Webquests

Wow. Making one seems like a lot of work...ka-cha!
I think though this is the avenue I could go with with my animal unit in mind. In the elementary version, I like "A Stitch in Time" because it had a lot of good pictures. I thought the "Bowhead Whale" had too many icons to click and view from. I liked "Meet the Immigrants" because it wasn't as word-y or click-y like the bowhead webquest and without the (learned) format of "Introduction, Tasks, etc.", I thought the "Ancient Egypt" was confusing. I liked the "North Carolina Zoo Breakout", but that too had too many links to choose from.
I believe this is a better format to make my animal pages from though. I don't think I'd like the idea of it being an actual "quest" though, even though I get the idea that these quests are very informative. I want to make one that would just be simple and informative. I think clicking on "what does it look like" and "what does it eat" would be good enough with both my limited knowledge and my students age-level (but I'm sure they would know way more than myself). I would like to hear more about webquests though from Sabine to see if this is the avenue I should take with my students.
By the way, I'm slow with my powerpoint because I haven't made a page yet for my students to follow from...

Words Big As the Screen

What an encouraging article. A big part of what my "research" is is the buy-in aspect of maintaining and using Yugtun here in our region. I appreciated reading this article in saying that, that Natives should be 'researching" for themselves and not just have outsiders speak for us.
I also appreciated the message that native languages are not just something, "incapable of expressing abstract thoughts" but should be used for things like "...educational advancement, economic achievement, and recognition beyond the village or reservation." I think a lot of people who don't "buy-into" the Yugtun language have been programmed to think these thoughts, that our language is "old" and from a long time ago. I have a tendancy to think that some people from my generation equate maintaining the language into living in the past. I would love for us to create a webpage, or a computer screen like the Hawaiians to have Yugtun words instead of English. I think that would be a way to kick the idea that Yugtun is old and used only for hunting and fishing (or whatever "village", "old") way that it's seen. I know this because I used to think that way too in high school and college. I used to think, "Why should I speak Yugtun when it sounds so glutter-y and rough?" For me, it's so much more than that. I still can't believe it took me such a long time to finally appreciate my language in the way that I do now. Thank God! (Can I say "God"?)

Powerpoint Papers

My idea of making a powerpoint is to do one for my animal unit, which I've started teaching. I think using the powerpoint method to create a webpage for my students is going to be a fun activity. I'm wanting to combine teaching powerpoint and the animal unit together if that's possible. After reading the two powerpoint papers and having seen Angass'aq's family page, I'm excited to develop one for my fourth grade students. What was exciting was when I read Cathy's paper, she mentioned teaching students vocabulary and recording them. Each student is going to research an Alaskan animal we are learning about. I'm thinking after researching the animal because students need to learn the name, what they eat, where they live, how their body structure helps them to survive and to include a not-so-known fact about them, after that I think it would be awesome if each kid is able to give a short report or something when they click on an animal. What I liked about Angass'aq's page was that it was interactive, and I'm hoping to make one like it. I hope to learn a lot more of powerpoint than I do now, which is just to use powerpoint for presentation purposes.
After reading the papers, I have two questions: If I am to publish this hopeful student-generated work, how would I get around the copyright laws mentioned, because I know we'll get our animals from the internet? And is this idea of having an animal page going to be too big to save onto a webpage (because both papers mentioned having too big size, memory, megabytes or whatever when they created theirs)?

Laptops and Abdullah's Blog

We have laptops for the students here at AE and I identified with a statement from the article when she said, "My classroom, supposedly a zone for deep analysis and honest commentary, had become a mini police state, with me as the chief of police" p. 3. Several weeks ago, when I had my students type up their plant reports, we had several students playing around with a new program we didn't have on last years laptops: iphoto. They were also going into the web to look for cartoons to watch. Luckily though, we only use the computers for Word processing (so far) for an hour at a time because the other classes need them also. When I read this article I thought, "So lucky!" If we had laptops for all the students at AE, I would love it only because we would use them to look up stuff on the web and to write up our reports. Having to share our computers here is tough because with much use, they get dirty and we can't use them whenever and as much as we'd like. I can see the problems that McFarlane would have to use them a lot. I just how lucky we are not to have to use them as much as it seems they do in this school.

