In Teaching Children's Literature, one thing I'm learning about is the importance of design. Illustrations in picture books have evolved over time. Initially, in "Dick and Jane" books, the pictures were symmetrical and representational. They simply showed exactly what was going on as described in the text. As children's literature has evolved, we've started to see other styles of illustration emerge.
And with other styles of illustration, we also see the evolution of text-picture relationships to include.
Not really ever having taken an art class, I wasn't sure how to evaluate a book based on its design. Sure, I could tell that Journey, by Aaron Becker is a beautiful book. I just wasn't sure why. This infographic (below) and this awesome video created by designer/ author Carter Higgins helped me understand the basics. Design in extremely important in a picture book. And in a wordless picture book like Aaron Becker's 2014 Caldecott Honor Book, it plays an important role in helping the reader understand what is going on with only visual cues. Check out my video explaining how Becker uses design to propel the plot, convey mood, and express a theme. Still Interested? Check out...
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One of the summer classes I'm taking through NC State is called Technology Integration Theory and Practice. Among other projects, I'll be designing content-area lessons for a science, math, language arts, social studies, PE/ health and fine arts class. All of these lessons will involve using technology in a way that supports the curriculum. I'm excited about this project as I'll be moving to 5th grade next year and will be able to create materials for my future students and colleagues.
My first lesson is a science lesson. Science was always my least favorite subject in school, and since I've always avoided it, it is probably my weakest subject. I decided to form a lesson plan based off of what my 6th graders are currently learning from their science teacher (I teach language arts). That way, I figured, my students could help me with the content information, and it might prove useful to the science teachers in my school or at least serve as a study tool for the students. Right now, the students are studying a unit called "Growing and Flowing." Their essential question is "How do plans survive and reproduce?" The students have already learned (through flipped videos, teacher instruction, diagrams, etc.) about the parts of a flower and how it reproduces. But... according to their teacher, many of the students didn't do too well on the last quiz because they're not studying and haven't committed their learning to memory. I decided that an "expression of learning" activity in which students taught their peers (or even younger grades) to identify the parts of the flower and their functions, could increase students' mastery of the standards. Explain Everything is an app that worked well with this activity. Below you will see my lesson plan and a "student sample" that I made with the help of Jaden, Sarah, Ajay and Alex. Thank you for teaching me about the parts of a flower and their purposes! Thanks too to Ms. M, science teacher extraordinaire, for checking over my science facts. Suzie Studentface's Student Example:A few weeks ago I handed in a letter of resignation to the Wake County Public School System. Although I love North Carolina, my school, and my community, I feel like it's time to move on to the next adventure. I am sad to go. In fact, since I made this decision I've often felt a twinge of guilt. How could I leave in a time when many North Carolina teachers are moving on to higher paying jobs either out of state or in different fields? Working hard to earn a Master's degree and not being compensated for it makes it easier to leave. Giving all of my time and energy to a job for five years, working hard to become a team leader, department chair, directing school plays, and sponsoring after-school clubs, and then having my tenure taken away makes it easier to leave. But the friends I've made, the connection I feel to my community and my school, my love for my profession and my students, and the feeling that North Carolina is my home make it hard to say goodbye. I'm not leaving the teaching profession all together, (I don't think that would be possible for me), just changing my job title from North Carolina teacher to International Educator for the next few years. Teaching internationally has been a dream of mine for a long time now, so I'm excited to share that I will be teaching 5th grade in Kuwait next year at the Universal American School. Kuwait is a small country in the Middle East with a population of around 3 million people. It's very tiny compared to the United States. See a size comparison below comparing Kuwait to North Carolina from ifitweremyhome.com. Many people I've spoken with are worried for my safety as there is a lot of media right now about dangers in the Middle East. I have talked with several individuals who are living in Kuwait now or have in the recent past and they all say that they feel safer in Kuwait than when they lived in the United States. There are many American interests in Kuwait (buisness, oil, education), there are several American military bases in Kuwait, and as a culture, it is just safer (no guns, no alcohol). Here's an interesting comparison from ifitweremyhome.com about what life is like in Kuwait as compared to the states. I am eager to experience a new culture, to feel what it's like to be the one who is "different." In a time when our media misrepresents the Middle East and there's a lot of cultural misunderstanding, I am eager to listen and learn. I also suspect that traveling internationally will deepen my appreciation for my American citizenship and the rights that it allows me. There's a lot to do before I leave. I need to finish out the school year with my 6th graders and say goodbye to my students, colleagues and friends (and clean out my classroom, yikes!); finish my Master's degree in New Literacy and Global Learning from NC State (I have three classes to go this summer); figure out all of the tricky paperwork involved in getting a Visa to teach in Kuwait; sell most of my possessions; visit family in Illinois; go to the UK with my best friend, and hopefully learn Arabic. It's going to be a crazy summer, and it's going to be hard to have so much change happen at once, but I think it's worth it when you're pursuing your dreams. And as corny and idealistic as that sounds, that's what I'm doing.
