Language and Literacy: Reading Strand

  For students to develop their reading skills it is important to exercise the skill of reading for a variety of purposes.  According to the Ontario grades 1-8 language curriculum (found here) this means reading for "self-discovery, self-enrichment, and for the sheer fun of it" (p.10).  The curriculum goes on to highlight how this is particularly important for younger students, as it can form the bedrock of their attitudes and habits towards reading.  From a young age I have been exposed to books and to reading in a environment that has always been enjoyable.  So I can agree that making a good impression at a young age is incredibly important.  However, the momentum should not stop there, reading should always be presented as an avenue for student discovery and enjoyment.  How do you do this?  How can you make reading an enjoyable process that encourages student self-discovery?  Well there are many methods out there but I wanted to take the time here to discuss a method which I have been researching and writing about on this blog for the past month.  I am talking about using pen and paper role-playing games to teach reading skills to students.

Sargoth. (March 2009), Role Playing Games at Burg-Con [Online Image]. Retrieved from Wikipedia.

  Now many of my readers might not be familiar with what a role-playing game (RPG) is, so I will briefly describe it here.  A role-playing game involves a group of players taking on the role of fictional character that they have created.  One player takes the role of a game master (GM), who unravels the story to the players orally, describing events, places, and choices the players have.  The players who are taking the role of these characters respond to what is presented to them by GM.  There are many published systems out there that add their rules and settings but that is the basic concept.  A few staples of pen and paper RPGS are the game manuals, character sheets, and dice.

  So what does this have to do with the reading strand?  I am here to argue that integrating RPGs into the classroom is an excellent way of not only incorporating the reading strand, but others as we will see in later posts.  For the reading strand I would like to share an interview with teacher Kade Wells.  Kade Wells is a Texan teacher who used Dungeons and Dragons (a highly popular RPG) in his 9th grade language arts class to great effect.  You can find the interview with Wells here (the interview starts at 21:55).  Wells describes a classroom plagued with apathy, completely unenthusiastic about reading.  Wells describes that having his classroom create characters in a RPG context created a buy in, where students were reading for their own sake because they wanted their characters to do well.  These students were reading game books, manuals for Dungeons & Dragons, and if you are unfamiliar with them these are not small books, these are about 300 page sized tomes with columned text.  Certainly not easy reads even for a grade 9 class, but these students became eager to read them and would wonder how they could find specific things in the text, so would use things like indexes and the table of content to find what they were looking for.  Coming from students who had no interest in books or a history reading, this is big to have students discover how to effectively use things like an index on their own.

  I therefore think that RPGs are great on their own for teaching students how to read dense manuals and unpack rules through skimming and cuing.  We can even see that students are actively reading out of a sense of discovery and for fun.  Of course this cannot meet the requirements for the whole reading strand, students must read for a variety of purposes.  I believe though that a teacher can build these other expectations around the game while still maintaining student enjoyment, discovery, and engagement.  For example students are expected to read a wide variety of texts, well since RPGs are often set in fantastical settings, why not incorporate myths and folklore into the game, have them interact with those texts as if it were something occurring to their characters.  I also believe that reading strategies can be easily incorporated into a RPG by bringing in prior knowledge, questioning (something routinely directed towards the GM), drawing inferences, connecting, evaluating, and most importantly creative thinking.  Although information and instructions in RPGs are conveyed through the manuals and orally form the GM, there's no reason why information cannot be conveyed through other written or graphical means.  Such as through text that might appear in the game world, written stories or events that impact the student's characters, even the reading and processing of information on character sheets is a good example.  If the curriculum says that baseball cards can be used in a classroom (p.11), I see no reason why character sheets can't be.

  As educators we must try to create creative ways for students to engage with reading.  I do not think this is the best way, but I think it that it can be incredibly effective at engaging the students with a variety of texts for different purposes.  Feel free to explore other parts of my blog to find out how else RPGs can be used in a classroom.

James Jones. (April 2009), Dice and Character Sheet [Online Image]. Retrieved from Wikipedia.

Assesment Blog Post 1

  Over the years of your education you are constantly faced with assessment, either from your teacher, peers, or yourself.  Growing up in the public school system in Ontario from grades K-8 I do not remember receiving a very diverse means of assessment.  Most of my experiences with assessment from grades K-8 were test oriented, or based on the teacher's evaluation based on a rubric.  I don't feel like this form of assessment was incorrect, far from I think it is necessary, but it was the only form of assessment I remember from those grades.  It wasn't until high school that I had the chance to experience student self-assessment on our work.  However, this form of assessment was rare possibly due to a lack of trust the teachers had in honest student assessment.  It was not until university where it was common to self-assess your performance in seminars and give yourself a grade.  It was also not until university where I felt like peer evaluation actually mattered, mostly for seminar facilitation.  That being said teacher or professor led assessment and evaluation through papers and tests has been the dominant form for assessing my academic performance.  This is not to say that I disliked this method of assessment, I love tests and papers with rubrics but as a student teacher and as someone who has interacted with teachers from many different backgrounds I realize it has not worked for everyone.  

