Student Teaching

So far my student teaching experience has been awesome, exhausting, but awesome. So far I have taken over a Physics class and slowly working my way up to taking 2 Physical Science classes one at time. I have found that there are not many new vocabulary words (that is my literacy project, teaching vocabulary) but the words have a different meaning in different contexts. I have found with my Physics class that I am having to stop frequently and ask students what different words mean from one word problem to the next. At first they did not see what the point of what I was doing, but once they saw how understanding one word was able to give them the last piece of information they needed they were able to understand the importance of reading each word and thinking about its meaning. Incorporating literacy, like I have in the Physics class, will be much more difficult in my Physical Science classes because this class has the EOCT looming in future and they are already behind. I see why so many teachers have a hard time bringing content literacy into their classrooms because of the information they have to cover before the EOCT. I guess teachers could bring a lot more literacy after the EOCT because most schools still have about 2-3 weeks of school left after the EOCT. If you have any tips about how to still cover the mountains of information and together, I am all ears.

Read What You Like to Read

From our past four weeks in class I’ve been trying to figure out different literacy explorations I could do in my Physical Science and Physics classes. I believe the first exploration I am going to do with my students is to teach struggling students how to dissect word problems. I have had trouble with word problems since I started seeing them in Elementary school. It wasn’t until I was in college Physics did I see the importance of dissecting a word problem. I hope to give students, especially those who are struggling, a guide of how to work through a word problem. I will advise them to start with what they know and write it down. Then they will need to write down what they are looking for. After having this information down, I will advise students to look through formulas that can bring the things they know together to get the thing they are looking for. This seems like a simple process, but until you make yourself sit and think about how to work through the problem you never really learn how to read and then work through a word problem. I also want to read some type of science article to show students that reading in science is different than reading in an English class.

When reading the chapter for Readicide, one statement really jumped out at me about sustained silent reading. The book stated “students were placed in SSR without interesting books to read. Telling a student that reading is a worthwhile activity is one thing, having numerous interesting books to choose from is another.” This comment was made in response to why many students stopped reading. I relate to this because I was this student. I loved to read when I was a child. I remember AR time was my favorite part of the day because I would be allowed to read what I wanted to read. Then by the time I got to middle school, there were not any books in the library that I wanted to read. Since I was required to read at this time, I started checking out books because of the number of AR points I could get. I dreaded reading the book and it was reflected the scores I would get on AR tests. When I started high school we did not have AR time anymore and I stopped reading. The only reading I did until I was a senior was for class. From this experience I feel that SSR is not a good idea, however this is because I did not have anything good to read. I believe that SSR is a good thing if the school library has a wide range of books and continually gets books that students want to read. So, in the end if schools will keep up with books that students like to read and want to read then getting students to read recreationally will not be as difficult.