Abdullah's Blogging: A Generation 1.5 Student Enters The Blogosphere
What I liked about this article was the argument from Graff (1989) and using blogging as a way to communicate and look at critical literacy. If I were to use blogging in my classroom, I think I would get a lot out of how a group of kids think. I liked how grammar and spelling were not a concern and how using the oral base of their language was brought to life when talking about plagiarism. I can understand why Sabine has us each blog our ideas down, but it would be interesting to see how it look if one person were to blog a comment and we were to expound, agree/disagree upon it like we do if we were sitting in a class (and we all know that our class was not shy to do it last summer). I learned so much when we were together to talk about our articles. I know that we had some tense moments, but we learned and grew from them, as well as when we came together to agree on certain ideas. I think some of our blogs should be this way, where we all have one page and we comment to each other. I know that we do this on the phone, but without eye contact it's easy just to not say anything.
Another cool idea that was brought up with the article had to do with identifying writing as "academic" vs. "personal essays and reviews of books". We do a lot of the latter probably because we are an "oral" bunch. Now I'm thinking to teach my grade 4 students to credit where they get info (either off the web or from books) when they do their animal reports in several weeks or so to do more of an "academic" paper...hmmm.

Ch. 9 Evaluation

One of the things that keep sticking out when reading this section (and I know I've brought this up too in another chapter) is our math curriculum. When I first started teaching in Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, we taught math using the Yugtun version of Saxon math. At first we were doing a lot of paste-overs from the English version. It took a while to get a complete set of translated grade 3 and 4 Saxon math sheets. When we finally got them and were expected to learn how to use them in our classrooms. I remember it taking a couple of years to get used to reading the script Yugtun and applying it to our classrooms. The first group of students I taught did very well in math I thought and then there was the whole wave of SBAs and then the math changed. What I didn't understand and still don't understand is how the district changes the curriculum. I remember wondering, was Saxon math so horrible that it needed to be changed and what exactly was 'wrong" with it to begin with? When we changed to Harcourt, it was a whole new process of getting used to. This is the start of my third year w/Harcourt and our math test scores in grade 3 have been low. I have a feeling that they're going to remain low till we get used to teaching it effectively. I honestly don't like Harcourt in comparison to Saxon because using Harcourt, we have to make a lot of materials to cover what the SBAs require.
In terms of our language, I know a lot needs to be looked at and modified. We don't have a nicely laid out Yugtun curriculum for grades 4-6. What we do have is the Yuuyaraq curriculum from the district office. They don't have specific tests, which can be good, but not so for a new teacher. There is no guidebook for those grades which has both positive and negative aspects. The positive being the teachers are free to teach what they want (of course in terms of the science expectations) and in whatever timeframe. The negative aspect to it all is that there is no guideline and no material made. The expectations are that each site is to adopt the guide to their dialects and their way of identifying with the topics.
In terms of AE and our language program, I wish we had time to do what we did in Akula Elitnaurvik and that is to get together with the elders to map out exactly what they think is important for our children to learn. To an extent we do this with our parents in our SIP meetings, but they don't come as directives. In that sense, I sometimes feel a little lost when teaching grade 4.

Ch. 6 Course Planning/Syllabus Design

What a chapter! There was so much information. I didn't realize that some of the activities that we were doing in class had a name. There are different aspects of each that I could identify with when I was reading through it. One of my concerns always seems to come from the topical/content-based syllabus and that is, do the students "get" what I'm taking about? Sometimes I think I make my lessons too easy because I worry about students not understanding what I'm saying. That or I think I get zoned out. We have so much material development to produce still, especially when it comes to assessment. But then after reading through some of this, I think, are we assessing too much?

Ch.5 Goals/Outcomes

One the curriculum ideologies that I found relevant to me was the "learner-centeredness" largely because I appreciated our authentic assessment class and our funds of knowledge book. More and more, I'm beginning to understand how important it is to include students when planning for your classess. The first thing I thought of under the "learner-centeredness" was put nicely as, "process rather than product". I'm trying to use the portfolio method with my fourth grade students and I'm finding it hard to adjust b/c for grade 4 there is no mandated guide to follow. It's funny how we want to teach what we want to teach, but when we have no guide, we, or I feel a little lost. I'm still trying to learn to think with this way of thinking.
The other two that I can relate to also were the social reconstruction section as well as the cultural plurism ideology. Under the social reconstruction ideology was a term we learned last year, "critical pedagogy" which closely relates to "learner-centeredness" as well. Thinking of these ideologies is like creating your own curriculum in your head because the students you have are unique to any other and their learning styles and what they know already will be different than any other class. I find this to be exciting because of that fact and because your plans will change every year (even though you might have the same general ideals). Under cultural plurism I think of our school. I believe this is what we are trying to do, that is to make sure our students understand that who they are and what they speak is important and worth more than what someone else might believe them to think. I think this chapter was the most I saw myself in.