A week or two ago, I was talking with a few of my students about our blogs and Thibault (Hi Thibault!) asked if I had updated mine recently. I quickly pulled out my phone to check the date of my last post and sheepishly admitted to a lapse in writing... a LONG lapse. Thanks for the accountability check, sir! Another student, Olivia, a talented writer and a blogger herself, challenged me to write a post before the end of Spring break. She will do the same. So thank you, Olivia and Thibault. I am not necessarily writing because I have anything brilliant to say. I am writing because you said you would and I said I would and therefore I am. I needed the encouragement and it's really cool that it came from my own students.
Teaching has been great this year. I have awesome students (clearly), work with an excellent teaching staff, and am enjoying my graduate classes at NC State. This semester I'm taking a class called Teachers as Leaders and another called Theory and Research in Global Learning. The latter has been particularly interesting because I'm pursuing an international teaching position and love learning about other cultures and how education is impacted by global issues. Here's a project I created for Theory and Research in Global Learning about gender equity in education around the world. I love that the NLGL program at State gives its students such freedom over what they research and create. The freedom has allowed me to do explore topics that are very interesting and useful to me. This concept of autonomy is something that I've been trying to bring into my classroom this year. After break (tomorrow!) we're starting a research project, the "I Wonder" project through which students will have a good deal of freedom over what they research and how they synthesize and express their learning to their classmates. Still sketching out the details of the project, so I'll leave you here and get back to work. If you’re looking for something to read this month, Before We Were Free, by Julia Alvarez is a great pick! The book’s protagonist, Anita, is a fifth-grader in the Dominican Republic, a country in the Caribbean. Something big is going on in the DR! On a seemingly typical day of school, Anita’s cousins are called out of class; they must move out of the country that very day for their own safety. Anita gazes up at the picture of the Dominican dictator, El Jefe, that hangs in her classroom and holds in her tears so someday she might make him proud. But as events unfold, Anita begins to question everything she has ever known about her country. Life seems to be upside-down! Tio Toni is missing, Papi talks in code and listens to a secret radio station, and Mami is in a constant state of nerves. After the secret police come to tear through the family’s home, Anita overhears her father talking with the American consulate about danger, change, and a revolution! Could it be that El Jefe isn’t the hero she thought him to be? Anita will introduce you to her haughty older sister, her silly cousins, and the new boy at school whom she secretly envisions herself marrying. You’ll meet the eccentric Chucha—she refuses to wear anything but purple and sleeps in a coffin instead of a bed, Anita’s worrying Mami, and her inspirational Papi who changes the face of his country and teaches Anita the sacrifice it takes to be able to fly free! Before We Were Free is an excellent book and if this description pricked your interest in the slightest, Alvarez’s book will do far more. So go ahead and start reading; it’s an eye-opening journey. This past Monday and Tuesday, I interviewed nine sixth-grade students during their lunch break to discuss digital literacy and learning at our school. We entered the student services conference room where I conducted the interview, and sat down in high-backed chairs circled around a large table, surrounded by whiteboards. One student excitedly whispered, “Wow! It’s like we’re at a business meeting or something!” making me realize that it’s not often that we respectfully ask students for their input on big decisions about what we teach and how we teach, and really listen to them.
