Group Differences

Overall, I really enjoyed our group differences forum. I think all of the groups did a great job presenting their topics, and I really learned a lot about the different types of students that will be in my future classroom. The two topics that I think I learned the most about were gender and English Language Learners. Before our discussion, I did not know that most teachers generally favored the boys in their class over the girls. In the classrooms that I have observed, I have never noticed any of the teachers treating the boys better than the girls or giving them more attention, so I was surprised that gender was such a big issue in our schools. Now that I am aware that there is a gender bias in schools, I can make sure to not give special treatment to the boys in my class during my internship. The second group I learned a lot about during our discussion was ELLs. As I said in class, I have never really considered the possibility of having an ELL in my future classroom. I think this is one of the groups that tends to be overlooked a lot in our education courses, and I am really glad we talked a little about how we can help a student in our future classrooms that speaks a foreign language. Although I feel like I learned a lot about ELLs, I wish we could have spent more time talking about strategies we can use in our classroom to help children who speak a foreign language. I feel like we only spoke about ELL students for a few minutes, and I would have liked to have a longer conversation about this particular group. 

 Because I do not usually talk a lot in our class discussions, my goal for our group differences forum was to make at least one comment each day. In short, I accomplished my goal. On the first day, I contributed to our discussion by asking my classmates questions about children who live in poverty. I also commented on a couple of the other groups' topics. On the second day, I spoke a lot when the ELL group was presenting because I was genuinely curious if other people in the educational field felt as unprepared as I did to help ELL students. Although I do not usually speak up in class, I felt comfortable talking during our discussion because I saw how respectful all of my other classmates were being. When I was thinking about how the group difference forum could be improved, my first initial thought was that I would have liked to do it a little earlier in the semester so we could have continued talking about the different groups when we covered different topics like classroom management and the theories of development. Now that I think about it though, I am glad we waited until the end because I would not have felt as comfortable speaking up during our discussion if we had done it earlier in the semester. The only suggestion I have for improving the forum is to schedule two whole class periods for the discussion, so we do not have to cut our conversations short. Other than this one suggestion, I really did enjoy the group differences forum. I learned a lot from each of the groups, and I was glad we ended our time together on such a powerful topic.

Post #10 Language

Theories in educational psychology promote the idea that language plays a critical role in cognitive development. Examine Table 2.2 (p. 51), paying particular attention to the age range that you are interested in teaching. Consider how you might incorporate or adapt the strategies presented for use with your own students.

Although I am not sure what specific grade level I would like to teach in the future, I am currently interested in interning in either a third or fourth grade classroom. According to Table 2.2, children in this age range have unique strengths and weaknesses in language development. Specifically, children have an increasing understanding of temporal words and comparatives, have an increased awareness of when sentences are grammatically correct, can correctly pronunciate all sounds in their language, can have sustained conversations about concrete topics, can construct stories with plots and cause-and-effect relationships, and have linguistic creativity and word play. Unfortunately, students still struggle by confusing the and a and have an incomplete knowledge of irregular word forms.

Table 2.2 gives suggested strategies for this age range that I can easily adapt or incorporate into my future classroom. The first suggestion the table gives is teaching irregular word forms such as that the past tense of ring is rang. One way I could incorporate this in my future classroom is by creating a spelling list one week with common irregular word pairs (ring, rang, begin, began, bring, brought, think, thought, etc.) .To help my students study these words, I could write all of the words on index cards and have them play a memory game where they had to turn two cards over at a time until they matched all of the irregular words. The second suggested strategy on the table is to begin instruction about parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc.). One way I could incorporate this strategy into my future classroom is by having students make a parts of speech book. Students would look through magazines and newspapers and cut out ten nouns for the noun section of their book, ten verbs for the verb section, and so on. Students could then find or create illustrations that went along with their words. The third suggestion from the table is to use group discussion as a way to explore academic subject matter. One way I could do this in my classroom is by placing students' desks in groups and having them discuss solutions to math problems or controversial issues in social studies before presenting their group consensus to the whole class for discussion. The fourth suggestion from our textbook is to have students create short stories that are presented orally or in writing. One day this semester, I was able to observe a classroom in an arts-integrated school, and they incorporated storytelling into their history lessons by having students create their own comic strips of historical events. I think this is a great way to incorporate the suggested strategy into my future classroom because children learn about historical events while also being creative and putting the story in their own words. The fifth suggestion from Table 2.2 is to consult with a speech-language pathologist when articulation problems are evident in upper elementary students. I think the best way to incorporate this strategy is to include a lot of discussions and questioning in my lessons so I can observe students' speech patterns and get them any help they may need for speech problems. The final suggestion made in Table 2.2 is to encourage telling jokes and reciting rhymes that capitalize on double meanings and homonyms. This is probably my favorite suggestion in the table because I think reading a joke or a rhyme out loud before class each morning would be a great way to start our school day. I think this would be a fun way to introduce children to the concept of puns and homonyms, and I think kids would really enjoy coming up with their own jokes.  

I really like the website I found this week for language development, It can be found at http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/communicationdevelopment.htm This website is broken down by grades K-5,and it tells what the average child's speech and language development is for each grade level.  For example, when you click on "Third Grade" the website redirects you to a page that lists what listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills students in this grade are expected to be able to do.