Final Synthesis Blog

Before I walked into this class, I was not sure what to expect at all. I thought it would be about our own literacy skills because it was a requirement for us as teachers. After the first class though, I realized it was about the different literacy skills used in each content area.  This truly has been the most beneficial class I have taken in all of college! I loved learning the different strategies and I think our professor was the absolute best. In this class, we discussed how to include literacy in class through using good teaching strategies. Our professor led by example in order for us to experience it as a student. Now these straggles are not just simply cognitive but as our textbook says, includes "instructional strategies for teachers use in the classroom". Some of these strategies were KWL, turn-and-talk, dramatic role play, and front-loading with images. Discussing the pros and cons of these strategies was one of my favorite parts of this class because I feel as though I have learned very good instructional strategies to help my students. I am excited to use these in a class one day.  

Also our book for this class was called Subjects Matter, and it was a very enjoyable read especially since we did not have to read the entire book. We only read what was necessary to our learning on strategies and literacy skills in math and science. We got to read books and find workbook pages to determine what skills were necessary to read and understand those passages. Many times we found that math and science problems need evaluating and analyzing skills that many students do not know how to do. These in-class activities were always shocking to me when I saw how necessary reading was. One time, we looked at standardized testing and the need to teach students how to take these sorts of tests. There were so many problems that we annotated and looked at what literacy skills students needed other than that specific content. We also learned very practical ways to implement these literacy skills into class. 

The first way was book clubs which I think were really fun and students would love, however it also is the one activity that I think would be the hardest to do in my own math classroom. I enjoyed learning about book clubs, but probably not my favorite one to use in the future. I do think that the podcasts we created though are a great use of technology to use in class. I would definitely use this in my future classroom. All of these super amazing examples of what to use in class is why I feel as though this was the best class I took. My students will benefit from my knowledge I gained in taking this course. 

Also our professor was the most engaging teacher I've ever had in college! I really learned so much through watching and observing his actions as a teacher. He was friendly and made us feel welcome and happy in this class. 

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