Content Portfolio

Content Portfolio

Visual Literacy

Artifact 1:

The first example of Speaking and listening I want to talk about is from high school in Social studies, where instead of just reading the text book at home and trying to understand the events that wen on in history, a group of students would be assigned a section and then they would bee required to act out the events that were happening.The intent for this would be that student gain a better understanding of the reality of the historic events in our books by getting to watch it rather than just reading it. 

Reflection: 

This type of visual lesson was extremely helpful as a student because reading and understanding what these events actually was really difficult for me. And I could see myself using this as a teacher especially when reading Shakespeare.Because, shakespearian writing can be very difficult to understand since its written differently than modern text so I could see the action of acting out the scenes being extremely beneficial to the students. Also, with acting it out it would force students to really direct their science and try and understand what the writing means which would ultimately make them better at reading Shakespeare in general.

Artifact 2:

The second example I have for Visual Literacy is when I was in AP Lit my senior year and reading The Merchant of Venice, our teacher h ad us read the book first, partially in class and partially on our own and then she played to movie for as at the end of reading the book. I also had a similar experience in my Shakespeare class in College where he actually played the film first before even reading it.

Reflection:

This method of teaching Shakespeare seems the most successful in helping students get a full understanding of the plays. This is similar to the last artifact because this is just another example of making plays a visual experience. I remember my professor telling us that its important for us to watch Shakespeare as a play first because that is how it was meant to be experience it was not meant to be read and I completely agree, not only is it important when thinking about what kind of literature plays are but also because it will help students get a better understanding of the plays meanings themselves and also they will see it most similarly to how people watched his plays when they were first created. So I think including film into my lessons around plays will be really beneficial to the students and make something that is often mistaken as boring for high school students and make it a little more exciting with a visual experience.

Artifact 3:

Lastly, I want to talk about one of my Experiences in a college class reading a Graphic novel. In my Intro to Fiction course we read The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. This was my first experience with a graphic novel and we were told while reading it to think less about the writing and more about the story that the images were telling and figure out the mood of the story based on the images.

Reflection:

Reading this novel was so eye opening to me because I had only ever experienced ebooks in my imagination, but with a graphic novel the images can shift that experience into a completely different one. I thought it was important that my professor introduces this a simply a different for of literature because before this class I wasn't sure if there could bee analysis in a graphic novel but now I know there definitely can. you can analyze everything like the colors the artist used and the symbols or the way they made the face of the character and so much more. I think as an educator I will definitely use graphic novels in my class because before this I would never have wanted to read or even been able to get through a batman book but with the visuals that a graphic novel provides it makes it so much easier for visual learners like me to get through possibly difficult books

Speaking and Listening

Artifact 1:

My first artifact is the typical Power Point presentation group project that students were required to do in many classes. They're given something to present on, each group member is supposed to have their own part and then present in groups in class. This is definitely working on student speaking because usually every student was required to speak their own section.

Reflection:

This type of project is something I definitely want to stay clear of as much as possible. These Power point presentations first of all take up so much class time that I feel becomes wasted. it is important and valuable for the kids that are doing the presenting but the ones who are meant to be listening are more often than not, just tuning everything out and not learning at all. Now I do see possible solutions to this that would help it become a listening project as well is if you have the non presenters fill out a reflection paper of their own where they reflect on what they learn from each presentation. So in that case I think it could become a lot more valuable to everyone.

Artifact 2:

This example is all about the listening part of this section. In a lot of my classes in high school it was common for teachers to play an educational video or movie and we would be given a worksheet based off this video that we would have to fill out while listening to the movie or video. A lot of times this was either fill in the blanks, or reflection questions for when it was over.

Reflection:

I think this strategy for listening works really well when trying to keep students engaged in an educational video. I know that whenever a worksheet wasn't required us as students would easily tune the whole thin out and sometimes fall asleep.So, I think that having reflection worksheets is extremely beneficial because not only does it require the students to listen but also reflect on what they think about the video. However, when there is just fill in the blank worksheets I don't think I will want to use those just because it doesn't actually require any reflection or thought about what the video is saying it just makes them listen for specific sentences to get the answer.

Artifact 3:

My last artifact is from my very first Education class at Eastern. In this class we had to do multiple presentations throughout the quarter. One was on a book we read, another on a specific school in Washington and I believe the first one we did was just an introduction of ourselves.with these presentation as a listener we had to rate each person one three things. Their content, demeanor, and preparedness. And the day after presentations the professor would post these ratings to canvas so the presenters could read them and reflect on how they did. 

