Madison's Blog

This weeks blog post on Visual Literacy is complicated simply because the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts does not factor in or include standards about Visual Literacy. It is important to understand as a teacher that there is so much more to literacy and English Language Arts than just books and reading and writing. There is performative works that convey literature and that is also considered literature, or artwork or music. Literature should be considered in a very broad sense, because the more broad the more there is to learn about; and in turn, more to teach to students. Thinking about literature in visual forms also helps students with different learning styles, and pushes students to be creative and think outside the box. It is unfortunate that some people do not even know that literature can encompass so many much more than books. I am glad that my time here at Eastern has furthered my thinking about what literature means as a whole. Going into teaching, ...

I do not have much experience with graphic novels, and I have only read one or two and they have both been in college courses. I find it really surprising that I never read any graphic novels in elementary or middle school. Growing up, I always thought that graphic novels were just comic books, or was a specific genre that I just was not interested in. Turns out, there is way more to graphic novels than comic books, and they are much more beneficial for English Language Arts classrooms than one might know. Thinking about graphic novels while going into teaching, I find that graphic novels are great for students who are visual learners. Students get stuck in reading the same format over and over again in their classes throughout their K-12 education. Graphic novels break this sequence, and open more learning opportunities for students that have trouble with reading regular novels and books without any visual components. I know that I have gotten so much more out of reading graphic nove...

While reading over the English Language Arts Common Core Standards I found that many things they hope to incorporate and enforce are things that all teachers really need to use regardless of subject. Science, history, art, and other subjects all need to learn how to speak and listen within a classroom, because collaboration is a must have in an education system. These Common Core standards also help teachers that end up teaching a subject they have not studied in. At least in my public school experience, coming from a small school with little resources, my high school often had the music teacher teach a few history classes, or a prior communications major teach History or English. It is not ideal for this to happen if these teachers have done very little within the content area, because they do not have the off hand knowledge in class. These standards help teachers get to this point and gives them the tools to use to be effective in their classrooms regardless of content area backgroun...

I was surprised to see such detailed instructions for teachers when it comes to discussions. As a long time student in class discussions, I never thought that teachers did a ton during class discussions, but they really do more than I thought. The ground rules area is something about discussions that is really important, and I like the idea that teachers are reflecting and analyzing the discussion in great detail in order to make future discussions better for student growth. I always thought of discussions as unplanned, because there are so many ways that a discussion can go. I was surprised by the planning and structure that goes into a discussion as a teacher, because students can add ideas and prompt the discussion in ways you may have never thought it would go. As an English major, I have definitely seen my fair share of discussions in many different forms. Some of my favorite discussions are where the professor is prompting students with questions based on class discussion, and pr...

Hello all, while reading over the PESB website and looking at the competencies for us English teachers, I found that the first section was a list of everything that I had learned in Professor McHenrys' Linguistics course last spring. I am happy to know that the courses I have taken so far have helped prepare me for my career. Reading over the rest of the sections, I found the speaking and listening section interesting because I always knew that how we speak and listen to our students was very important, but I had no idea that there were official standards connected to them. I am also curious as to whether or not all other subject areas have standards about speaking and listening, because I believe this is a more general aspect of teaching that everyone who wants to be a teacher needs to learn about and master. For the Common Core State Standards, coming from a small town I heard lots of negative comments about the Common Core. I saw my younger siblings math lessons change into some...