I graduated! :)

After two years of reading, writing, reflecting and teaching... :) I finally turned in the final draft of my Master's Thesis... I'm now ready to have my own classroom! :)

Photo taken with my beloved and wise professor and advisor from DTE.

Proud & Happy

Oh it's been a while.... I've been busy preparing for graduating in May, in one more week actually. In fact, I'm still in the middle of writing my thesis and really shouldn't be here to blog. But this is just another, more productive, way of exercising my procrastination habits. :) Anyhow, I thought I should document here that, yesterday I proudly presented my Reframing Technology Education argument in my Urban Ed class with my inspirations and findings from this blog! And here's my proof!

"Idea Tree"

Need an idea for an "Idea Tree" in the classroom?


Thanks to the brilliance of the art teacher at East Bay Conservation Corps K-5 Charter School.

"Reflection Center"

Everyone needs a reflection center sometimes. This blog is kind of like my reflection center, and I am thankful for it.

Once in a blue moon, my graduate program organizes a trip for us to visit other classrooms from other schools... I always thought we should do this more often, both as a student learning to be a teacher and as a teacher who desires to continue learning.

On one of these learning field trips to a small charter school, East Bay Conservation Corps, in Oakland, I came across the most inviting, content-rich and brilliantly organized art classrooms ever!
















And of course, it even had a very reflective "Reflection Center".

Yet Another Best Part of Me

This is another Best Part of Me photo and poem done by a student. I love his choice of appreciation here! Why shouldn't we celebrate our uniqueness?

The Best Part of Me
by Aaron

The best part of me are my teeth,
because they are beautiful and strong.
I could eat well.
They look like my mom's teeth.
I like my teeth,
because they show when I'm happy.


















And here I am,
busy posting these beautiful treasures
that my beautiful students
have created
in the classroom!

Happy D.E.A.R. Day!

Drop Everything And Read

Sometimes, I wish I could just drop everything and read. I think there is a big misconception that every teacher loves to read. I know this is not always true because, I never grew up as a reader. For the longest time, the best sleeping pills for me were reading books in bed. I really used this strategy one time when I couldn't sleep at night during high school. It worked like magic.

I always felt puzzled by why I never liked to read. Both of my parents are humongous readers. My dad is a professor in a university in China. He loves to read about philosophy and think about questions that tend to have no answers. My mom read hundreds of books from all over the world even as a teenager. She loves novels and autobiographies. In fact, she got in a lot of trouble for reading novels under her desk during school. From a genetic perspective, if you believe in it, I should have an advantage or at least a predispositon for reading simply by being born into a reading family. But it wasn't the case with me. I really didn't enjoy reading, any reading. In fact, this became such a strange phenomenon to me, I attempted to trace back my memories for reading as a child. Even more strangely, I realized that I don't remember having a single book as a child. Were there no picture books or any kinds of children's books in China during the time frame that I grew up? The only books I can remember were the text books that I got in first grade. But this can't be true. How could there be no leisure books for children in China in the late 1970's?

Just a few months ago, the answer finally came to me during a conversation with my mom and my sister-in-law about the books that my mom loved to read. It turned out, my lack of interest in reading was the result of a deliberate decision. Because my mom got into so much trouble for her uncontrollable love for reading during her childhood, she didn't want me to repeat the same path again. Therefore, she 'discouraged' me from reading as a child. And that probably explained why I don't remember having any books growing up. It is ironic that in my graduate classes, we learned all about how to develop literary beings, yet there I was, realizing that I was raised with the conscious effort of a lack of literacy. As much as I love my mother, I must say, this was probably one of the most silly and daunting things I've ever heard of!

Fortunately, right around the time when I started graduate school, I finally began my journey of appreciation for books and reading. Although still a turtle-speed reader, I love seeking out the beauty, enrichment and peacefulness to be found in reading.

