I loved it and first want to comment on how hilarious the main speaker was, he kept me laughing. But on a more serious note, I really did enjoy this. They talked about some serious issues about identity and finding the who in who you are or want to become or be seen. It was really moving because since I am a Caucasian woman it was interesting to understand what others my age go through just because of the race they are. It ties into bell hooks chapters because she talked heavily about diversity and race and uses her own stories to portray how it was for her growing up in a prejudice neighborhood. These students are many years past hers and were in school after they desegregated the schools and still it almost seemed like some of there stories were like bell hooks. It is interesting because though we want to believe that racism is coming closer to an end, the truth is that it really is not. There is just as much racism and segregation now as there was before. I personally think that there is still a lot of segregation but instead of it being implemented through the government it is now implemented in the idea of feeling safe and accepted. Chicago is a major example of segregation because theres pilsen where its mostly hispanic, theres china town, an area where all the polish people reside, and parts that are heavily african american among other races who reside in other parts of the city. Segregation now a days is implemented through the people by means of where they choose to live. People most often will choose a neighborhood where their race is highly representative so though no one is telling them that it where they have to live they are segregating themselves by means of fitting in and trying to feel accepted among others. Though I feel this issue is not leaving us anytime soon I think there are ways we can work at it to make the situation better by becoming more accepting of others and differences we have. By promoting these differences and teaching students to accept others how they are earlier in life we can start to try to prevent early racisms or prejudices that people have.

A Revolution of Values: Chapter 2 in Teaching to Trangress

Wow. So, 1:I loved the story that this author brought to the table about her white male friend and what she had to go through when she was only 16, I thought it was so moving. 2:There was a quote on page 28 that just stuck out to me that totally gave me goosebumps... "those of us who experience any form of assault are more likely to be victimized by those who are like us rather than by some mysterious strange outsiders" which rings so true. 3:I totally agree with the author when she says people who think that there are no prejudices and or racisms in the world are lying or are in denial because racisms and prejudices do exist, and probably sadly always will. 4: Lastly, the sad truth that this author brings up is even though every is entitled to the same education, it doesn't mean everyone is given the same opportunities and still to this day not everyone recieves the same education and its due to racial discriminations and prejudices. This article was a really good one to read that I can totally agree with and understand where this woman is coming from because we learn in our classes how the educational system is skewed and twisted and this woman makes valid points to back up what we have been learning a lot about in our bilingual classes, but in a way where we are trying to learn how to fix this problem and promote a change in the educational system so that everyone can recieve the same opportunities.

Building Language Awareness: Module 2 Video

I chose to watch this video because I thought it was very important to language awareness because if you don't build upon it, the children won't understand what your trying to teach them. For this to be successful the video tells us that the language input must be in context, the context should reflect the language that the learners use, and language practice in context should be accompanied by a conscious effort and a learner reflection on that action. The video shows the students putting on an all class skit about the pilgrims and their journey to the new land,then an all class guided discussion relating the topic of traveling to a new land to their own experiences about coming to this country, and then they worked in groups to make their own travel plans of where they were going, what they would have to bring and how far away it was. This I thought was very important because the children should build upon something dealing with language, and by giving them these opportunities they are making better connections between what they are learning and whats going on in their lives to make a more meaningful lesson where they grasp the information better.

Chapter 6 Kuma Book

Chapter 6 of the Kuma book really spoke to me. It was covering promoting learner autonomy which to me is one of the most important things a child should learn. Through promoting learner autonomy, the student is discovering themselves academically which can aid them in many other things throughout their lives. Autonomy is simply said as learning how to learn. Once you know how you learn and and what is the best way for you to grasp information, the better of a student you become along with being more self-aware and knowing yourself better. In this book they explain that the context of autonomy includes "self-instruction, self-direction, self-access learning, and individualized instruction." I completely agree with this but who better to lead instruction and help understanding then yourself. When a student has the opportunity to participate in class or lead instruction for a particular topic they learn the information better because they know what they have to do to understand what it is they are learning more proficiently. Promoting self autonomy is important and us being teachers should try to grasp that in our teaching and show students different methods to help self-instruct the lessons so that everyone can learn at their maximum potential.

Curriculum Design and Materials Development Article

I enjoyed reading this article. I like how the article defined curriculum and syllabus for us though I felt that most of the items in this article were either common sense or touching on a subject I was already familiar with. I like that they kept curriculum and syllabus seperate from one another because it is true that they are two seperate things but curriculum and syllabus for me run hand in hand because without a curriculum you can't have a syllabus. Curriculum is the materials you are supposed to teach throughout the year and the syllabus is a list of when your going to address these items in the curriculum and how you will be assessing them. I liked also how this article talked about stakeholders. I always knew that there were stakeholders for certain tests and such but I never knew what they were called until this semester. In another TESOL class we have been talking about stakeholders in depth and really looking at what it means to be a stakeholder and what to take into consideration. I liked this article but there was nothing really in it that I haven't learned about before.

