digital natives

After taking the quiz, I realized that I am not a digital native.  Although I could identify the terms IM, blog, and  online gaming, I was stumped on MOBS, smart MOBS, etc....  Although I definitely would not consider myself a master at all things technological, I can master a computer.  I have to admit I realize that in terms of knowing how to master creating a website, posting on YouTube, or composing music on a computer I am lacking in skill.  I believe that through this New Literacies project I will become more learned in the digital world, which is something that I have needed for a while.  In any terms, being emergent I believe is a great thing because you have so much ahead of you to learn and be able to grasp.  The world is at my fingertips when dealing with digital technology, I just need to figure out a way to introduce myself into this realm.  Emergent digital literacy and children's emergent literacy are connected, but obviously there are vast differences.  When dealing with children's emergent literacy, we have to remember that literacy encompasses a vast range of ideas, such as reading, writing, speaking, technological literacy, etc...  Children need to learn the basics of language before they can emerge from the emergent literacy to having mastered literacy.  Many adults that would not be considered a "digital native" are considered literate if they know how to read and write.  

digital native

After taking the digital natives quiz I found out that I am considered a digital native. Although I did not know all of terms, I knew more than half. For me, I learn technology rather slowly and the only types I know are the ones taught to me through school. For example I would know nothing about blogging if I did not have this assignment. I had to teach myself how and what blogging is. I consider myself to be an emergent digital learner. I think this because I am learning new digital literacies day by day. Tompkins talks about emergent literacy learners as “participating in a variety of literacy activities ranging from modeled and shared reading and writing, during which they watch as teachers read, write…” This reminds me of our literacy’s project. I will need someone to model the new technology for me to understand it. I feel that I am interested in new technologies, but without someone to teach it to me, I will never learn it. I think that it is important to teach both the “old” literacy as well as the “new” digital literacy. In today’s society more and more literacy is being produced digitally. Now I think children around the kindergarten age can be emergent in both types of literacy. It all depends on when you are subjected to the literacy.

Scaffolding

The hardest part for me about being a teacher is watching children get frustrated with a task. Scaffolding is a way of preventing frustration by assisting children in tasks they do not understand and allowing that student to grow from your assistance in other tasks. MSU professors and TAs use some strategies that ensure students are learning efficiently. Rather than writing on a black and white chalkboard, many professors create colorful and attention grabbing PowerPoint for their lessons to keep students focused. In Gibbons it states that “teacher-guided reporting is adopted to make more explicit the role of teacher in providing scaffolding for the learner” (34). This sort of scaffolding occurs in most of my classrooms at MSU. Students are consistently asked to report what they learned or how they solved a specific problem. I do like when the teacher-guided reporting is volunteer –based and open to anyone. However, the worst part of this guiding is being called on when you are unprepared to answer something and many students get frustrated.
I feel that the classroom setup is one of the most important ways to control the interaction between students-students and teacher-students. We experienced the difference hands on in our TE 401 class. In our usual Holden Hall classroom we sit in rows facing the front looking at PowerPoint slides and listening to Becky teach without interacting as much. However, in Erickson hall we were much more involved in discussion when the seats were arranged in a circle. I have also seen a difference in participation based on classroom setup in my kindergarten field placement class from TE 301. When I first started my field placement the children were seated in separate group tables. Although the children participated, the participation level increased greatly when the desks were arranged in a U-shape facing the board. In this formation, all of the children were looped around and they could see other students, the board, and the teacher. Personally, I always enjoyed the creative ways that teachers would rearrange the room to see which way students learn and interact the most and I plan to do the same.

Class discussion and scaffolding

There are many types of “talk” that I see within my classes here at MSU. Typically each type of talk is centered on a specific kind of class. When there is lecturing, the professor does most of the talking, just giving time to answer questions prompted by the students. When in a smaller recitation of a lecture class typically these classes are more discussion based. Within the Goldenberg article, he talks about the importance of discussion based activities. He talks about how the teacher should be the mediator and the initiator, but not the dominant speaker within the discussion. The teacher should prompt meaningful questions and allow the students to dictate what the main points to consider are. Sophomore year I took an IAH class that had a recitation that used the ideas Goldenberg suggested. Our TA would prompt a question and let the class discuss until there were no comments left. Within a class in a university most if not all of the students have learned the scaffolding measures to make this mean of discussion influential. In an elementary school classroom, however, students may not have the previous scaffolding techniques to be able to understand how to withhold this type of talk. Students must learn how to ask meaningful questions, listen to their classmates in order to build upon their answers, and learn how to take the focus off of the teacher and on the class. Some types of scaffolding a teacher may use are asking open-ended questions to try and promote class discussion or have children work in small groups to become more comfortable interacting with other classmates.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is an extremely important concept in terms of the classroom.  Teachers are able to aid their students by providing them with additional help if it is noticeable that they are struggling.  Once the teacher begins to aid the student, they will continue to help until the student feels competent in the task and is able to complete the task on their own.  Scaffolding is a type of help that the teacher can use to help to guide the child away from frustration while also providing a helping hand which many times is needed when children are trying to figure out higher-task problems.  In classrooms throughout my experience in the field, I have seen a lot of teaching strategies that are similar to scaffolding as well as seeing scaffolding taking place.  Such instances include in math centers, watching the teacher point to each object being counted, therefore making sure the children don't count a marble twice.  Once the student started to understand what was going on, the student was able to sort the objects so she did not count the objects twice.  Not only is scaffolding seen in math lessons, but it is also used to enhance literacy.  According to Tompkins, "Through active involvement with literacy materials, young children construct their understanding of reading and writing." This active involvement can be the teacher scaffolding for the student.  Other teaching strategies such as modeling have been implemented in my classrooms.  I have seen modeling occur in literacy lessons, where the teacher models how to hold a book, turn the pages from right to left and read the words off the page.  This modeling is how students learn to hold a book upright, turn the pages the correct way, etc.... Other teaching strategies can help us to teach children just like scaffolding can and it is important to recognize these other strategies as well.

