Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Double Entry Journal #4


Note: Sorry this is late! I thought for sure that when I looked at the Google site earlier in the week, it said that this was due on Wednesday at midnight... Nonetheless, here it is! :)

 
1.      Three things I learned about teaching and literacy development:

a)     The reading states that "Some teachers tend to copy pedagogical instruction that mirrors the way they were taught. For many, this is a correctionist or formalist approach to teaching writing that has been around for years and places standard grammatical and mechanical forms at the forefront of writing instruction. The result is diminished writing among our local students due to a fear of judgment."  Thus, I learned that sometimes students stop writing or do not write much because they fear that they will be corrected.

b)     I learned that with proper instruction, students can learn to “code-switch” between Appalachian and Standard English.

c)      I learned that by embracing students’ native languages (ex. Appalachian English), they feel like they’re not looked down upon and are more likely to learn the ways of Standard English as well. 

2.      Two examples of how the strategies for literacy instruction presented in this article reflect Culturally Responsive Teaching:

a)     The reading talked about how the one teacher’s classroom is adorned with “maps and charts on which dialect patterns are tracked by county road and family.”  This reflects culturally responsive teaching in that students are able to build bridges of meaningfulness between home and school experience. 

b)     In addition, in that teacher’s classroom, “Students interview parents and grandparents and find out how their Appalachian English has changed over time.”  This reflects culturally responsive teaching in that students are encouraged to share their varied perspectives and experiences because they’re bringing family experiences into the classroom.

3.      An example of literacy instruction from my own schooling experience:

I can recall in about 2nd grade we read the book “When I Was Young in the Mountains” by Cynthia Rylant, a West Virginia author.  We did activities with it comparing Cynthia’s life in the Mountains to our own lives in the Mountains.  Thus, the activities were culturally responsive in that we were taught to know our own and each other’s cultural heritages.
 
4. This website http://www.edweek.org/tm/events/teaching-tolerance/resources.html is about 5 teachers who were honored for being culturally responsive educators.  I liked it because you can read about each teacher and what he/she did to be culturally responsive in his/her own school.  By reading about these teachers, different ideas on being culturally responsive can be gathered.


Source: Epstein P., H. (2011, September 13). Honoring dialect and increasing student performance in standard english. Retrieved from http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3655

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