Kuma Chapter 8

Consciousness-raising was a section in this chapter I found to be relevant in my own theory of teaching. Like it said that traditional grammar teaching is almost the idea of tabula rasa, or blank slate. I do not agree with this idea, I do not believe that teacher's are the only knowledge holders in the classroom... I feel every body in the classroom plays a role in teaching and learning. I believe that students come with information equipped for them to build upon and make connections, we are learning facilitators in that if we raise the students consciousness about what they already know and tie it into what were talking about in class they will have a better grasp on the knowledge and will make more meaningful connections to the information around them. Consciousness-raising is drawing the learner's attention to the information they should be grasping, so instead of filling in the information on a blank slate you are actively promoting them to be self-taught and give them the opportunities to learn as much as they want... giving them the tools to succeed. This ties into the bigger picture of this chapter talking mainly about heuristics because heuristics refers to the process of self-discovery on the part of the learner, the teacher gives them the tools they need but its up to the learner to take the information in, and that's what consciousness-raising basically is. If all teachers taught in this manner I feel it would provide a better learning atmosphere for all the students in the classroom.

SIOP Book ch. 1+2

I enjoyed reading about the differences between content based ESL and sheltered instruction in chapter 1. I feel that these subjects were a good review for me though because being a bilingual major we talk about these topics on a regular class basis. But the talking about the characteristics of the students and the statistics they listed was what really caught my attention. You hear about how the affects NCLB has on classes and schools but when reading it on paper in a profound textbook is scary. NCLB is not helping our students or schools, its hindering them.
Chapter two on lesson preparation was interesting to read about also because I liked knowing all the different content objectives for EL's. Ive briefly touched on this in other classes but learning about the standards that are aligned to state, local and national was interesting to read about. Something it also touched on which I feel is necessary in any classroom is to incorporate supplementary materials that are suitable for any given lesson plan. In the book it talked specifically about EL's but I feel it's necessary to have that for any child because you should be about to adapt lesson plans or incorporate as many things as you can to gain the most purpose out of your lessons.

End of Semester Project

So far, we had our meeting monday morning. We (Tina and I) are looking at doing a dual teaching mini workshop at the ELI. We will observe a couple times and write an observation report looking at student interactions, teacher responses and do an informal interview if we can with the teacher of the classroom to see whether her plans before she came to class went as she thought and if not what changed and how did she/he adapt to the change in plans. We will then compose a mini workshop in three sessions, the first being an introductory session where we will meet the class and let them know what we expect or to gain from this experience and visa-versa. We will then teach two lessons on different occasions that tie into each other with lessons/activities to enhance the knowledge they are already learning about in there classroom. I want to get a better feel for teaching in this environment and kind of get my feet wet per say in the teaching atmosphere and I think this will be a good opportunity to do that.

Minimizing Perceptual Mismatches

I really enjoyed this chapter of Kumaravadivelu's book because it looked into the mismatches you could encounter in your classroom. There can often be mismatches between teacher perceptions and learner perceptions of what is available to learn according to Kuma, and I fully agree with him. The way the learners percieve the usefulness of classroom events plays a big role in perceptual mismatches in the classroom. Most perceptual mismatches occur between teacher agenda and learning outcome. According to Kuma though most of the time these mismatches can be corrected right away, he has 3 pedagogic insights about mismatches that are they are unavoidable, they are identifiable, and they are manageable. I believe him that they can be changed to correct the mismatch in the classroom. There are 10 different mismatches that can occur which are cognitive, communicative, linguistic, pedagogic, strategic, cultural, evaluative, procedural, instructional, and attitudinal. Kuma then ends the chapter explaining to us some microstrategies for minimizing perceptual mismatches. This section of the chapter I always love, even though we have only had a couple chapters so far with this at the end I find it very useful to see where these microstrategies can be applied in normal daily life.

Kuma Chapter 3

In this section of the Kuma book, I found it very interesting and relevent when they were talking about how teachers and students need to utilize learning opportunities inside and outside of the classroom. I highly agree that as teacher we have more of a responsibility to utilize learning opportunities inside the classroom. When a student asks us a question that we can further expand on and explain for other students who may not understand also, we are utilizing learning opportunities. Learning opportunities can go as far as answering a question or creating a lesson from something your student is struggling with. As a teacher we are often served learning opportunities on a silver platter per say. We need to learn when these opportunities are presented and how we can use them to further educate our classroom.
Learners on the other hand need to utilize learning opportunities outside of the classroom. Obviously, our teacher isn't always with us and as future teachers we can't always be with our students monitoring their every move outside the classroom. It takes initiative as a student to use learning opportunities outside of the classroom to further the knowledge process and be all you can be. I really liked this section of the book because you often hear of a lot of learning opportunities but rarely do you utilize them or see teachers utilizing them. By understanding the different learning opportunities out there no matter how big a learning opportunity or small we can use it to our advantage to help educate or learn.
Lastly, in chapter 3 I also liked the examples of different lessons and activities you can use in the classroom. They were interesting to read and invision. I could see myself using some of these in my future classroom such as "3.2.1 ask your students to read a target-language newspaper, or listen to radio news broadcasts, or watch TV news coverage focusing on stories of local interest-any act or event that excites or agitates the local community. Ask them to select any one news story that interests them, and be prepared to talk about it breifly in class" (pg. 65). I like this because it brings in outside news and things going on in the community while also promoting their target-language. This is a good way for the students to work on gaining local knowledge and practicing their target-language. I really enjoyed these helpful activities.

