Give Students a Voice!

Knowing how to effectively communicate is a 21st-century competency that everyone needs to have!

What a classroom looks like when students do not have a voice

                                

                    What a classroom looks like when students are encouraged to use their voice 

Oral Communication in the Ontario Curriculum 

Not only is effective communication a skill that everyone needs to survive in this day and age. It also is a strand called Oral Communication in the Ontario Language Arts curriculum. Expectations in the curriculum requirements that students will: 

OC1. listen in order to understand and respond appropriately in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes (p. 9). 

OC2. use speaking skills and strategies appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes (p. 9).

OC3. reflect on and identify their strengths as listeners and speakers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful in oral communication situations (p. 10). 

Good educators don't just teach students how to speak but how to effectively communicate in today's day and age.

This video represents the importance of teaching effective communication skills and what happens when individuals do not have these skills. 

3 Ways To Teach Students about Effective Communication 

1. The Importance of Listening 

The first step to developing effective communication amongst your students is teaching them the most important skill; listening. We cannot have effective communication if we do not know how to listen to one another. In the TedTalk, Julian Treasure states in just 5 steps how to become better listeners. This resource is not only an effective tool to help your students, but also to develop better listening skills as an educator. It is important for educators to develop good listening skills so that they can understand the needs of the students in their class and how they can help them.

                                          

2. Talking Circles

Talking circles are a great way for students to learn how to communicate with other individuals and to demonstrate how to communicate effectively. Talking circles allow for diverse opinions on topics to be shared and for students to learn how to respectively respond back. 

3. Podcasts 

https://www.thepodcasthost.com/niche-case-study/podcasting-in-education/

This article describes the importance and benefits of incorporating podcasts into lessons. Students are more likely to be engaged in a podcast for a longer period of time compared to a video or listening to a person lecturing at the front of the class. 

In addition, Podcasts are also a great platform for students to demonstrate effective communication skills. Long gone are the days when students did formal public speeches for their culminating activity to demonstrate that they are meeting their oral communication expectations. Know there are other platforms like Podcasts that take away anxiety and nerves of presenting in front of large groups and provide a more creative way for students to demonstrate that they have met the oral communication expectations. The link listed provides sites where students and educators can create their own podcasts.  https://www.podcastinsights.com/best-podcast-hosting/

Now You and Your Students can become Effective Communicators!

 

References 

BCPSQC. (21 Nov 2014). How well does your team communicate? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/gp9x3fvKjm4.

Cult of Pedagogy. (24 Oct 2013). Chat Stations for Class Discussion. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/eFUL4yP0vqo

Gray C., (24 Jan 2017). Podcasting in Education: What are the Benefits?.  Retrieved from 

https://www.thepodcasthost.com/niche-case-study/podcasting-in-education/

TED. (29 Jul 2011). 5 Ways to Listen Better: Julian Treasure. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/cSohjlYQI2A.

Winn r., (22 Nov 2019). 31 Best Podcast Hosting Sites in 2019. Retrieved from https://www.podcastinsights.com/best-podcast-hosting/

The Writing Process

       Writing is not an easy and linear process

Good writing develops from a messy, non-linear process!

You probably hear your students say...

Even though good writing is a messy process, it does not need to be frustrating, boring or hard!

In three steps learn to make writing more enjoyable and easier for students

1. Use Graphic Organizers

I find that graphic organizers are a great way to help students organize their points and thoughts during writing. Likewise, it helps students understand all the components apart of the process in writing without being overwhelmed.

Graphic Organizers Writing

I provide my students with graphic organizers as it is a UDL tool. It not only accommodates the student I have in the class that has an IEP with accommodation in writing but it is a useful tool for all the students.

2. Teach about Inner Dialogue during Writing

Students need to understand that good writers struggle during the writing process all the time. What makes a good writers' inner dialogue different from a not so good writer is having good positive reinforcing thinking. Allison Lienert a grade 4 teacher demonstrates to her students the positive thought process that they will develop during writing.