As I posed a set of questions about technology, teaching, and school improvement, ideas about topics ranging from teleportation to Gardner’s multiple intelligences spilled out of these clever young people. They provided some great insight about technology, pedagogy, and content, passionately expressing their ideas about how we can make education better at our school. Not only did they provide insight on how today’s youth is using technology, but they gave me some great ideas about my current educational practices and proved that by involving students in the decision-making process, students will be more engaged in learning. The technology that my students use doesn’t surprise me. They use laptops, cellphones, and gaming consoles like X-box. They also mentioned pencils, calculators, and paper as technology tools, which I think was pretty brilliant of them. My students use apps like Facetime to communicate with their friends; they use their laptops to check the homework site and look for resources their teachers have posted. (Their answers might have been swayed toward academic purposes as I’m not sure they wanted to talk about online gaming, social media, and other personal interests in front of their teacher.) When asked for suggestions about how we could make our school better, first as a broad question, and then in terms of technology use, the students gave specific, insightful feedback. Students like hands-on learning, like to learn at their own pace, appreciate differentiated learning, like using computers at school, and want learning to be fun. “Students should be put into classes by how they learn,” one student suggested. “You know, like some learn best by hearing, some by doing things by hand, or seeing things. Each teacher could be an expert on teaching a certain way.” “We have too much homework,” one student responded. “What if we had longer school days but we had less homework?” “I hate worksheets,” a young man added. “Less worksheets. More computer time.” When asked about technology in our school, students talked about the poor internet connection. (We’ve been having connectivity issues since the school year started.) They dreamed about “iPad desks,” huge movie screens, and apps on the student-response clickers that we use but they also devised “realistic goals” as they termed them. We discussed a one-to-one policy and BYOD and students acknowledged that a BYOD policy would save money for the school, but wouldn’t necessarily be fair for students who had no devices to bring. “I would feel bad for the kids who couldn’t bring it in or don’t have a phone.” They decided that a BYOD policy would be good, but that the school should provide devices for students who could not bring their own. While I appreciated learning about my students’ technology use and hearing their advice for improving the school, it was the time that I spent with them, and seeing them problem-solve and interact in a small group that I really enjoyed the most. The student conference center is free often during lunch, so I’d like to make these meetings a regular thing. Just finished James Beane's A Reason to Teach Creating Classrooms of Dignity and Hope (Teaching the Democratic Way). I was tired of taking notes, so I decided to tweet my thoughts and favorite quotes while I was reading and organized some of them below using Storify. Bean makes some compelling arguments as to why teachers should be teaching in a democratic way which includes giving the students a say in what they're taught, how they're taught, and how they're evaluated. It's reinforcing everything I'm learning about autonomy in the classroom and using problem based learning to make learning engaging, relevant, and reflective of society. For the past two weeks, my New Media class has focused on the differences between Chinese and American schools, digital literacy, and Daniel Pink's theory about high-touch, high-impact skills that are "right brained" in nature. Yong Zhao's book, Catching up or Leading the Way, illustrates the many differences between Chinese and American schools, explains the history of education in the two countries, their current policies, and where these systems of education are headed.
At first, the keju covered many subjects, but eventually, its focus was narrowed down to just classic literature. Because such a narrow focus was put on memorizing the classics, and that was the only way to earn one’s way into the upper class, individuals were discouraged from pursuing scientific and technological study. This produces “gaofen dineng students, which literally means high scores but low ability. It is used to refer to students who score well on tests but have few skills that are usable in society,” (Zhou, 2009, p. 81). The gaofen dineng problem in China suggests that “education that is oriented solely to preparing students to achieve high scores on tests can be harmful to both individuals and the nation,”(Zhou, 2009, p. 85). Now, China exports a majority of the world’s manufactured goods. But because the Chinese do not own the companies, the money is going out of the country. In 2008, China’s president, Hu Jintao, called for educational reform to address this issue. Saying that China was far behind developed countries in the areas of science and technology development, he challenged the country to become an “innovative nation,” (Zhou, 2009, p.68). ...what China wants is what America is eager to throw away—an education that respects individual talents, supports divergent thinking, tolerates deviation, and encourages creativity by a system in which the government does not dictate what students learn or how teachers teach; and culture that does not rank or judge the success of a school, a teacher, or a child, based only on test scores in a few subjects determined by the government, (Zhou, 2009, p. vi). Zhou points that out innovation comes from innovative people and innovative people are not produced by school systems that teach to the test and produce cookie-cutter learners, (2009, p.vii). This rigorous “teach to the test” model is what China is struggling to escape (but can’t because of the college entrance exam) and it’s what we seem to me moving toward. It’s also important to note that “…the United States remains strong in science, technology and other economic activities, which suggest that American education has defied the “crisis label” and been able to produce the talent necessary to support the nation’s economy,” (Zhou, 2009, p.72). We must learn from the Chinese education system and step away from excessive high-stakes, high-pressure standardized tests. We must continue to encourage innovation, divergent thinking, creativity, and American entrepreneurial spirit. Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future presents compelling arguments as to why we should be moving away from a test-based, centralized education system and get in touch with the "six senses" of the right side of the brain. I start to get into Pink's ideas in this Flip Grid and will expand on them more in the future. Zhao, Y. (2009). Catching up or leading the way: American education in the age of globalization. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. The 6th grade open house was Wednesday night this week. It was great to meet my students' parents and get a sense of how invested they are in their students, the teachers, and the school. If you missed it, here's a quick Prezi that contains some information about my class and curriculum. When parents entered the classroom, I had them write similes on notecards to compare their children to things in the classroom. Here are some great responses.
