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).
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.
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.
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!!!!
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
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.
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
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.
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!
[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