Positive thoughts are important to foster as an educator. Students need to change their mindset from I can't to I will! My mother who is not a teacher taught me the most important lesson. Whenever I told her that I could not understand my homework or learn a new concept. She would yell really loud over me " I think I can...I think I can... I think I can"! As annoying as those words sounded, it helped me to understand the importance of having a growth mindset to enjoy and be successful in learning. I now try to foster the same positive attitude to develop a growth mindset in my students.

 

3. Incorporate Writing Activites using Social Media

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-31-how-social-media-can-help-teach-good-writing   

Writing does not have to be boring! The Ontario curriculum states that students will W1. "generate, gather, and organize ideas and information to write for an intended purpose and audience"(p. 12). With students have social media accounts, it is a great way for them to share their writing pieces with their peers and a targeted audience. An example of an activity using social media is getting students to use sites like Instagram or Twitter to voice their opinions on issues happening around the world. 

https://twitter.com/hashtag/payattentionGOliteracy?src=hashtag_click

NOW YOUR STUDENTS CAN BECOME EXPERT WRITERS!

References

Institute of Education Sciences. [2015 Jul 7].Using Graphic Organizers in Writing (Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Grades: Newcomer Class).  (Video File). Retrieved from https://youtu.be/n88mM9_K6X8

NooNoo S. (2017). How Social Media Can Teach Good Writing. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-31-how-social-media-can-help-teach-good-writing

thinkSRSD. [2017 Feb 8). SRSD Think Aloud Gr 4. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/aVCUJiw7Ml8. 

3 Resources to Engage Your Students in Reading

3 Resources to make Students Engaged in Reading

Your Students Before Implementing Miss Mueller's Resources within your class

Your Students After Implementing Miss Mueller's Resources within your class

Reading  

I find that the students in my class dread when I tell them that it is silent reading time. What happened to the days when we were in school and loved to read. I remember the times when a book was so good that I could not put it down. I used to hide the book underneath my desk and continue to read while the teacher would conduct their lesson to the class. Now I notice that the once books being hidden under the desk are cellphones. Students filling their minds with games on the computer instead of literature. I knew that I had to do something that would change the perception that students have towards reading in my class. I decided to go on an adventure to help students become more motivated in reading. I found three resources that you can use to incorporate reading within your classroom. But, first I will share my love for reading in this song! 

 

Reading and the Ontario Curriculum 

Reading is one of the four strands in the Ontario Language Arts curriculum. The Ontario Language Arts curriculum states that students will:

R1. "read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literary, graphic, and informational texts, using a range of strategies to construct meaning" (p.11). 

R2. "recognize a variety of text forms, text features, and stylistic elements and demonstrate understanding of how they help communicate meaning" (p.11). 

R3. "use knowledge of words and cueing systems to read fluently" (p.11).

R4. "reflect on and identify their strengths as readers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful before, during, and after reading" (p.11). 

Reading Video Games

https://www.education.com/games/fifth-grade/ela/reading/

Incorporating reading within the classroom does not have to consist of formal textbooks or novels. When you look at R1 of the overall expectations for reading in Ontario, students will understand a variety of literature. I like to incorporate video games as one of the variety of literary texts that students will learn to comprehend. The site provides multiple games from kindergarten to grade 5 where teachers can assign their students to play one of the various games that help students learn about reading. The game that I played is Transition Stars: Bug Rumble. This game told a story that took place in outer space. It described a planet and it was trying to help students under the format of a story so that they would be able to comprehend it better while they were reading it. The game gets students to read the script of the story and fill in the missing transitions to complete the script. I used this game with one of my students who has an IEP and accommodation in reading. My student never reads during the silent reading period. The student was given the choice to work on this game instead of silent reading. I found that the student enjoyed the game as it incorporated gamification of winning a star when completing the task properly and moving on to the next level. The student is very artistic and demonstrated that they comprehended what was going on in the story by drawing pictures of what happened to the people on the planet throughout the story. Although this site is great I find that it is more for the younger students as it incorporates cartoon figures that older students in grade 5 and up will not be as interested in. 

Reading Comprehension

https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies

I find when I work with students in my class one-on-one when they lack having proper reading fluency it can change the way they interpret and comprehend a text. Reading Rockets provide already designed lesson plans that educators can immediately modify and use within their class. Reading Rockets provides a particularly good lesson on teaching about phonics and reading fluency. 