Believe it or not, one of my favorite and most memorable and touching moments with reading was a gift from a 4th grade student. While I was student teaching in his class, he read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein to me as a rehearsal for his buddy-reading with his little kindergarten buddy. His voice was filled with emotion and sincerity. It felt as if he was the Giving Tree himself. Both, his tender heart and the beautiful storyline had brought tears out of my eyes and out of my heart. I will always be thankful that he introduced me to my favorite children's book for the first time, even at adulthood!

Thank you Rene for the gift of giving!


Thank you Martin, my colleague, for the inspiration of this posting!

Are We Teaching to Create Future Dinosaurs?

Now that the ELD club had ended, I am in full force preparation for my master's thesis, which, you guessed it, its about this blog and the use of technology in the classroom.

Through the past few month of keeping this blog, I've been so thrilled by the tremendous positive feedback I've received from my students, other teachers, my colleagues and even people I've never even met before. Aside from providing gratification and encouragement, all of these positive responses led me to believe, even deeper, in the reasons for why I wanted to start this blog in my classroom in the first place.

Technology is such a huge element of our lives today, we cannot pretend that our students are neither part of nor being effected by its constant evolution. Knowing the significant role that technology plays in everyday lives, higher education and work places, it feels even more wrong for me to not prepare our students for this ever-so crucial skill demanded by the current and future lifestyle.

Clearly, from my experience with the upkeep of this blog, I've become more and more inseparable with the idea of infusing the use and exploration of technology into everyday teaching. I am not arguing that technology should be taught in school at the expense of teaching math and reading. In reality, for most of us, technology is used as a modern tool to express and communicate. That is exactly what my goal is: to teach technology in the way that it is represented in reality, not as a new subject to dictate as part of a school day's schedule on the board. Just as adults use it everday, I believe our students should also be taught the use of technology as a tool to express and communicate, rather than as a subject that requires too much dictated instruction. Of course, in order to become free and flexible in the use of technology as an everyday tool, some direct instruction and drill style practice such as the basic skill of typing, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, will still be necessary.

Overall, it is time that we, who care for and want to contribute to the education of our children, recognize that we will no longer be doing our kids justice if the only preparation we give them is based off a list of skills that reflects only the demands of life as we were kids. To teach and prepare our children for the future that they will grow up in, we must push ourselves to think beyond our comfort zone and update our skills and our To-Teach list in order to reflect the present and future demands of life.

For preparation of my thesis, I need to find related researches and articles to read and reference. If you know of any, let me know! :)

"We Got Game!"

One of the brilliant ideas I came across from visiting other classrooms during the last day of our ELD club, was English learning through games. One of our teacher groups used the entire 8 weeks of the club to focus English development through the playing of fun games like Charades, Taboo, Telephone, Candy Land, etc...

At first, I was thinking, this sounded really fun, but not very academic. But after listening to their reasoning, I realized it was a brilliant idea.

As suggested by my first instinct and a natural instinct really, playing games is fun. Fun for both adults and children. But as linguistically developed adults, we take for granted the language skills involved with understanding the rules of the games that we play. For younger children, especially English learning younger children, learning to play fun and mind-challenging games is an exciting and engaging way to develop a new language and even a specific form of language.

As the eight weeks went on, students learned to read the directions and rules of the different games they played. While playing these games with other kids, they also had a lot of opportunities to develop their authentic use of language. They were then challenged even further to by making up their own games and rules. Finally, in order to play their own games, they had to teach the rules to other students.

Along this process, every moment was evidently a learning moment. The most brilliant part of it all was that my fellow teachers have proven the point that learning does not have to be boring! Thanks Brooklyn and Pha Pha, my brilliant teaching divas!

Game: Castle Land















Characters:
- Rattle Snake (yellow)
- King Cobra (red)
- Dragon (blue)
- Dinosaur (green)




Game: Iceberg - This one has very complex directions and rules!




























Game: North Pole Soccer
I just love the name of this game. I wonder who the players would be if there really was a soccer game at the North Pole. Maybe Polar Bears (Home) Vs. Penguins (Away)














I just realized right now that all the games I saw were created by boys. I really wonder what the girls decided for their theme?

Last Day

All of the teachers preparing for the last class in the library.













Students preparing for the presentations to the parents.












