Yearning for more Learning

The chapter that Mary and I presented on “Maintaining a Community of Inquirers” was quite interesting. I learned a great deal from reading and discussing the seven underlying processes of inquiry for purposes of reminding ourselves of our beliefs and our vision of literacy. I am certain that education makes personal sense to everyone, as far as education always involving and connecting the known to the unknown.

Sometimes I am amazed at how a single inquiry can trigger all types of wonderful responses from my students. Some students are just waiting for the opportune time to express their perspectives and experiences on certain issues. Unquestionably, when an inquiry curriculum is rooted in personal and social known, familiarity pushes children to go beyond where they have been as they pursue new perspectives and more in-depth investigation on many other topics.

After presenting chapter 5, I was noticeably eager to dive right into the next item on the agenda, which was the ERRQ questioning strategy. I understand that my explanation of “The Thrill of Big-Wave Surfing” lesson plan was rather extensive. I apologize if I was too enthusiastic about imparting my lesson plan last night. However, I wanted to unload this huge upsurge – so to speak. By the way, I enjoyed listening to everyone’s ERRQ lesson plan ideas. Thanks!

Hafa Adai

Dr. Rivera, thank your for the coloring book. My street name is Binadu. I have always wondered what it means. The book you gave me says it is a deer. What a mysterious way of finding an answer!
I love this class more than my other class, and it is because of all of you. You guys bring so much of information into the classroom which I can take to my school. Geri, you had quite a bit of different ideas on how to incorporate the ocean into various activities. Lalanie, I truely know what you mean when we have to be careful when we want to try out a concept with our DI students and hope that the DI coordinator does not walk into our classroom. Mine is only 2 doors down. Today, she walked in--twice!. Barbara, your book sounds facinating. Hope to read it some day. Charlene, I always look forward to your presentation. Because working with SPED students is no cupcake. Your presentations always show how much your students are enjoying your class and learning.

Horray!!! We're getting out early!

We had fun today just like the other days. Gerri and Mary had a really good presentation. And the rest had good lesson plans. The activity that Dr. Rivera had presented was really fun. I'm going to look for more of these Reader's Theater scripts so I can use them with my students.
Well, good luck to all of you on the next assignment. Work hard but don't forget to relax a little bit ok.

Lainne

Logic

I love Mary's idea of teaching logic. I could really see it in my kids when logic is not being used. I remember when I first had my kids, I use to wonder what happen to their logic in doing things. I realized that maybe they weren't being taught effective logic skills. Teach logic to your kids so they can use their head to decide things. I really enjoyed the (activity 5) presentations. Even when some of us are restricted with how we teach, we still find ways around that restriction. This is what teaching is all about. I learned alot from everyone. I love all your ideas and strategies. You all are really helping me in my teachings. I guess this is why I ejoy our blog and moodle sessions so much. Because we are allowed to have a collaborative learning community.

Community of Inquirers

Presentation on Chapter 5 was made by Mary and Gerri. The first half of the presentation was done by Gerri who clarified what was discussed in the Chapter. This helped in sorting out through the information provided in the book, which was a whole lot. Mary talked about the three types of logic which reminded me about the interesting idea of tension driving the logic process. She also talked about parent partnerships. We thought that the services for students in SPED get more parent cooperation. Maybe we should try to get all our students into a SPED type of service?

Barbara

About the IRA meeting yesterday . . .

It was interesting at the same time very musical again. I guess the theme explains why it's very musical. The theme for this month was "Move to the Rhythm of BOOKS through MUSIC!"
That morning we only had one presentor. She was Maria Borja Dooley, a local author. Her book was titled, "Bonita the Bat". In her presentation, she told her story of the success of her book. She read the very interesting book to all of us. We can really see how successful the book is because of its beautiful story and creative illustrations. The suthor read the story with passion and full of emotions in her voice. She explained that "Bonita the Bat" will fly from school to school in the Marianas.
IRA President Aimee Lizama presented Powerpoint on Reading lessons with music. We read different books with music. The background music was played by a band (Aimee's friends with her husband). Very interesting points were discussed. Members were given the opportunity to make up their own song with music about IRA. A few volunteer presented their song.
Read-A-Thon winners were announced and awarded that morning. The winner that's going to Toronto, Canada is so lucky!

IRA MEETING

Hi Everybody:
This Saturday March 10, 2007 at 8:30 a.m. You still have time to enroll, which is mandatory for this class. See you'll at Nikko Hotel.

Oh, what fun it is to be ...

That’s how I feel about yesterday’s class. Despite of all the tensions I had about the presentation, everything went OK!

Lalainne and Charlene—Good job with your presentation. I am till today still afraid to approach my student’s parents. Your input about how collaboration is important, that parents must become involved, and a good time to do it might be during the open house was so informative. My next year’s open house is going to be much better.