In Michigan State classes, I have noticed some strategies that professors utilize in the classroom to attain maximum retention rates in their students.  It is obviously harder to see due to the shear class size and the little professor to student interaction, but strategies such as repeating information over and over again to make sure the students remember it, having office hours for the students so that they can come for help, and hopefully leave the office feeling reassured and able to finish the assignment on their own, etc... are strategies that we see in college classes.   

Diversity in Classroom

Having a diverse classroom environment is extremely important in order to allow children from diverse cultures and backgrounds to feel included, but also to introduce your students to different ways of life that they may not be familiar with.  Having a diverse classroom opens up your students eyes to the world around them.  Different ways to incorporate diverse cultures into your classroom is through making sure you practice an anti-biased perspective.  By doing this, as a teacher, you will not feel biased against any particular race or ethnicity, and make sure to give equal representation to all groups.  Having a diverse classroom environment can include doing and having many things.  Making sure that children have different colors of crayons that relate to skin color is important, because not everyone's skin looks like the tan from the Crayola box.  In terms of literacy, having diverse types of literature is important.  Some children do not have a standard nuclear family, and when they can only read about this family in your classroom, they begin to question why they are different.  In one particular instance, in my Fce320 placement, a children had two mothers.  She was very upset when reading a book about a mother and a dad because she could not relate to that family.  The teacher promptly placed a book about a child having two mommies, and the child felt included again.  Another way to have a diverse classroom environment is by placing posters around the room that represent different races and cultures.  A teacher may choose to have a bulletin board filled with different languages.  In a classroom for my FCE321 class, a teacher has how to say "hello" in different languages on a bulletin board.  Furthermore, when reading books to students, it is important for the teacher to engage conversations about the books.  'Book talks' are extremely important because, according to McGee, "through talk children fine-tune ways of thinking about and interpreting literature."  Therefore, when we use diverse literature, as a group, we can discuss this literature and begin to understand the different backgrounds that this book represents.  McGee also discusses "response centered talk" where he describes "readers can share their own understandings and insights" which is also important when discussing how to make a classroom diverse.  In this instance, children can discuss how their families and background are different or alike to the ones being discussed in the books.

Overall, I believe having a diverse environment, particularly when it comes to literature is extremely important to allow each child to feel represented, and included in the classroom. 

It is imperative for teachers to explore the backgrounds of students in many different ways to help them learn to their best ability. There are many different ways for students to connect personally and culturally to reading. In Triplett’s article she discusses the importance of book talks as a way of getting to know students and their backgrounds in an experience-text relationship (ETR). She states “ETR is an instructional conversation strategy meant to help teachers integrate cultural relevance into comprehension instruction” (64). I like this statement because from experience in the classroom as a student and as a future teacher in the College of Education, I have seen many scenarios where students share experiences during book talks and connect to the story in many different ways when they would not be given the chance to discuss otherwise. She mentions that it is important to get children thinking and connecting to the book before the book is even opened by asking prompt questions. For TE 301, my CT always asked questions before reading the text to get the children involved and motivated before they knew what the title of the book was. I always liked listening to the stories and answers that the kids produced from the questions she asked because they could tell you a lot about the culture and home life of students. Although it is hard to make time for book talks in the classroom with the required material and tests that students are given nowadays, teachers have to understand that book talks are very important. Students can connect to the book and also connect with other students who share some aspects of their diverse culture, while also learning to become better readers. Whether small groups or large book talk discussion, children can connect to the book and discuss their personal connections with each other.
Another way to learn about students and their cultural experiences is to have a diverse selection of books. I know that when I was in elementary school we did not have that many diverse books for the few diverse students that attended my school to relate to. Having a diverse selection of books will allow every student to connect to books differently and having book talks about diverse books allow for different experiences to be shared for the whole class to learn about. To better understand every individual backgrounds you could always have every student create their own stories about themselves. I always enjoyed the Young Author books that we worked on in elementary. We were given blank books and a topic for which we could go about creating in any way possible. Some topics that could help me as a teacher learn more about students would be “All About Me”, “My Culture”, “My Favorite Personal Memories” and even “What People Do Not Know About Me”. These topics would allow the students to reach into their memory bank and past experiences so they can share with the class diverse literature created by students.