Reflection:

I think for speaking and listening skill this is a good method. I personally found it really helpful to see how other people perceived my presentation. I remember thinking I sounded shaky and nervous and unprepared but then I would get my ratings back and they would all say how confident and prepared I seemed so that really boosted my confidence. however, I could see this being very difficult for high school classrooms because I can see some people rating other unfairly just because of immaturity and I could also see some more shy students being more scared to present because they know they're being watched and judged. SO I think this strategy would have to be only for specific groups of kids or classes. For example this would be super helpful in a speech class.

Writing Composition and Grammar

Artifact 1: 

The first thing I want to talk about is the 5 paragraph essay structure song I learned in 7th grade. The was a song that broke down what each sentence should be in a 5 paragraph essay. I don't have it all memorized but I do remember the body paragraph part. usually there would bee hand movements with this as well but I'll just type the words. Opening sentence, point one support support, point two support support, point three support support, concluding sentence. And she taught us this song to use when we have our timed essay writing days so we wouldn't forget the structure.

Reflection: 

I would absolutely love to use this someday in my class because it created such n easy outline to follow for young writers before they can do it completely on their own. and not only was it helpful but it was so fun and I remember during the timed written looking around the room and all the other students were like singing the structure and doing the hand movements as quietly as possible. I think song and dance is a great way to help students with their writing. 

Artifact 2:

In High school my teacher handed an image out to each of us some were art some were actual pictures. They were definitely random. And then she wanted us to create a story based on these images. Then we paired up and shared our image and what we wrote.

Reflection:

Creative writing was really hard for me as a student I struggles coming up with anything on my own. I could write stories based off of other peoples ideas or concepts but had a hard time coming up with something original which I think is common for a lot of people. So, doing this assignment was really helpful because I was the only one with this image and even though I could come up with this image in my head, her giving us something to write off of was super helpful. Because I could make up whatever I want about this image and that definitely helped boost my confidence in creative writing because for once my mind wasn't just blank. So I would definitely use this in my class to give certain students that little boost to get their creative juices flowing. 

Artifact 3:

Lastly for Grammar it was common for my English teachers to have songs for certain grammar rules to help us with our writing. There was a song for everything, commas, conjunctions, POV. These songs were meant to make sure every student could use the correct grammar in their writing without having to ask for help during our timed essays in Junior High. 

Reflection:

I think that using music and dance can be helpful for any type of class if you can make a song or dance you should for students because it is so helpful for memorization skills I think with some age groups it could be hard because it can easily turn into a silly thing but for 5-9th grand and maybe even older its perfect to help them learn but also enjoy the learning process.

Literature and Reading Content

Artifact 1:

Something different that we did in American Lit this quarter was looking and multiple different forms or literature, for example Comic strips, Music, and Graphic Novels. We would have discussion about what makes each form literature and how they're different but can also be the same.

Reflection:

I thought this was cool because it showed me that there's more to literature than just novels and typical books it can be so many things so I think this idea of exploring other forms of literature would be great in the classroom to show students that literature is way broader than the typical idea of books and poetry.

Artifact 2:

The second one is what we did in this class where we each picked books that interested us and presented them to our classmates.

Reflection:

I really like this idea because not only does it support choice reading but then it gets kids interested in what everyone else is reading too instead of just randomly picking books from the library. I think in my class it wouldn't be any specific type of book it would be 100% up to the student to pick and then present on what they learned what they liked or didn't like. And I think this way it willet kids excited to pick out books they want to talk about.

Artifact 3:

lastly in Junior High we focused a lot on poetry in my classes which is one of the reasons I became so interested in possibly teaching English but our teacher would give us a poem and we would have to kind of come up with what we thought the poem was about and what it was trying to say. we also had to describe the mood of it. And then she would play a video of the spoken word performance version of it and we'd reflect on if the verbal version change our perspective or not and which version was easier for us to get the mood from.

Reflection:

I really enjoyed this because I remember already thinking that poetry was cool but I didn't think there would be much to direct about it but then we did this a lot and I realized how complicated poetry can be. I definitely want to incorporate poetry into my classroom because I think its important for students to see a type of literature that has to be really dissected to get down to the true meaning of it.