week 11

New Literacy Notes
*I am assigning a biome and having students search for pictures on the internet and create a comic strip using comic life*
1. What am I learning about my new literacy?
a. Visual Literacy includes diagrams, maps, tables, time lines and story boards. In my case, visual literacy will also include a comic strip.
b. In regards to traditional literacy, visual literacy is closely related. If one is not able to comprehend it would be difficult to understand what a time line would mean. Also, most time lines, tables, maps etc are labeled and not knowing how to read text would make understanding visual literacy merely impossible.
c. Visual literacy, like the traditional literacy is very diverse. Visual literacy expands beyond pictures and diagrams. I would not think of a time line to be part of visual literacy but I have learned this is actually very common. Also, there are the broad names (diagram, map, story board) but then there are TONS of different types of diagrams or maps expanding the use of visual literacy even more.
d. Visual literacy can be used across all subjects, but it is necessary to be clear and concise. Also, label whenever appropriate. For example, a map is pointless without a legend and a graph is irrelevant without the labeling of the x and y axis.
e. I am surprised how broad visual literacy is. Like traditional literacy, there are many different definitions and beliefs of what visual literacy entails.
f. In my placement, my students mostly have visual literacy. Although many of them cannot read, they make graphs with pictures, color in charts for the weather which are both uses of visual literacy. I think in the kindergarten level, visual literacy is crucial.
2. What am I learning about my new technology?
a. I find myself reading the tutorials a lot to familiarize myself with comic life. It is a complex program, but very useful once I become fluent.
b. It is hard to remember what all the buttons mean and how to format pictures. This will become easier as I practice more.
c. Comic Life is not like a lot of other technologies I have worked with. I do not know how to crop pictures and reformat. However, much like using a website, Comic Life requires navigation. I have found myself “lost” and not knowing how to get back to the area I was working in.
d. One thing I have noticed is that Comic Life is pretty common sense developed. Whenever I wonder where something is or how to do something, I usually only have to try a few times. I do not know if this is because I have some sort of technological fluency or if it is due to the simplicity of how the program was developed.
e. Students in my placement would not use Comic Life. I could do my initial idea with the use of magazines and have the students make a collage that is relevant to their specific topic.

Week 10

Vocabulary can be taught in book club in many different ways. Tompkins talked about how vocabulary during book club is more meaningful than simply learning words on their own. This is because when you learn new words, but can associate them with meaning and text, the words are more likely to become part of your vocabulary rather than a memorized word for a quiz or test. This is a great idea. I hated learning new vocab words because I looked at it as "busy work". However, learning new words with relation to a book I am reading, or a subject I am interested in makes a lot more sense. Using this technique, for a vocab lesson on ROTHMC I would have each student in the book club choose a word from the book they are unfamiliar with. From here, the students would have to define their word, find a synanom for their word and come up with a picture or symbol that relates to their word. This would help other students to not only hear the new vocabulary, but make sense of the words through the text as well as see an object or picture that is relevant. All three of these methods will help students to build vocabulary but also make meaningful connections. 

Week 9

This weeks readings were very interesting to me. I am curious about assessments as I still suffer from test anxiety. I am constantly looking for and thinking about other ways to assess students so as not to make them feel anxious. Tompkins had a lot of great ideas. 

Tompkins also talked about the word wall and high frequency words. I see this in my placement everyday. At the kindergarten level, they are constantly working on literacy. They have literacy centers for an hour and a half every day. This is a great way to build fluency. There are different stations that all work on different things. THis idea of centers can be taken into book club as well. The different centers could just be different activities of the week. For example, there is a center that works on ending sound matching. THere are pictures and the students have to draw a line to match the pictures up that end with the same sound. This could be done to work on fluency at the kindergarten level in book club. 

I work with a small group of students on tuesdays on high frequency words. These words are words that are in everyday language a lot but are hard to sound out phonetically. It is great to see these students learn these words because it is increasing their fluency and reading abilities. 

For my mini lesson, in regards to Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, I would have the students design a cereal box. THis would be more of an ending assessment. THey would have to create their own vision of the story on the front of the box. On the back of the box I want a self written synopsis and what the reader ranked this book as far as stars and why. On one side panel, will be a self written description of the main characters. On the other side panel would be a word search with definitions.