Ch. 4 - Situation Analysis

This chapter seemed to be all about the potential problems that might arise when trying to create or change curriculum. With that in mind, I instantly thought of the math curriculum and how that's been changing in LKSD within the 13 years of teaching the subject. I know Renee isn't all into the Saxon math curriculum (just yet), but I thought that was the best math curriculum we've had. Once you get over the line-by-line say what you've got to say situation, it's a really good program for younger kids. What I loved about it was that there was a lot of repetition and review. It's not like Harcourt where you go from one topic to the next (with very little review) and continuity. We had Saxon for a number of years within this school district and when they decided to change to Harcourt, I don't remember a pilot or a bunch of teachers saying, "Wow, this is great! Check it out!" All I remember was we had to re-learn another math curriculum. I don't think a study was done to say how "bad" Saxon was for our students. And if so, Rachael can correct me if she knows, but when it comes to math, it seems we don't have much say. Now the talk is into something called Singapore Math. Rachael and I briefly talked of this, or she brought it up in our class, but I hope our math doesn't change because I'm creating material to supplement Harcourt math now.
Anyway, when I was reading this chapter on situation analysis all I could think of was how I couldn't see what the district was doing about math. I know we have a cool social studies curriculum to follow, which as Kristen pointed out is totally teacher based and driven, but with math? I don't know.

Chapter 3 - Needs Analysis

I’m having a tough time trying to apply the whole idea of “curriculum development” to myself right now. I think because the curriculums we have right now is something we have to do, have to follow anyway. The biggest difference between our school and the other LKSD schools is that we teach Yugtun to grade 6 and not grade 3. In fourth grade on up, we use the Yuuyaraq curriculum which is our social studies/science curriculum. The best thing about the curriculum is that individual teachers and schools can adapt it to meet the regional language/dialect and resources.

I’m not used to being in a position of developing curriculum as this book suggests. I can take the ideas to apply to our school, but I don’t understand why I would need to. How this book best applies to me is in the terms of language maintenance. Already I see the need for Yugtun language maintenance and I do believe with my research I will get the information that I need. Several of the procedures suggested in the book are what I plan on using when conducting needs analysis. I’m going to give interviews, focus groups, and that I’m going to conduct this semester. These area things that pop out when reading this chapter.

Chapter 1,2 & 7

Two things that stuck out from the readings were: syllabus and peer coaching. The way that I read creating a syllabus was to plan out the year for the students. When we did that for math, it made teaching math easier to plan (this will be my second year using it). The district format is called "mapping" and in it we have several maps to teach writing, science and social studies. One of the things I like about mapping is that it gives me a whole year's view on a week by week basis. I'm not too sure that when they say "syllabus" they mean for one subject for one grade level, but that's what it meant to me as I was reading.
There was another section in chapter two about peer coaching. This is something our school has attempted to do, but not very successfully. I think because we feel we need to be in our classroom all the time. There were several new teachers in my room last year who came in not necessarily for peer coaching but for observation. At the start of the school year, we were highly enouraged by our principal to put the practice of peer coaching to work this year. I know at this stage in my teaching career that that's probably a good move. Sometimes we get into the rut of teaching and I believe I've reached that point and need additional points. Having the SIOP class was helpful indeed, but it's difficult at this point to put practice to work. I'm thinking since I've planned out math that it would be easy to use my "essential questions" and turn them into content and language objectives. I think also it would be much easier for me too to try to map out grade 4 social studies/science class also.
It's difficult to think of a "whole" curriculum when you teach one or two classes. I want to ask, are we to look at whole curriculums in this class and not so much the grade level we currently teach? Chapter one talked about the beginnings of teaching and knowing English in the 1950s and the importances of doing so. The Yugtun language doesn't have a global need and I know that the regional need is not the strongest right now. I guess knowing these two differences makes it hard to grasp the idea of "whole curriculum". Help anyone?