The final books that the students created.











The final group picture. Such a bitter sweet feeling...

The Last Stretch in ELD Club

The past two days, we have officially entered the last stretch of finishing our final product for this Friday's ELD finale open house. As a final product, each student will put together a book that will encompass all of the drawings, photos and writing they have created during the past eight weeks of the club. This book will then be showed off to the parents and teachers who come to celebrate our students' success during the open house.

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that what I'm about to say next might be somewhat of a disappoinment when considering the goals and hopes I mentioned in a previous post, Process Vs. Product. During the process of the eight weeks, we have all been very busy birds, both the teachers and the students. In order to use photography as an inspiration vehicle to drive authentic writing and language production, we had to do a lot of setting up in terms of teaching students how to take photos with a digital camera and disposable camera, the concept that photographs and images tell stories, the targeted language forms and functions for describing, making a connection with and asking critical questions about a photograph, and also begin to develop a critical lens for the students when viewing an image.

Thinking back, this is really a lot of work that we had planned for our students. Although, at the end of the eight weeks now, I do think we have accomplished many of these goals through the process of learning, exploring, doing and re-doing, I cannot say that the process was always a smooth one. This may be why, we are feeling a bit scrambled and rushed during the current production process. In an ideal world, the process for learning and product creation should be one, yet I feel that the transition between the two is a bit forced for us. It almost feels as if we were just getting on the right track with a meaningful and productive process, and then it was time for us to have products to show for it.

Timing and finding balance, crucial ingrediences for productive teaching!

My Fear

I can't believe this Friday will be the last day of my ELD club. I have this secret fear that all of the fun and exciting posts generated from my work with the students will start slowing down as I stop working with them directly come this Friday. Although, I still plan to share my own reflections and wonderings about teaching, learning and master thesis writing here, I am extremely concerned about the student work and feedback portion of this blog.

Part of me feel disappointed at myself for not having setup a more robust access system to the blog for the students who don't have computers at home. As much as I found resources and support that are available at their elementary school, thanks to our generous librarian, Luz, and her six WORKING computers in the library, the chances my students will walk themselves to the library during recess to read and respond to my blog are extremely slim. So, what do I do? How can I continue to reach out to and be reached by my students out in this vast and seemingly far-reaching on-line world once I'm no longer there to guide them?

Process Vs Product

In my graduate class on integrating the arts and the nature of language and literacy, we had an extensive discussion about a teacher's internal pressure (some driven by external expectations) to produce products in order to show in a concrete way what we have done in the classroom with our students. Meanwhile, we also have a strong desire to give students the learning experience through the process of doing and making things. In an ideal world, we would love to deliver both product and process to our students, but unfortunately, in the reality of time, something's gotta give.

This is really not an exclusive challenge faced by teachers, this kind of balancing in life is really a constant struggle that can be found everywhere and in everyone's everyday life. Rather than becoming increasingly stressed and overwhelmed trying to come up with a perfect solution in this on-going search, I actually felt inspired by the discussion from class and began to recognize that I find comfort in the upkeep of this very blog. As a student teacher, I must admit this is a place where I have gained tremendous satisfaction and insights about my teaching and learning through the PROCESS of writing these reflective postings. At the end of each posting, this process has given me an extremely self-fulfilling PRODUCT that is both alive and ever-evolving, and can be appreciated by both others and myself.

With that said, I guess there must be a way for us, teachers, to help our students gain knowledge through a meaningful process while making progress on the development of a product. The next step will be to figure out how, with the help of time and experience.

A TIME WHEN I FELT PROUD

A time when I felt proud was when I got 100%. On a spelling test. I went running fast as I can to my house to tell my mom on the phone and I told her ''I got 100%. On the test, '' good bye.'' I felt so happy and excited because my dad was going to bring a present and a toy. The present my dad gave me was a Playstation 2 game station.

