Structure and Organization

The article written by Gay Su Pinnell focuses on what teachers can do to make the best out of their teaching. Teachers have their theories of how they believe children learn. It is important to put this theory into action while you are in the classroom. There are many researched practices in the media that aid teachers in helping students succeed, but it some school invest financially in these products without getting to the main source of the problem. Improving teacher's skills rather than the technology and media is more beneficial to the school and the students. Pinnell states, "Sustainable improvement requires investment in building long-term capacity for improvement, such as the development of teacher's skills, which will stay with them forever, long after the project money has gone." This so true, because once these teachers learn and apply these skills, they will stick with them forever.

The article by Frey and Fisher given explicit strategies that aid teachers in organizing an effective environment to assure that learning takes place in the classroom. From various strategies like visual, verbal, physical, gestural, and environmental cues; to examples of questions to ask the students in helping them engage in metacognition. Once students become aware of how they are learning, they will be able to apply this in all other areas of their academics. The hard part is being able to help students become aware of their thinking and what works best for them.

This video highlights two teachers who are considered "great teachers" who excite the students and make learning exciting by empowering the students.

1. Do you believe that teachers must have a controlled classroom in order for effective learning to take place, or can chaos and learning take place simultaneously?

Real Life Inquiry

For my inquiry, I decided to do a spelling inventory on the boy that I babysit. I will refer to him as S in this paper. Since I have begun working with S, I have recognized his love of writing and reading. S is homeschooled, is in the second grade, and his mother is his teacher. She informed that S truly fell in love with writing and reading, when she began to let him choose whatever he wanted to write or read about. She truly believes this is how he has become such an advanced reader and writer. Before giving him the test, I predicted that he would not be challenged enough if I gave him the test around his grade level, so I choose the test for third through fifth grade.

When I began the test, S, gave me a look and said, “Really? Bed? This is too easy.” He seemed annoyed at first with all of the easy words, but as we went on, he began to see the challenge increase as the words become more complex. S correctly spelled seventeen out of twenty-five words. The majority of the words he missed were due to him doubling the wrong letter or using an “a” instead of an “i”. According to the rating scale, Samuel needs review in the “within word pattern,” because he missed the ight in bright. He spelled all of the words correctly in the “suffixes and affixes” stage, and then the next stage, “derivational relations”  is where he needs to be explicitly taught. Overall I was extremely impressed with his ability to spell as many words as he did correctly.