Wednesday, 10 September 2008 - 10:45 AM MDT

9/4 Highlights

Today we had the privlege and pleasure, as well vexation of taking part in a game called Barnga.  The game's instructions were given to each of the three different table-groups.  We then participated in a silent tournament, where after 2 or more rounds, we realized that different instructions were given to each table.  This was an example of how to use non-verbal communication...as well as how well we deal with others not playing by our own set of rules.  We connected this to the classroom and to life.  In life we expect others to play by what we know to be "acceptable behavior" when in honesty they may have grown up with a completely different instruction book as we did.  It also showed us what it is like to be the student in the class that doesnt necessarily understand what is going on.
We also had the opportunity to go to the Smart Lab at SJC and begin our webpages, outlining the work that we will be doing in this class.

-- Elise

Friday, 12 September 2008 - 1:23 PM MDT

9-11-08

Today we started out by discussing the storytelling festival and everything that goes along with that! Vollunteers, days that won't work, where the tents are and on and on. Then we tried to watch the Barnga video, but we didn't have the right cord so that will have to wait till another day (along with the syllabus). We took a break and then met at the park where we talked about the Nacirema culture and how remarkably similar they are to us! We ended by breaking into groups to discuss the books that we (haven't yet) read in. My group got to know each other better while we talked about the differences in culture inside the U.S. and we speculated about what we thought our book (Join In) might contain! Just another fun day in the park.

Saturday, 27 September 2008 - 9:31 PM MDT

9/25

Signing with Vickie Bruno. Reviewed our names, "how are you?" "What is your name?"

We then went through the alphabet for extra practice. Can use sign for spelling practice with student's.

We talked about name signs.  Usually you would use your first initial and a sign the represents you.

We talked a lot about hearing loss and the different causes. We looked at the anatomy of the ear while Vickie talked to us.

1/10 people have hearing loss in the US...........1/3 people over the age of 65 have hearing loss.

hearing loss is as common as high blood pressure, some heart disease and arthritis.

30/1000 child have hearing loss (estimate)

People who have hearing loss can experience problems with reading and understanding phonics. So what appears to be a learning disability can actually be that the person cannot hear.

Causes of hearing loss are many. Examples: louds sounds (music), illness, genetic and head injury(abuse, accident).  Also, anything causing damage to the ear bones, ear drums and nerves will also cause heaing loss. Otitis media is the medical term for an ear infection which is another example of a cause.

45% of hearing loss is unknown as to the cause.

As teachers it is very important, especially in the elementary grades, to watch for signs of hearing loss in children.

Hard of hearing can cause delays in speech.

There are 3 types of hearing loss:1. Sensory neural -which is nerve damage in the cochlea. 2. Conductive- which is loss of hearing based on the outer ear to the bones and cochlea. 3-combination of both.

Most of the damage in the ear cannot be repaired and will not regenerate.  Hoever, the bones and the ear drum can be repaired.

In a earing test x is the left ear and o is the right

We listened to a tape that simulated what is would be like to be hard of hearing. I couldn't hear anything.  We then took a spelling test on 3 levels of hearing loss and i failed the test. I was able to make out 3 words out of 10.

We talked about how nice a classroom FM system is; which basically is speakers around the room and the teacher speaks into a portable microphone making it easier for students to hear.

At the end of the lesson Vickie taught us numbers 1-29, colors and emotions (happy, sad, crying, mad, hurting)

Next week we are going to get a name sign, by either making it up or Vickie will help us.

Monday, 13 October 2008 - 10:44 AM MDT

Wednesday, 29 October 2008 - 3:04 PM MDT

10/17

Today was our first day in Charolette Bradshaw's class! We all had the opportunity to meet the students we will be working with for the remainder of the semester. When we grouped with our students we helped them branstorm ideas that they will use for their "I am From" poems. I think that we all had the opportunity to  learn a little about who our students are (ex.what they like to do, their families, favorite food, movies, etc.) from their brainstorming ideas.

In class we had the opportunity to learn more sign language from Vicki Bruno! She gave us a vatiety of handouts which showed examples of different signs that can commonly be used in the clasroom. We went over all of the signs together, along with The Pledge Of Allegiance. Vicki also gave us a handout which was titled "What to Do in the Classroom For Students with Hearing Losses". It gave examples of common do's and don't's when teaching a child with a hearing loss. She also gave us an article which discusses the learning benefits of teaching hearing children sign language. I thought that these were both really informative and beneficial to all of us as future teachers. Vicki tested our sign lanugae knowledge with a fun Sign Language Bingo game, in which some of us won  random selection of prizes! Vicki ended our sign language session by giving us a list of informative sign language websites, along with her own personal website (just in case we ever have any questions).