Written and mostly-typed by Sergio

I must say though, I don't know if this is the most representative picture for "proud". Nonetheless, the effort should be encouraged! :) Ms Niki

A TIME I WAS ANGRY

A time when I felt Angry was when I wanted to go to a party , and I had to finish my punishment before I can go. I had to finish my punishment in one hour, or else I would miss the party. We got there in time and I was happy to see Santa Claus. He gave presents to every kid, and there were presents of all kinds for all ages.

Written and typed by JUAN CARLOS

I do think his acting in this picture looks a little more disappointed than angry. Don't you think?

Teachers' Show & Tell

Teachers also do Show & Tell. Today in my own graduate class for education, we had a Show & Tell gallery walk and learned about different innovative ideas on different strategies our colleagues used to teach English learners. Here's one new idea.

Repetition and Innovation through Song Writing and Music
by Martin & Zareen

Used the song "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" as a language frame for each student to write their own stanza of the song. Students learned about rhyming, came up with their own animals for the lyric, ordering animals from smallest to largest, co-created a new version of "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a..."

JUAN CARLOS AS A LAND DEVELOPER

I WOULD CHANGE THIS LOT TO A SOCCER FILD SO WE COULD HAVE FUN . IT WOULD BE LIKE A REAL SOCCER FILD. SO WE COULD HAVE FUN. IT LOOKS LIKE WITH WHITE LINES AND NETS. IT SMELS LIKE GRASS AND PAINT. IT SOUNDS LIKE FUN AND EXATING. WE DO KICKING AND RUNNING.

Dreams & Hopes

Last Friday, we took our kids on a community walk field trip. We walked from school to a near by park. On the way, students used our digital cameras to capture meaningful and important spots in their neighborhood. Half way in the trip, we came upon an empty and seemingly abandoned lot. We asked the students, what would they like to put in this space if they can put anything in there.

And here are some of their answers,
















Jonathan: "We should move our school here."
Me: "But you already have a school."
Jonathan: "But we can have a bigger school. We can put the science building here (pointing to the left of the lot where some abandoned looking cargo containers were), and have more classrooms here (pointing to the empty space to the left near the trees), and a playground here, (pointing to the middle section)."

Juan Carlos: "We should put a park here with play grounds and a soccer field."

Alexa: "We should put a school here for the poor."
Me: "How is a school for the poor different than our school?"
Alexa: "Because we go to our school, and we are not poor people. But this school is for the poor people that live on the street."

Aaron: "We should put a hospital here."
Me: "Why? Don't you have a hospital around here already?"
Aaron & Alexa: "No!"
Me: "Where do people go when they get sick then?"
Aaron: "We have to go all the way down there (pointing with Alexa to a far away place)."

Vanessa: "I want to put a school here."
Me: "Yes?!"
Vanessa: "It's because there are a lot of people in the district waiting to go to school."

"Vintage Dolls"

So many exciting things happened today and yesterday. I can probably post 5 consecutive entries. Let's start with this one.

Today I subbed for my 5th grade class from last semester. I spend the entire semester with these kids and even taught them myself, solo, for 10 days as part of my training experience, so as you can imagine, seeing them again after 3 months was very much a highlight of my week. Aside from getting reconnected with my students, I also discovered a new treasure for my idea box, "Vintage Dolls". Doesn't the name itself already sound so appealing?

Anyway, as a part of their 5th grade Open Court language arts reading, my old kids just finished a unit on Heritage. During this unit, one of their projects was to create a "Vintage Doll" that represents their heritage and ancestors. The common basic material for these dolls were simple human shaped papers. Each student thoughtfully and creatively brought these plain paper dolls to life with color, recycled fabric, and other knick knacks they found from home. In order to truly represent the ancestry of their heritage, many students had sought out information about their heritage from their parents that they had never realized before.

Aside from the social science and language arts perspectives, this was also a brilliant activity for showcasing some of these students' hidden artistic talents. I was truly amazed at the quality, creativity and meaningfulness of these remarkable "Vintage Dolls".

More on "Best Part of Me"

This is yet another posting on "Best Part of Me". But this time, let me explain the process that students went through in creating these beautiful poems.