The video teaches about the List-Group-Label activity that can help teach students about vocabulary and comprehension of words. Students are paired in groups and match the words in groups that relate to each other. The groups then present what they have found to the other groups in the class. I have used this strategy with a grade 6 class. Although, I modified the activity and used sentences from a novel that the class read together. I find that with the grade 6 class, they are a very chatty bunch and will often become distracted by one another and disengaged within the lesson. I had to make sure to pick the groups wisely and I walked around to each of the groups and spent time with each to make sure that they kept on task.

 

Incorporating Diverse Reading Materials 

https://www.edutopia.org/article/22-diverse-book-choices-all-grade-levels

Standardized tests have shown that girls are overwhelmingly exceeding in reading comprehension compared to boys. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-girls-are-better-reading-boys/571429/ The Atlantic article describes these statistics and reasons why girls may be more interested in reading than boys. One of the issues was the material available for boys in literature. I find that in my classroom, I did not realize that I could be the reason why so many students dreaded silent reading time. Edutopia provides a list of books that incorporate diverse characters and storylines. I am in a classroom that has students from many different cultures and religious backgrounds. The books that were in the classroom, I find had more white female main characters. I wonder if the students in my class may dread silent reading time because when they read a book that is at the back of the room they cannot relate to the main character. I am going to make sure to incorporate more diverse books within the classroom. 

You Now Know 3 More Resources to Incorporate to Teach Reading!!!!

References 

Berger T. (15 Feb 2019). 22 Diverse Book Choices for all Grade Levels. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/22-diverse-book-choices-all-grade-levels 

Dowell Middle School. [McKinney ISD Media]. (12 2010). I Like Big Books- Dowell Middle School. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/tuZSfvHHMr4

Education.com.  (2019). 5th Grade Reading and Writing Games. Retrieved from https://www.education.com/games/fifth-grade/ela/reading/

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2006). The Ontario curriculum grades 1‐8: Language [Program of Studies]. Retrieved from

Reading Rockets. Teaching Reading: Classroom Strategies. Retrieved from https://www.readingrockets.org/strategieshttp://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/language18currb.pdf

Media Literacy Blog

Welcome To my Literacy Blog!

I am a teacher candidate in my fifth year of concurrent education J/I at Brock University. In the next couple of weeks, I am going to be talking about some resources for educators to bring into the classroom that focuses on the four strands of literacy. Some of the resources I have used personally and other resources I have seen other educators use in their classrooms.

Media Literacy

This week I am going to be focusing on the Ontario Elementary Literacy Curriculum strand Media Literacy. I am not tech-savvy and with a lot of media being online today with society becoming more technologically advanced, I am scared to teach this strand in the classroom. Although, I find it to be a vital component to teach in literacy as I myself have seen a fake post on social media and believed what I had been reading (I hate to admit, but more than once!). Students need to develop a critical lens when looking at media and be able to detect the reliability and biases of a resource.

Resource on What is Media Literacy?

I have used this resource myself when creating lesson plans for some of my classes to understand what media literacy is. This resource I find is for educators more than students. Jean Kilbourne has an EdD and is an expert on media literacy. In her YouTube video, she states the importance of educating students on media. I find this resource to be vital in understanding the importance of being literate in media. Kilbourne states that “95% of the information we get is controlled by only 5 major corporations who are in the business of marketing”. I interact with news stories every day on social media. Sometimes I share these stories with other educators on my social media accounts. Knowing that the media is controlled by such few corporations, I will now be more careful about what I share with other educators and how I present the information. 

Resource on #FakeNews

This resource is a great video that gives a lesson plan on how to teach about credible sources online. Emily Cook a teacher of grades 6 and 8 teaches her students on finding sites that are trustworthy and reliable to use for research. Emily Cook assigns her students a site where they must evaluate whether it is trustworthy or not a credible site to use. Emily Cook gives her students a chart that they must fill out while exploring the website. The chart gives them guidelines on whether this site is a good resource to use or not a trustworthy site. Emily Cook to make sure that her students are understanding the task has a class discussion on the sites that the students explore. Emily Cook’s lesson plan would be a good introductory lesson to Media literacy that especially focuses on the topic of fake news and credible resources. This activity lines up with the specific expectation of media literacy in the Ontario Elementary Language Curriculum of students being able to “demonstrate an understanding of a variety of media texts” (p. 14) and “identify some media forms and explain how the convention and techniques associated with them are used to create meaning” (p. 14). I would incorporate this lesson into a grade 5 or 6 classroom. I find that it is a vital tool students need to have when conducting research. 