Gerri—What caught my eye about your presentation was the exit card. What a wonderful idea! Students fill out a card about what they learned that day and one question they have for that day. Cannot wait to try this one. Love it.

Charlene—You are doing so many activities with your SPED kids that I never knew was possible. It is wonderful how you have worked writing through visual presentation with the graffiti board. Loved all you artifacts.

Barbara—To me, personally, the DVD was out of this world. You are right about “We are learning as well as teaching from our students.”

Dr. Rivera—Reading as a whole class “Under the United Blue Sky” brought an ache in my heart. Make it mandatory that all of your students read this book. The plurals activity brought on some great laughs to end a stressful day into a goodnight.

This was a good evening for me.

This evening was great. I think Charlene and I did a good job in our Article 4 Presentation. And also, everyone did a great job in their individual Writing Process presentation. I learned so much in all these presentations. Now my folder got thicker! Hehehe . . . But the best part that I really enjoyed was the activities that Dr. Rivera presented to us. I'm definately going to use these fun activities with my students to get away from DI. I'm sure they'll love these activities. Out of all the activities we had this evening, I really liked the flower part. I think with the type of questions asked in this activity, it really brings out our inner selves and our sensitive side. Fun, fun, fun is what I would call this class. I'm really getting the hang of this. I'm really starting to like this class and I'm really enjoying. Have a nice evening!

Lalainne

Writing is Exciting!

Everyone did such a wonderful job presenting today! I liked the way Charlene and Lalaine were able to contribute their experiences about Direct Instruction. It was interesting seeing a Progress Report from the Division of Special Education for the very first time.

I liked the way Mary took the time to define and then mentioned all of the strategies in prewriting. She was really right about being patient and encouraging students to do their best in writing.

Charlene, I enjoyed hearing about the vast amount of learning that your students experience and how journals activate their cognitive abilities.

Barbara, I enjoyed listening to the creative suggestions and strategies that you used to encourage your students to build their writing skills. You are right! Teaching is definitely a learning process in itself.

Activity 4 presentations

Writing is a long process that must be practiced. It is a process that requires students to think, reflect, and edit. It helps students improve their spelling, sentence structure, and create ideas/questions. Students must work and practice the writing process. I noticed that everyone was interested in their students writing process. There were so many ways to introduce writing. Keep it up everyone, never loose your enthusiasm for teaching.
I thought that every one's presentation was wonderful. Barbara's idea of an e-essay was pretty interesting. This is really new to me. I could really use the e-essay as another alternative assessment at the end of the semester for my students. Its also a good way to present to parents on how their students are doing. I really want to learn how to do it. I wish we could finish the DVD. I wanted to see how it looked.

Strategies for the Writing Process

Learning logs was presented by Gerri. She presented many ways this can be done. I like the part she suggested using a daily theme. I tried using a literature log in my class which I did not think was very successful. One of the faculty who teaches in my department uses a quote a day. She uses the quote as a theme for the day.

Mary's presentation gave us strategies on pre-writing which I thought was good and something that I'd like to try. She puts the writing process in an organized fashion that makes sense. I am impressed that her students, at 1st grade, did pretty well in webbing.

Lalaine's presentation had very stylistic illustrations. She used a butterfly theme throughout the different slides. I like that she brought student samples to show the class.

Charlene mentioned that she provided food at her sharing. I find that works really well even in my department. She brought colorful samples that she posted on the wall. Like Mary, she stressed on the pre-writing. She told us about her use of graffiti board in reflecting about the book, Faithful Elephants. She modified the circle writing strategy by introducing editing.

This sharing process is very helpful in generating ideas for my program.

Thanks -- Barbara

Presentation

"How you teach is just as important as what you teach." Good job, Barbara. Loved your concept that we teachers need to "buy in" our students and lead from behind. My students need the opportunity to read different things other than books. I brought in today's newspaper. Some browsed through it. I guess there was nothing interesting in it. (I don't blame them. I did not find anything interesting in it either.) I do not have any children's magazine. Anyone, if you have an extra copy, please pass me one. Thank you.

Lesson Plans!

I think that I speak for everyone when I say that I went over board on my lesson plan. I should have learned that I tend to stress out when the work is as simple as ABC. Everyone's ideas for the poetry lesson plan was educational and worthwhile. If its ok with everyone I would like to take ideas from each one of you to use in my classroom. The different presentation and ideas sparked my interest for a new activity for my students.

Good job, Barbara!

Barbara's presentation was quick but elaborate. I hope my presentation turns out the same way, quick but elaborate. Besides the good presentation, I really liked the sharing of our poetry lesson plan. It gives us more ideas on activities and creativity. Mary also shared a good website where we can get poems and even here the real authors read their own poems. We heard Robert Frost's voice and that really gave me a different interpretation of his poem, "The Road Not Taken". Thanks for sharing, Mary.

