Winter 2018 493: Teaching Literature to Adolescents

Freire’s chapter showed me that the current teaching strategies need to be adapted in order to break a mindset of oppression.  In the past, education has been a memorization game, memorizing facts for an end of unit test. Today’s education needs to take a different route then that and engage students in critical thinking skills. Freire reminds the teacher that we aren’t preparing students to recite a bunch of facts but to critically think about issues presented in their lives. Just memorizing facts would be ‘banking’ and Freire defines that as, “the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat” (Freire). In order for students to engage in critical thinking, teachers must realize they aren’t just a dispenser of knowledge. Teachers are responsible for teaching their students how to learn and how to think critically. In order to get students to critically think we must run discussions and have conversations on complex ideas....

“Night” by Elie Wiesel demonstrates the true horrors that Jewish people lived through during World War II. Never having read this book before, I wasn’t ready for the emotional experiences this book has to share. Consistently I found myself full of emotions as I read Wiesel’s words. My father has always been obsessed with WWII and he constantly is watching the History Channel’s programming on the various concentration camps that happened. Therefore, I have plenty of background with the concentration camps that were happening throughout the war. Yet, reading this book and experiencing them through the eyes of Elie, was truly horrifying. Listening to what these people had to go through in order to survive in this period of time changed my perceptive on the world. Seeing the process actually take place in the eyes of the Jewish people was surprising. At first rounding all of the Jewish people from the Ghetto was peaceful, but that soon changes. Seeing how the German army was able to...

Chapter thirteen “Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning”, by Richard Beach, Deborah Appleman, Susan Hynds, and Jeffrey Wilhelm is the teacher's friend when being introduced to grading. I lack the background with grading because I have just received my placement at Freeman High school, but this article calmed a lot of fears I’ve had when approaching the topic. Throughout this article, it discusses the different ways that teachers can grade students and how to determine what assignments actually receive a grade. Similar to my interest, the article takes the writing approach when discussing student assessment. Through writing the teacher can gauge what is going on in their students head when juggling questions. This can lead to a deeper understanding of why students may not be grasping the information presented in class. Furthermore, the article discusses the various kinds of assessments and their meaning to the student: Group discussions, written feedback, teacher responses,...

Understanding the different learning standards and lessons needed to get students to the Common Core State Standards could be hard. Reading the “California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template” provided an insight of the English high school classroom. Throughout the piece they discuss reading rhetorically, connecting reading to writing, and writing rhetorically. Furthermore, reading rhetorically easily describes the pre-reading, reading, and post-reading throughout this section. Pre-reading are the steps that students take before actually diving into the piece of writing. Students pre-read in order to find purpose with the reading and to eventually dig deeper into the content of the reading. This section was helpful because it lays out the different strategies teachers can provide students with in order to successfully pre-read. For instance, reading subheadings, headings, titles of chapters, or any other pieces in the book provides students w...

Beach, Thein, and Webb’s “The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12: Origins, Goals, and Challenges”, and English Language Arts Common Core State Standards, gave me a strong introduction to Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Reading CCSS allowed me to begin building connections between lessons I’ve done in my education class and how those lessons will look in my classroom. Also, reading the article informed me of the many different organizations that formed together in order to create the CCSS. I never knew how many people were involved when trying to create these state standards. Understanding the foundation for the CCSS allows me to see why the CCSS is enacted and how it was designed to help. Furthermore, I wasn’t expecting to learn about how the 21 st Century effects education and CCSS. Knowing that our curriculum is consistent with “living 21 st century based on a knowledge economy” (Beach et al) is extremely important. It proves how...

Stephen Brookfield’s “Discussion as a Way of Teaching” gives a well-rounded image of effective discussion within the classroom. Brookfield’s text paves the way for educators when incorporating classroom discussion into their curriculum. He is able to do so by providing different examples of conversations that should take place in the classroom between student and teacher. Also, he provides detailed directions on how to present certain discussion topics in the class. Brookfield’s text has earned its spot on my bookshelf.                   Throughout the piece, Brookfield asks the readers to reflect on their own experiences with group discussions. Making me reflect on my own history allowed me to build a connection with the techniques in the book. I remember good class discussions as those which flowed fluently and smoothly. Many times the professor would stimulate our class by asking open-ended questions i...