ELA Methods I

Hi Sean, I would like to say, first of all, thank you for a great quarter. Not only in the classroom, but helping me figure out my trajectory. I tend to get a bit excited and not think things through and you helped me iron things out which I really appreciate. Second, thank you for teaching a class that I initially dreaded but ended up really enjoying. Not only did I meet more awesome people in the same program that I was in, but I also gained lots of great resources and learned the most about teaching that I have the past four years. It’s one thing to take Dr. Potter’s Intro to Ed class, it’s another to take a  look as to what we as teachers need  to teach and apply that to our students with different methods. The most important thing I learned was that we aren’t going to be perfect our first year teaching. We’re going to mess up and need to self-correct, but there are so many colleagues and guided texts that are there to help us do that self-correcting that we’ll figure it ...

1. “Percy Jackson and The Olympians” This is the most important series I’ve ever read, to this day. I love the message that Riordan portrays with having Percy being the son of a single mom, having ADD/ADHD and Dyslexia, and having a hard time in school. The different characters show that no matter your background you can make something of yourself. And just because you have a learning disorder doesn’t mean you can’t be the smartest kid in the room— all while teaching you about Greek and Roman mythology, as well as Egyptian and Norse mythology in Rick Riordan’s other series.  It’s great for students to read of characters that they can share some kind of similarity with them and connect more on a personal level than typical literature characters. 2. “The Help” The Help is a really important text, not just because I could read it a million times and not get bored of it, but because it gives a (fictional) look into what was happening at the height of the civil rights mo...

1. First Essay (that I could find) vs. the latest The earliest essay that I could find that I wrote in college was in Dr. Green’s Intro to Fiction class my 2nd year at Eastern. I did running start in high school and have no access to those assignments, but even then they were science based so I hadn’t been able to stretch my writing muscles until finally getting into his classroom, and it was rough. Not only did I have loads of grammatical and spelling errors, but even organization and concepts that I wrote about made no sense. If it was an essay that a student had given me as an assignment, I wouldn’t  have graded it as nicely as Green did.Compared to now, as I’ve gone through 2 years of upper level English courses and have really refined my skills as a writer (I think). In the beginning, I had an average grade of 75 on my essays in any of my English classes, versus now it’s between 85 and 90. My latest essay was the most complicated for me to write. It had nothing to do with a...

1.  Romeo and Juliet Text to Movie As my last presentation showed, I still very much remember this movie. this was the weirdest movie I had ever watched in school, and I think that’s why I remember not only the plot of Romeo and Juliet, but even some lines from the play as well. I think it’s so important to have films to show hard to understand plays (especially Shakespeare) and this was the first movie that I actually needed to watch in order to really and truly understand what we read in class, and i know there are a lot of students who feel the same way. 2. Schoolhouse Rock I still have these songs stuck in my head over a decade later. Not only did they have a ruin cartoon and catchy songs, but you actually learned  something while having fun in the classroom. “Shot Heard Around the World”, “I’m Just a Bill”, and “Conjunction Junction” are still my three favorites from School House Rock, and could still tell you frame by frame the entire video that went along with the...

Andrew Jackson Political Cartoon Presentation (9th Grade)  My first major presentation that I had to do was freshman year in front of both my English and History classes for a joint grade. I was able to get away with small presentations earlier in my school career but this was the biggest (so far). I was terrified and stuttered through my whole presentation, but made it to the end and actually learned something about presenting and that I’m not as terrible as I thought. This was a turning point in terms of becoming more confident in front of a crowd and conquering my fear of public speaking because of the kind and encouraging words of my teachers who offered advice on how to improve my skills.  2.  WCTSMA Presentation My Andrew Jackson presentation led me to being able to get on a stage in front of 300+ people and present a research-based PowerPoint on Spondylolthesis. It was a group project, but I had the biggest number of slides and speaking points. I struggl...

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OZzDLGaffny7Yn8y8QxHUrXnmS5odlRdRGpB0Ooj7sM Description: This article talks about how using feature films to help teach a certain set of literature helps increase understanding and the want/need to discuss similarities and differences between the different media’s. It not only talks about movies, but tv adaptions, plays, and radio programs. Not only does this article shed insight behind the reasons as to why to include different forms o media into the classroom, but also provides 3 other references to work with that provide materials and lesson plans from companies that are trying to encourage more films in English classes. Most lesson plans tend to avoid movie days except for maybe one or two a year. They’re time consuming and some teachers find them unhelpful or even harmful when it comes to understanding the text, when the opposite is actually more true. How to apply to the classroom: The article offers a few options, one being to bri...