The Best Part of Me activity is not an original idea from us, Mahea, Vivian and I. In fact, we copied the idea from the book, "The Best Part of Me: Children Talk About Their Bodies in Pictures and Words" by Wendy Ewald. We had the students talk about the photos from the book first, then we read the corresponding writing to them. From there each student came up with two examples of their best parts. We modeled how to write it using four parameters; describe, function, why, and details. Then students wrote their own best poems for their best parts. The next day, students were asked to narrow their best parts to only one and visualize how they'd like to capture their best part on photo. Once they described the exact lay out and setting of their desired photo, we took the pictures for them. We then helped students edit their writing. The students "Best Part of Me" pages look like this:

The Best Part of Me
By Nataly

The best part of me are my eyes.
Because they are dark black like a dark black dog.
With my eyes, I see myself and EVERYTHING around me!
My eyes are the best part of my face.
They reflect my Mexican heritage.
My eyes show my feelings.
They laugh, cry, smile.
I love my eyes!

From here, we had the students turn their writing into a slap book. We learned how to make it from our graduate book-making class. I enjoyed learning and making it very much myself, but it was even more rewarding watching how engaged the students were during this hands-on activity. Their books were beautiful and creative!

Here's how they look,

THE BEST PART OF ME

By CRISTIAN











The best part of me are my knuckles.
Because I have ten knuckles.
They are like little circles.
They stick out.
They help me grab stuff.
I like them because I can hit balls with them.
They help me stretch.

the Best Part of Me

My students started a new unit writing and discovering about themselves. Here are some of their beautiful work samples (typed by students themselves),

The Best Part of Me
by Edgar

The best part of me are my eyes.
They are chocolate brown.
My eyes can see Everything!
My eyes are big and happy. And my eyes can reflect.
When I am furious or nervous,
my eyes can cry, sick, or tired.
My eyes are like little circles.
I like my eyes.

My First Comment From a Student! :))

I'm so excited today, because this Blog finally received its very first comment posted by a student this afternoon! See the comment link for the "Self Portrait" posting for details. :)

This really wasn't a surprise to me, because three of my students actually huddled together on the carpet in front of my laptop and posted the comment, almost collaboratively, right next to me. Since not all of them have a computer at home nor do they get much of an opportunity to use a computer at school, I first showed them a few basic moves for navigating around the site. After reading some of my postings, Jonathan, the artist of the boy portrait from the "Self Portrait" posting, decided to post a comment about his own portrait.

Aside from feeling overwhelmed with internal joy as I watched the students showing so much interest and desire to participate on this blog, I felt even more rewarded as I watched the three of them talk about how to spell "violin", whether "play" should be in past tense, or how to form the next sentence entirely. With no official training for typing, their three sets of eyes were also much more effective at spotting these randomly scattered letters on the keyboard.

This was such a treat! Thank you Jonathan, Alejandra and Alexa!

A side note, whenever I've had the chance to work with kids using computers, the urge to teach them how to type always immediately rush to mind. Watching their little index fingers trying to find the randomly scattered letters on a keyboard is a 'itching' sensation. I can't help but to get an instant reminder that typing is a skill that needs to be taught and learned. With computers playing such a huge role in our lives today, I often take the ability to type efficiently for granted. I learned how to type when I was in 9th grade. But back then, computers weren't as a big part of learning and life as it is today. Now that it is, shouldn't we consider teaching this enabling skill much earlier?

Storytelling

Many argue that the best way to learn a foreign language is to move to that foreign place where everyone around speaks the language. Well, all of my students did. They all moved to Oakland from Central and South America, however, I can't say that they are truly surrounded by English speakers. The community they live in is very much sheltered in Spanish speaking. This is why, my teaching group is trying to find the 2nd best way to help them learn and improve on their English.

For the next 6 weeks, we will use the power of photography to help students create language, stories and imagination, so that hopefully, their English development will start emerging through this storytelling process. Below are some stories the students had come up with orally, and the teachers helped with recording.

