Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook

The article “Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook,” was an intriguing way of grading assignments with a lot of material and ideas to think about. The article has about seven sections that tells parents why teachers grade the way they do, and the ideas and thoughts that go behind this process. In the first section of the article, it allows parents to get an understanding why there is a standard-based grading and reporting system for teachers to use. The idea behind standards-based grading is that it allows a more accurate and consistence reports on student’s achievements for their families and students to understand their state and local standards on grading. Yet, with this grading standard it allows students to “make progress they feel motivated and more successful because enhancing perceived competence is motivating in and of itself. Students begin to think about grades and other assessments, which teachers use to provide informational feedback helpful to their success,” there parents get a better understanding that these grades create motivation for students and allows parents to check up on their child and see the progress they are making in school (2). However, in section two of the article the idea behind the purpose of grading was spot on and allows parents to get a good reasoning why these grades happen as, “the purpose of grading is to communicate, to all stakeholders, student achievement toward specific standards at a certain point in time to inspire future achievement and impact change” (3). From there the article then discusses the purpose of the report card is “to communicate separately: 1) Student achievement toward academic standards 2) Student progress related to attributes that promote secondary and post-secondary success,” which gives parents a better idea on why report cards are made. But also, another important piece of information that I thought was useful, and helpful with the parents would be the information on how parents can check their kids grades out online. This lets parents know how to check up on their child and see the types of grades they are getting in class. It gives a step by step process on how to check their grades by going on the Spokane Public Schools webpage and clicking on the parent’s toolbox. From there everything is smooth sailing, because now these parents will get to check up on their kids’ grades, when they didn’t know they had the option to check daily rather than waiting for a report card at the end of the quarter.         

California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template

The article “Assignment Template Aligned to California’s Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy,” is a helpful template that would give support to the California teachers as a guide to help themselves out, and for other states to gather information on their core state standards. Therefore, some useful tips that I found out would be reading rhetorically, which means to “focus not only on what the text says but also on the purposes it serves, the intentions of the author, and the effects on the audience” (4). This idea allows the teacher to scaffold these practices to help their students maximize the fluency with language and develop readers, writers, and thinkers within them. Also, I found the prereading tips to be helpful as it gives teachers some good ideas to help their students understand the book more clearly before reading. Some of those ideas were to “make a connection between their own personal world and the world of the text,” and “activate or develop prior knowledge and experience related to the issues addressed in the text,” also “share their knowledge relevant to the text,” as well “consider their opinions or biases before reading,” and “set purposes for reading,” lastly “begin to formulate the issue their writing will address” (4). All these ideas will be helpful for future teachers to use, including myself. Also, another good idea that I thought was interesting would have to be annotating and questioning the text, which my prior high-school teachers and college teachers used this strategy. Not only is the strategy helpful for teachers, but the teachers can encourage their students to do the same. This allows the students to personally connect to the author’s point and it allows them to reflect on the evidence or examples within the text. Also, annotating will allow the students to often ask questions about the author’s ideas or assumptions or even the challenges that he inferences or concluded. Lastly, I enjoyed the tips about Postreading which allows your students to summarize certain text with groupmates working together creating paragraphs that give main points within the text. 

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Art Instruction in Grades 6-12

Personally, I found the article “The Common Core State Standards,” to be very helpful and full of rich information. As the article stated that the common core state standard for English is that they all have different approaches for curriculum and instruction, that includes different approaches on reading and writing skills. That knowledge goes with specific literary works, such as genres, or forms, which involve the reading and writing process or strategies. From there the ideas behind common core standard that set general goals for student learning, but don’t specify what or how curriculum that will be taught with the students. However, it is up to the teacher to be knowledgeable and professional engaged with your students, while the important matter is to improve student’s literacy. Yet, it is the teacher’s job to also collaborate with their colleagues and the school district to get an idea on the curriculum that will be taught to the students, as you can formulate your beliefs and own decisions with your curriculum. Yet, with the No Child Left Behind Act it gives future teachers the proper ideas that many high-school students will lack the abilities and skills to be a good college student, as it is our job to help change that idea for the better. Therefore, for English language arts the common core state standard believes that literacy practice will allow your students to meet or exceed the standard to build on their knowledge and draws ideas on the world we live in and connect these ideas with text, language practices, and critical issues. But also, an idea that I continue to think about teaching would be, “Creating these spaces requires that you go beyond simply devising a set of tasks or activities and, instead, envision ways to draw upon and exploit students’ knowledge, experiences, and passions in ways that help them commit to achieving shared goals,” which is a very good idea to think about when your teaching (Pg. 5).

Graphic Novels

Personally, I believe that graphic novels could be very helpful for students for many possible reasons. One reason would be that some students don’t really like to read that much, which is relatable to students at a young age. Most young students at an early age don’t like to read that much and would rather watch a movie instead. Yet, with those movies the graphic novels would be way funnier to read for students, as they’ll get more details and ideas that the movie couldn’t fully corroborate into the movie. Also, the graphics could catch the eyes of a young student, who would like to make graphic novels for a living. However, at a young age I preferred to read graphic novels for Dragon Ball Z, instead of watching the episodes that didn’t fully put in a lot of the information at times or funny saying that Goku would say in the novel. Even though the fight scenes in the TV show was amazing to watch, but the graphic novel allows the reader to make the show in his head, while he reads the graphics scenes and the show plays inside his head. Yet, if the student doesn’t necessarily have that type of thinking or has trouble reading text in books. Then graphic novels would be perfect for students, who have trouble reading and understanding the text and meaning behind the words. This would allow the students to get visuals and ideas behind the words to help build a story inside their brain. But also, graphic novels are great piece of visual arts that could help connect to the students who are visual learners rather than linguistic type of learners. But another reason that graphic novels are helpful for students with learning would be that there isn’t a lot of text in-front of them. Often students feel overwhelmed with the amount of text on a page and get discouraged with that amount of reading. In which, these students don’t do the reading and often get left behind and forced to retake the class or take a reading class that is lower than their peers. 

Discussion As A Way Of Teaching

I really enjoyed reading the article, “Discussion As A Way of Teaching” because it allowed future teachers to get ideas on how to keep a discussion alive, while having students fully engaged in the discussion. The idea that many discussions fail because they have unrealistic expectations, unprepared students, no ground rules, reward systems askew, and no teacher modeling. All these complications tend to throw the discussions off task, while students lose interest in the discussion. However, there were some great ideas that would keep the discussion alive and would have students fully engaged within the discussion. The idea about the “Circles of Voices,” was rather very helpful as it gives teachers ideas such as the students getting time to gather their thoughts and ideas for three minutes before the discussion starts. But from there the teacher will allow the students a period of uninterrupted air time as they are taking turns in a circle or volunteering at random. This allows students who are shy or introverted to be involved at least once in the group discussion, as they won’t feel threaten or nervous about their peers’ thoughts or reactions towards their comments or beliefs. Also, some ways to keep the group discussion going for your students are, “Ask a question or make a comment that shows you are interested in what another person says” or “Ask a question or make a comment that encourages another person to elaborate on something they have already said.” However, the “Conversational Roles,” all have great ideas and roles that a teacher can use to help the discussion continue. The one role that was rather interesting would have to be the “Devil’s Advocate,” which the teacher would listen carefully and then formulate or express a contrary view, this view would keep the students in check and would allow them to explore a larger range of interpretations. Overall, the article is an important source to help future teachers out with keeping discussions alive and fun for everybody…