An additional resource that can be useful with Emily Cook’s lesson is the Nike Commercial of Kobe Bryant jumping over a car. I would show this commercial to my students to show them that not everything they see on TV is true. The Nike Ad shows Kobe Bryant jumping over a speeding car but in reality, that jump is a highly dangerous stunt and impossible. I would also then show them the next YouTube video shows how the real commercial was filmed and how camera ticks can make the stunt look real.

Resource on Biases in Media

http://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/media-issues/marketing-consumerism

Media Smarts is a great resource that teaches different aspects of media. On Media Smarts they provide a resource on marketing advertisements and the strategies that corporations use in their ads and social media sites to target different groups of people to buy into their product. The resource sets out the Canadian laws on media and how corporations follow these guidelines while still reaching out to their targeted audiences. The Ontario Elementary Literacy Curriculum specific expectation for the media literacy strand is students being able to” identify some media forms and explain how the conventions and techniques associated with them are used to create meaning” (p.14). This resource covers that expectation as it teaches the techniques behind different media forms. I went to an arts conference in September and one of the speakers discusses using Media Smarts in their classroom. They showed me how Media Smarts can help students understand the elements used to create media so that students could create their different media platforms. I find that Media Smarts provides resources for all different age groups from grades 1 to 8. 

Additional resources that can be used with this source: 

Animoto https://animoto.com

  Animoto is a free video maker. This tool can be used in helping to teach media studies as educators can have students create their own commercials to sell a product of their choice. I would incorporate this tool in grades 4 and up. This will allow students to meet the expectation in the curriculum of being able to “create a variety of media texts for different purposes and audiences, using appropriate forms, conventions, and techniques” (p. 14). In grade 11, I used Animoto to create a movie trailer for a book I read in English class. I liked how this tool is free and easy to use. If you use the pictures or music provided in Animoto they are copyright free so you do not need to get permission to use them or cite them.

Co-Co’s AdverSmarts game http://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/games/coco/flash/start.html

This game is created by Media Smarts an organization designed to teach about critical media. The game is targeted for a young audience and it gets children to pick the gimmicks that they want to use for their cereal advertisement. As children pick their choices the game describes how cereal companies use these techniques to get children interested in buying their product. When playing this game it definitely was targeted for a grade 1 to 4 audience. The game uses simple language and cartoon images that younger children would love. I enjoyed how the game described the different aspects of the commercial that I designed and why commercials incorporate these aspects.

Stay Connected!

I will be posting in the next couple of weeks on resources that I have discovered or used that connects to the other strands in the Ontario Language Curriculum. Please comment below of any resources that you have used in your classroom to teach media literacy! 

Resources

Animoto. (2019) retrieved from  https://animoto.com

[Common Sense Education]. (23 Oct 2014). Using Critical Thinking to Find Trustworthy Websites. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/c3vzNooWqPA

Kilbourne J. [Kids in the House]. (7 Oct 2013). The Importance of Teaching Kids Media Literacy - Jean Kilbourne. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/cz-zatefhIs

[MixtapeLink]. (18 Feb 2011). How Kobe Bryant Jumped over a Speeding Car?. [Video file.] Retrieved from https://youtu.be/OyUXG_LUJVs

Media Smarts: Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy. Marketing and Consumerism. Retrieved from http://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy/media-issues/marketing-consumerism

Media Smarts. (2019). CoCo’s AdverSmarts. Retrieved from http://mediasmarts.ca/sites/mediasmarts/files/games/coco/flash/start.html

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2006). The Ontario curriculum grades 1‐8: Language [Program of Studies]. Retrieved from
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/language18currb.pdf

[rockboy1138]. (29 May 2009). Sport Science: Kobe Jumps Car Part 2 of 2. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/NUzryIW-MLo