After Vicki left, Frances used a picture as an analogy to explain what we have taken, and what we will take, from this class.

-Brittany

Wednesday, 29 October 2008 - 8:12 PM MDT

10/7

I know this is late but since we ddnt have class it got a little mixed up. Some people on this day went to the Story Telling Festival while others went to the Four Corners Conference for Professional Development. I went to the Conference where I thought it was really interesting and exciting.

I cant remember the guest speakers name for the first part of the day, and I cant find my information about the day but Eric Carl keeps ringing in my head. Anyway, he spoke about painting your vision and working with others and yourself to get everything and anything you have ever wanted to accomplish. DUring this speech he played music and powerpoint and painted. During this time he painted Bonno, Abraham Lincoln, and Einstein-Within mintues! It was amazing.

Then we broke out into workshops and I was in the "How to Motivate yourself". Just because of the future workplace I wil be in. There were a few speakers and we did a few hands on activities and they gave us ways to encourage ourselves in challenges or others around us.

That was the end of the day for me and I had a good time.

Thursday, 6 November 2008 - 4:41 PM MST

10/31

This week we had the pleasure of hearing about Frances’ fantastic trip to Alexandria, Virginia, and her extended paid vacation to Disney World.  We had the opportunity to look at some of her pictures, and to discuss how Disney World is culturally diverse. 

Frances talked about professional development schools and how they relate to us as future teachers.  UNM is trying to collaborate with as many local schools as possible on student teaching to make the experience beneficial for all involved.

We had a debriefing session about the time we spent with our kids at Apache.  A lot of us agreed that it was sometimes very difficult trying to get them started.  Frances told us to just keep asking questions, and eventually they will let everything come out.  We also talked about peer conferencing, and she asked us to bring copies of our own stories so we could peer conference as a class.  She also asked us to think about some sort of special recognition that we could give our kids.  Fredrick came up with the idea of having a cotton candy machine at the Author’s Chair event. 

Frances gave a hand out at the end of class about Teaching English-Language Learners: What Does the Research Say?

Monday, 10 November 2008 - 2:38 PM MST

11/6

In the morning we were all in Bradshaws class working with our students. We started out with our I Am poems and moved on to our family story. We all went back to Brandshaws class to go over our writing workshop for next week, which was really super quick. We did not get to go through it in great detail, but I feel tht most of the kids will do fine with the process.

Back in class we all discussed what we thought we should do about the writing workshop as well as how much time we had left to get our students to finish writing their papers. We do not have that much time at all and some people decided they need to go in other days within the week to help their students finish.

We then got into groups and did a workshop on our family papers giving advice to those in our group, which was very helpful and fun getting to work with different people in the class.

There is not much tiime left, we are almost done :)

Wednesday, 12 November 2008 - 9:26 PM MST

hello class.  sorry that I didn't get this scribe posted sooner.  I was scribe for the October 24th class.  As you may remember, Frances was out of town, and we were in charge of the students at Apache.  We worked on our I am poems. 

We had a good experience helping our students work.  It is clear to me that we are now fleshing out our classroom work into the world of teaching.  I look forward to the challenges up ahead for our students and the stories they will write.

Clark

Friday, 14 November 2008 - 3:36 PM MST

Thank you, scribes, for posting your class highlights. We are winding down in terms of the number of weeks we still have left and gearing up to inspire and coach our Apache 4th graders in writing their family stories.

Nov. 6 was a funky-kind of session with Sarah B, Emily, Clark and Heather not there (all for good reasons). The tenor of the class was like: "I'm feeling feeling a little more than usually overwhelmed" kind of day. The highlight of our session was sharing our family stories in peer conferences so we can revise them.

We talked about preparation for our Apache students' peer conferences the following week, Nov. 13 and discussed the writing process from our text on p. 236. Moststudents are familiar with the writing process and we are gaining more experience with this strategy.

 The Writing Process model is the most authentic way to teach writing to all children and adults, for it is the process most writers use. I hope as educators, you will incorporate this model in your own classroom giving students ownership, support and guidance in becoming writers who read and readers who write.

 This reminds me, when we get stuck with our own writing, the anidote is to read others' writing to get ideas. The same thing may apply to our Apache studnts' stories. If we want to encourage them to write more interestingly, instead of: 'this happened, then this and then this' list-like style, which becomes listless to the listener), a strategy would be to read passages from children's books to get the point across and to give them some storied examples. This may be a great idea to try in the last couple of sessions with our Apache students!! Try it and let us know ihow it worked!

Your scribe, Frances

Sunday, 30 November 2008 - 9:56 PM MST