Session+3

=Session 3=

=3.1: Monitoring Understanding=

**How do you monitor students' understanding in your classroom?** As a Spanish language teacher, I am often monitoring their use of the oral language. I monitor understanding in my classroom in many different ways. As a formative assessment, one of the ways I monitor is through the use of clipboarding. I have a columned list of all the students in each class and there are certain times during an activity where they know they are being monitored on their showing me understanding through a short conversation with various other students. As the students are performing their task at their tables or walking around the room, I have my clipboard and informally walk around the room and overhear their conversations as assigned to them. They earn a score between a zero and a two. Zero is no understanding presented and two is the utmost understanding. Although I understand there may be students that understand a concept but may be too shy to show their understanding in a presentational manner, if this is the task, it must be performed orally in order to show me that they know it.

**How might that practice change as you implement more technology?** One advantageous change that could occur with new technology could be students showing me they understand by presenting in a less threatening way, through the use of video and audio recordings. As it is now, I can never get to every single student in a two minute informal assessment manner. If the students were recording themselves or one another and they were compiled in some sort of file, I could view or listen to them all at a later time. This could gauge how I would approach my next lesson.

Another idea would be to have them show me understanding by giving them a prompt such as an image, sentence or action and they are required to write their answer in a googledoc which serves as an instant “chatroom” so to speak. Their typed response would show me instantaneous understanding.

=3.2=

**Before reading**, activate prior knowledge. After activating prior knowledge, to make the new information connect, link it to the prior knowledge. Setting purpose is extremely important. Why are we reading this? How will it affect my life? Previewing the reading is important to see how the whole text can aid in student understanding. Making predictions is a motivator, but also as the new information is presented, it’s validated or discarded. An instructional practice I find success in using is encouraging students to generate their own questions. I like the activity of turning the headings into questions. It's an easy way to motivate and make predictions about what they are going to be reading.

**During reading**, questioning is crucial to deepen understanding. Fix-up strategies can clarify a misunderstanding. Making connections to personal experiences, other text and world issues makes it that much more meaningful. Summarizing the text is a valuable way to see that what was being read, was comprehended. The more one can correctly summarize, the more the reader got out of the reading. Think aloud is beneficial as well. I feel as if it is another way to summarize, and put into your own words, what was understood from the reading.

**After reading** ﻿strategies are a way to help students reflect on what they have read, review information and applications to real-life, and presenting an understanding of content and concepts learned through written and spoken word. Writing in a journal about what they read is an example of reflection. I utilize journals in this manner to put their thoughts on paper, whether the thoughts be personal or factual questions relating to the content. The encouragement of retelling the reading can be presented through role playing as well. This activity can be more entertaining and memorable for the students and they get to "be" the characters or scenario in the reading. I often use this method and from student feedback, I know it's among one of the favorites.

=3.3 Wordle as a Before Reading Strategy= //Wordle can call attention to words in a text that appear most frequently. The larger the word, the more often it appears in the text.//
 * What does it seem that Wordle can do for the user? **

//Wordle seems like it could be very useful. It's an eye-catching way to see the key words in the text without skimming. It gives the reader a very clear idea of the meaning of the text.//
 * How useful does Wordle seem to be as a before reading strategy for students? **

//I think a Wordle could benefit a wide range of learners. In regards to multiple intelligence and different learners, I believe linguistic leaners would definitely benefit because of the mere fact that a Wordle is a compliation of words. Someone strong in spacial intelligence would benefit because a wordle does look like a picture as well as a compliation of words. A student easily distracted or overwhelmed by too much text may benefit due to the fact that a wordle looks more like a puzzle of a few words rather than a daunting sea of sentences.// media type="custom" key="9879109"
 * What type of learners would benefit from using a Wordle? **


 * What observations and predictions about your article can you make based on this Wordle? **

Putting myself in the shoes of someone whom knew nothing about the article topic, I would have to say that I would predict the article was speaking about a genocide. I can predict that the genocide probably occurred against Armenians since those words appear the largest in the Wordle. The fact that Turkey is a word that appears almost as largely as the other words, I can predict that the people of Turkey had something to do with the genocide. Messy, killed and historians also appear in larger text in the Wordle so I would predict the article has something to do with the beliefs and findings of historians in regard to the genocide. I may predict that they are comparing the genocide to the Nazi invasion on the Jews as those two words are found in the Wordle as well.

I can make connections by seeing other keywords in the context of the Wordle. Some other smaller text are words such as “Congress, majority, lawyer, Bush, committee,” this may lead me to think that the article is talking about the debate going on a few years ago in regards to the acknowledgement of the genocide on the part of the United States. I know that to this day there is much debate as to whether or not it was an actual “genocide”.
 * What connections to your background knowledge can you make? **

=3.4 Annotated Article - During Reading Strategy=

media type="custom" key="9879433" align="left"

My thoughts after reading the artice weren't too much different than after viewing the Wordle. I did know about the subject, however, I do think that there were so many unimportant words in the Wordle, I wasn’t quite sure how it all fit and what to make of the article. After reading the article, I was able to see and remember certain words from the Wordle and it proved to be that much more memorable.

I used crocodoc and I found that having the ability to mark up the text was equal to if not less desirable than an actual paper and pencil article. I do like having a hardcopy of articles to read rather than reading things online, especially if the article is more than a page in length and I have to scroll down to read more. I do, however, see annotating electronically as a great benefit. It can be shared with others in a very easily transmittable fashion. I notice when I was downloading the crocodoc file, it asked me if I wanted to choose the option to allow others to mark up the text. This could prove very valuable when collaborating with others.

= 3.5 Top Five Vocabulary - After Reading Activity =
 * Armenians || Armenians are the race of people whom were targeted in the mass premeditated killings by the Turks after WWI. ||
 * genocide || A term coined by Raphael Lemkin to mean the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national,racial, political,or cultural group. ||
 * Turkey || A country in the Middle East that was home to many people of whom were involved in a massive genocide. ||
 * killed || 1.5 Armenians were systematically killed in a genocide after WWI. ||
 * historians || Turks deny the historians findings that what happened in Turkey was a genocide. Rather, the Turks believe it was a result of the Armenians merely losing a "messy" war. ||