Students were divided into 3 small groups, and each group was given one picture. In planning this lesson, 3 goals came to mind. First, I wanted to expose the students to the concept that pictures tell stories. Second, I wanted to use pictures as a way of producing language through the functions of making observations, describing details, and creative storytelling based on observations and details. Students were prepared for this during Opening Circle as we practiced describing details and drawing assumptions from these details using two different pictures I had brought in. The third goal for this activity was to stab at the idea that each photo was taken from a specific perspective, and it can only represent what is shown and not necessarily the entire 'truth'. I understand this is a huge idea that is even difficult for many adults to grapple with, but as we discuss and take more photos going forward, I think it is an important message that needs to be addressed at some point earlier on.

When reading the stories for each picture, notice how the stories and style of stories created by students change as the lense of each picture zooms out.



One day there was a little cat that was sleeping , because it was sick. Smeow, the cat was sleeping on a sofa with a red pillow. And then a dog growled at Smeow, and the cat got scared. And then Smeow found Ms. Niki laying on the bed. Smeow wanted to wake up Ms. Niki, and she did. Ms. Niki woke up and said, "Shoo! Scram little dog." And then Ms. Niki grabbed Smeow and let her sleep on her lap.

~ The End ~

One day a mommy cat had four baby kittens. One of the kittens was sleeping and the other kittens were drinking their mom's milk. The mom took three of her babies to Las Vegas to live there, and left one baby in Oakland, because this kitten didn't want to wake up. he was having a dream and wanted to keep dreaming. He was dreaming that his mommy was having another baby. When he woke up, he got really scared because his family was left.

In Las Vegas, a big monster truck crashed into the mommy, and she died. The babies found a new mom, and they lived together in Las Vegas.

~ The End ~
:(....

A baby cat is playing with a red yarn.

Another cat is sitting.

One cat is walking.

The big cat is the mommy. She is lying down. She might be sleeping.

The three cats are in the kitchen because of the seats, and table, and fire stove.
The walking baby cat might be looking for something.

One baby cat that is black and white.

Two other cats are brown with white.

This is a poor house with three cats inside. I think its a poor house because I know that the stoves now don't look like that. They look more new. And the floor is dirty.

No one lives in the house because there is not a lot of stuff, and no one is around. The cats are alone.

Wait, but maybe someone does live there, because there's a book. And maybe someone is making coffee. And the cats look too white to live in the street.

Maybe someone found these cats from the street and cleaned them.

Maybe the cats snuck in the house when no one was around.

Maybe they got in from a cat door.....

~ The End? ~

Self Portraits

There is always something magical about a child's self portrait.








This is one of my student's self portrait of himself in a starry night, inspired by Van Gogh?















This is another self portrait by a student.
Quite grown-up looking!

A Plug for GLAD

GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design)

Pictorial Input Chart

Today, in my own class, we had a GLAD trainer come in and gave us an abbreviated version of their overview training... In less than 3 hours, we were exposed to 8 different GLAD strategies (Inquiry Chart, Pictorial Input Chart, 10/2, T-graph, Graphic Organizer, Chants, and Zero noise Signal) and countless great ideas and modeling on how to make language more comprehensible for English language learners. I guess, one of the big things with GLAD is establish consistent patterns and structures that will help students learn new contents, so the coordination and consistent use of colors and visual support is key. Notice in the picture above, the elf owl is drawn in red, and the words describing this owl is also in red... This is the perfect program for someone slightly obsessively compulsive like me.. :)

Partner Portraits

Last week, the students interviewed a partner and learned all about them and drew a picture of their partner based on the information they have learned. There wasn't any specific direction for how each student should draw their partner. Many different expressions came through...



This is a great picture that told a lot of information about one particular student. For example, the interviewed student likes the # 10, likes to play kickball, likes pizza, etc.










This is a picture drawn by a different student. Here this student decided to divide the paper into 5 different sections and drew 5 different things about the interviewee in their own section. Very organized way of displaying and thinking!










One thing was interesting though, most students had much more to say about their picture and their partner when talking me during the process of drawing. When they actually went to the front of the class to present their partner and picture, half of the words and descriptions were gone... Was this purely caused by shyness or is there some kind of a correlation between drawing and language production?