How can we make open house better next year? Please comment below. I love John Dewey, and not just because of his cool hipster mustache (see below). It's amazing that Dewey lived a century ago, yet what he believed and wrote about education is just as applicable in today's society as it was in the early 1900s.
Here's some context: Dewey lived during a revolutionary time in the United States, during an era of progressive social reforms. The country was moving away from an agrarian society into an industrialized one, when children transitioned from working on farms to working in factories. Factories were not safe, but it's important to note that children played a vital role in society and they had mentors while they worked. An influx of immigrants and poor working conditions led to child labor laws, a mandatory school attendance law, and reforms to the justice system so that juveniles would not be tried and incarcerated with adults. These factors led to the idea of early adolescence as being an isolated stage of development, separated from society and many would argue that this stigma about middle school prevails today. I just finished reading The School and the Society and The Child and the Curriculum, which Dewey wrote in the early 1900s amidst this social change. Dewey pointed out several things that schools were doing wrong: teaching subjects in isolation, ignoring current technology, treating school as an entity separate from society, treating children like cups and "filling them with knowledge." (Any of that sound familiar?) He argued that just as society was changing, so should the school system. Here are some of Dewey's thoughts and mine. 1. What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. 2. When society changes, education must change too. For school should not be separate from society, a place isolated from the world. It must play a valuable role in society. 3. Society is full of collaboration, so students must learn to collaborate in the classroom. 4. We must teach children a love of serving their communities and provide them with instruments of effective self-direction. 5. The "center of gravity" in the educational system must be the child. The child is first. The curriculum is second. The curriculum should address the immediate social needs of the children. 6. Students must inquire, communicate, construct, and apply what they're learning through artistic expression. This reflects the learning process. 7. The school should be a place where the student REALLY LIVES, where she may gain a life experience in which she should delight and find meaning for its own sake. 8. School life and home life should not be isolated things. There is a gap between what we experience at home and what we do at school. Students should use what they learn at home and school and use what they learn at school at home. School and social life must be connected. (Dewey would totally back a BYOD policy.) 9. Students should study things in relation to their real-life context. 10. Subjects should be taught in an interconnected way. All studies grow out of relation in one great common world and the school is an organic whole. 11. Students NEED choice in school. They need to have control over what and how they're learning. If we are charged with preparing today's youth for the democratic process, we must teach them to take risks, make their own choices, and stand behind those choices. Otherwise, how can we expect them to do this when they are adults. 12. Develop is not only demonstrating knowledge on an assessment, it's gaining knowledge through experience and demonstrating knowledge through application. Dewey's theories had a great effect on education in the United States and deeply influenced progressive education, which really involved problem-based learning, teaching the whole child, individualized education, teaching interdisciplinary units rather than subjects in isolation, and addressing social issues and using children's interests to drive the curriculum. This leads me to ask myself, how can I be more like Dewey? Here are some goals I have to that end.
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Jill Zappiateacher, grad student, bibliophile Archives
October 2015
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