Work, work, and more work... We'll all be so busy this week especially for me and Charlene because we both are expected to do two powerpoint presentations. Good luck to us, Charlene! And to all, have a busy and literacy day!

I really enjoyed Barbara's presentation on The Authoring Cycle as a Curricular Framework for Reading. Barbara's presentation reinforced the fact that students need many opportunities to do more exploring by reading many different things.

Additionally, I really enjoyed hearing the various poetry lesson plan ideas from our colleagues. Listening to Robert Frost read "The Road Not Taken" was such a treat. He had all the right emotions for all his verses and stanzas. Plus his voice was so powerful.

Finally, the counting rapidly out loud in English and Chamoru was quite an experience. At first, I felt confident counting quickly from 1 to 10 in English. However, when we switched to a combination of quick responses in English and Chamoru, my brain was not processing the information fast enough and everything I wanted to utter was not coming out right. Now I realize why we have to be more patient and understanding when teaching students to speak the English.

Authoring cycle as a curricular framework

I am totally sold on the authoring cycle. I would like to see if we can do a training on how to do this on Guam.

Lesson plan sharing is such a good resource of ideas for me. What other teachers are doing in class and what is successful for them is information I gain that makes the course productive for me. Such as Charlene's special vocabulary binder, and Geri's poem strategy about "I Am From" encouraging students to write about themselves.

Thanks so much -- Barbara

Presentation

Yaay! Lets clap for Barbara for doing a great job. I thought that Barbara did a good job at explaining what the Authoring cycle is. I could really picture the process of Authoring Cycle and its benefits. One idea that she quoted was learners expect entertainment and engagements. I say bring it on. As long as I am still young I can learn to entertain and engage my students to read. The key is the techniques and strategies that create meanings that you would use. Lets all be creative and spontaneous but with meaning. These are just some of the ideas that really caught my eye. I as well as the rest of us can relate to all these topics. Because these have an impact on all of us.
*How you teach is just as important as what you teach
*You move back and forth between authoring and learning to expand meaning
*create an environment filled with books- provide opportunity
*have a variety of reading activities with different strategies--keep interest
*Millennial student is a non-lineal in learning
*Learners expects entertainment and engagements

About Saturday Morning

Hey guys,
I was at the Nikko Hotel this Saturday and I had fun. But unfortunately, I didn't see you guys there except Gerri, who was so awake that morning! Where were you guys huh? Hard to wake up that early in the morning huh? Well, let me just share with you guys what happened at that IRA meeting. That morning was very musical. Students from Mt. Carmel were there to perform all throughout the morning. And the instruments they played were xylophones and drums. They were terrific. I wish I knew how to play an instrument well. And of course they had three presentations and the one that I was able to see was "Panel Theatre with Fire Works". That was awesome. The presentors for this were from Japan and they brought with them products from their country that they have been using in the classrooms for thirty years now and are still very effective. These products were called Panel Theatre. It's just basically using felt like material from Japan and creating different visuals with it. It was a really good, entertaining, and funny presentation. Although it was difficult for us to understand them because they were talking and singing in Japanese, they were still able to get their messege across because of their wonderful product that's very educational. I wish you guys were there to see it. I'm glad I ended up at that section of the ballroom. That morning was a success for me. I look forward to attend upcoming IRA meetings because of that experience, even though I didn't win a single prize from the raffle! But hopefully, I'll win next time.

Yesterday's Class

Hello Everyone
I already miss you guys. I have not laughed this much in a long while. The activity was wonderful especially after a long hard day at work. The stories where funny and Dr. Rivera, what a concept! I look forward to using all the ideas generated by everyone to use the write round activity in future endeavours. I also liked the idea that Dr. Rivera went over the chapter. It refreshes my mind and made me look for things I missed in the textbook. Dr. Rivera, when you mentioned "Don't fear writing" well, that was like you were talking to me directly. I loath writing. But, I am learning just like my students to keep working at it. Also, you mentioned about giving students choices, such as, learning centers. Subtly, I have began planning on how to intergrate all this ideas into DI instruction without rising eyebrows. As I mentioned in class,I have squeezed journal writing into my DI instruction time as of Monday. The students do this after they finish all DI work and while waiting for me to start a new lesson, or during recess and lunch. The students love this new concept. Today, my students were so impatient waiting for me to give them a new topic for journal writing. By the end of the day one student came up to me and said she wanted another topic so that she can keep writing. Wow! If only we had more time and NO DI. I have not read any of my student's entries yet. I want them to keep writing and hope to bring home their stories this weekend. See you all on Saturday 8:30 a.m. Nikko Hotel.