Powerpoint for Presentation Ch.1+2 of book and Kuma article

Eng 345 powerpoint

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Chapter 2 of Kuma Book

      During my reading this week I found chapter 2 of the Kuma book to be very insightful into a lot of information that is relevant to TESOL today. I like how he touched upon the different approaches that we were talking about last week and he starting going into information that we only just started to talk about which was learner-centered, learning-centered, and language-centered. It was nice to read about them and to get a better grasp of what it is that we will be learning more in class. The thing that struck me most interesting though was the Post method pedagogy section of chapter two.
     I found reading about the post method pedagogy was engaging to me because I had never heard about it before. It has three sections which are the paramerer if particularity, the parameter of practicality, and the parameter of possibility. Seeing what each of these parameters were was excting and interesting to me. I got kind of confused when it came to the section of macrostrategies and how they worked and were implemented into the classroom but truly macrostrategies are implemented by the smaller lessons called microstrategies. There was a list of ten macrostrategies and a brief description of what each of them were which helped with understanding what it was that they were talking about. This chapter was really interesting to me but mostly learning about the post method pedagogy. Pedagogy in general is a big and interesting topic but this put a new spin on things and I enjoyed reading about it.

Language Approaches

       I have seen a few different language approaches being a student of a second language. I have seen the communicative language approach where we would engage in a lot of role-play and dialouge activities. We would work in groups a lot and we were pushed to communicate in the target language. I have also been taught in the grammar-translation method where little instruction would be given in the L1 and we would focus on the grammar aspect of the language. We would read texts and have to translate sentences from our L1 to our L2 language. The third approach that I have been taught before in was the direct method. We wouldn't be able to speak in our mother tongue and lots of pictures were used to understand what it was that we were reading. The last approach that has been used in a classroom that I learned in was audiolingualism. It had a lot of emphasis on dialogues and speaking. We would have to do a lot of memorization and we would learn reading, writing, and speaking more seperately than integrated. There was a lot of emphasis on pronunciation and our errors were corrected if we spoke wrong.
        In personally felt comfortable with the communicative language approach and the grammar translation approach. I like the communicative approach because I like role-play and dialouges because I feel you can practice situations that may happen in real life and role-play is kind of in the moment and thinking quick off your feet which I like. I also like the grammar translation method because I like to understand the meaning of a sentence and see how it's being formed. It helps me to have a better grasp of the language I feel. I do not think there is a best method that fits the needs of all the students though because everyone learns differently and has different methods that work better for them. I think for a teacher to be a good teacher they will integrate all of the methods as some point to engage the thinking and minds of all their students so everyone has an equal opportunity at learning.

Blog Post #1

          The context in which I hope to teach when I graduate from Illinois State is in a suburban setting. I want to be close to the city but not in the city. I want this because I want to be in a classroom where I will have immigrant students and be able to use my second language in the classroom but I do not want to have a full classroom of non-english speaking students. I want a diverse classroom with all kinds of backgrounds and cultures and languages in which I can assist my students to become the best that they can be. I feel that most of the time in inner-city schools you see a lot of segregation, not because the school sets it up that way but because of where the students in that district live. In Chicago I feel that there are areas of the city that are predominantly one race or another, but I feel in the suburbs you find more of a mix of students that come from different backgrounds and cultures. So, I want a diverse classroom where I can use my second language of Spanish but at the same time I want a lot of different ethnicities and challenges. I feel the city would always present me with the same challenges students of the same kinds of backgrounds.
          I feel it is very important to be knowledgable and conscious about TESOL issues because whether we realize it or not we are confronted with these issues everyday of our lives. There are so many immigrant students in this country and many of them are assessed wrong on a daily basis, and are struggling in our school systems because people are ignorant to what is going on around them and they don't know how to handle the situation at hand. I came into this major because I wanted to make a difference and make sure that every student had the opportunity to an education and making the most out of themselves. By becoming a TESOL and bilingual teacher I feel I will be making a difference everyday when I wake up and go to work. My goals as a language educator are as simple as making a difference in someones life everyday, whether they realize it or not, just to help future generations recieve a good education that they understand with minimal struggles.