Holly's week 2 notes

• My goals include: to be open to all ideas and even if I don't like the idea to try it before completely disregarding it (if it has to do with how to do something in placement), stay open-minded, talk more with the teachers/interns in my school to learn different ideas or methods for teaching and staying focused, and I'm sure there are a lot more goals that I cannot think of right now. 
• I hope to work in a smaller and close community school because then I can get to know all of the students and how they are in school and outside of school.  This will help make me a better teacher and build a relationship with the students and the people in their lives.
• I want to learn about different projects and activities that students can do with the books they read so that they do not feel like reading is just about reading aloud to the class (like was said in the Hettinger & Knapp jigsaw article).
• I wanted to read the article about "Underachieving Readers" by Hettinger and Knapp because in my placement now, I work with the "lower level readers."  The students mostly sit and listen to a book being read aloud by the teacher. Afterward, they work on different things, like phonetics, by writing on white boards.  I like that the books read aloud are interesting to the students, but they don't read books themselves because it may seem like a frustrating chore (Hettinger, Knapp).  I think it would be interesting to see if the students did as said in that article and read with more able readers because the different level readers are separated into different classrooms that are taught by different teachers.
• Hettinger and Knapp's article made me want to be a teacher that reads a variety of books to the students, but also allows them time to read with others or alone.  I do not want to focus on making students read aloud if they find it a "chore," but focus on letting them know they can succeed and help them do so.
• Also, while reading the Risko and Walker-Dalhouse article about Cultural Modeling, I learned that I want to include texts that interpret the students' lives, prior knowledge, and past experiences they have.   Books in the classroom library should be interesting to students so they can connect to the text and goals of reading/writing.