  I still believe that the current methods of assessment still strongly involve the use of tests and rubrics for projects that are evaluated exclusively by the teacher.  However, I also think that we are shifting away from that as the main focus.  I think there is more methods of assessment out there then there was when I was growing up in the elementary school system.  I think that there is more room being made for student self-assessment and peer evaluation.  I also think that anecdotal observations are playing a stronger role in how teachers evaluate a student's performance.   In most Ontario public schools there is likely more diversity in how students are assessed than I can currently think of.  Just based on my own classroom observations I can say that homework worksheets for subjects like math and geography are still common and larger culminating projects for classes like language arts and geography are still used.  Rubrics are things that, based on my observations, are noticeably absent.  Meaning that students are not provided rubrics for how their assignments will be assessed by the teacher.  This may be just due to that fact that I have yet to see them being used, or that perhaps there is a less rigid means of assessment being exercised.  Worksheets are reviewed and graded by the teacher and given back to the students, likely with some feedback and writing on where the student did well or needs improvement. 

  I know that assessment has largely moved past the use of tests and rubrics exclusively, and there are more diverse means of assessment being used by Ontario teachers.  Currently though I just feel ignorant of what kind of advancements have been made since my time in the Ontario public school system.  I look forward to growing my knowledge on this topic and later writing about how my readings on assessment have changed my beliefs and maybe helped enlighten me to methods that I have never considered before. 

 

Math Reflection Week 6: Math Curriculum

  One of the activities that really stood out to me today in class involved us using paper cut outs of math curriculum expectations and matching them to example activities.  A picture of the activity and the cut outs is posted below, and if you're curious you can also read the Ontario grades 1-8 math curriculum here.  I performed this activity with a partner and even with two minds working on it it was still surprisingly challenging.  This is due to the fact that some of the curriculum descriptions and expectations sound a little vague, and you think that these examples could fit into more than one grade level.  Usually it gets tricky when deciding between two grade levels that a nearer to each other, like grades 7 and 8.  Although I like how this activity had us reading through the curriculum and getting a better understanding of the goals for each grade and how assignments meet those goals it still came across as a little strange to me.  This assignments is a test of our knowledge of the curriculum and mathematical processes.  It assumes we are unaware of what grade level we are designing activities or lessons for, so we mix and match.  In reality I do not think that this would come in handy.  For example if you are hired to teach a grade 6 class you would focus on the math requirements for grade 6.  I think it would have been more useful and applicable if we were given a single grade and many different activities and were required to find the one that just applied to that grade level.  It was a little bit of an overwhelming mixing and matching activity with all the different grade requirements.  I would still considering doing a mixing and matching activity using paper manipulatives like this for my class though.  

 

Michael Feagan. (Sept. 20 2016). Math Curriculum [photo].

   Over the past week I also got the chance to try another math game.  This weeks math game that I tried was called Dirt Bike Proportions.  It's a simple game in which you race dirt bikes, and your dirt bike goes faster is you answer a multiple choice question on simple proportional fractions.  When you answer a question correctly the bike moves forward, when incorrectly it stalls.  At the end of the game it tells you what questions you got wrong and the correct solution.  It is similar in terms of game mechanics to a game a played a few weeks ago but did not write about, Integer Orbits.  Although I think using games for math classes is a great idea, I also think that you need to keep the games fresh on a deeper gameplay level, not just changing the theme and the curriculum.  

  I had a great math week overall, getting the chance to try and improve my knowledge of curriculum expectations is always welcome as that is something I will always be doing in my professional career. 

TPACK Quest

  Over the past few weeks I have been steadily progressing to completing all of my badges, symbols of my course achievements.  The first one I wish to discuss is my badge Cup of Wisdom.  The Cup of Wisdom is rewarded for completing all of the weekly online tasks that help to support my background knowledge with various technologies.  I think my favorite activity within the Cup of Wisdom was the PBL Badge, simply due to the large amount of choice we had in online teaching tools to explore.  I personally loved learning about the timeline tool Timetoast and the trading card tool.

 

  The second badge I wish to discuss is the Genius Hour Badge.  We have talked a lot about genius hour over the past few weeks, but getting a chance to experience is something I'll never forget.  I will defiantly look into using the concept of genius hour in my classrooms going forward, as I think it is an excellent opportunity for students to express their interests and get some self-motivation.  I also really benefited from my own genius project looking into role-playing games in the classroom.  This is a topic I might not have researched otherwise, which is a shame because I got a lot out of this activity.

  The third but potentially most important badge I have received is the Professional Order of TPACK Badge.  This involved coming to class consistently, tweeting regularly, and collaborating in all in-class learning activities.  This badge represents my professionalism, collaboration and dependability.  As a teacher I think it is a good idea to try and incentivize student punctuality and participation.  This badge does a good of keeping students accountable. 

Genius Hour Learning Object

  Earlier in one of my weekly reflections I had mentioned the creation of a learning object for my implementation of role-playing games in the classroom.  This learning object was a timeline of the events during the opening year of World War One using the website Timetoast.  You can find the timeline for this here, I would personally recommend viewing it in list mode rather than timeline as it looks neater.  As I said I would use this tool to have students make their own timelines for specific historical events.

Genius Hour TED Talk

  I have finally finished my TED talk all about my genius hour project on how RPGs can be used in the classroom.  I have embedded the Youtube video of my TED talk below.  I unfortunately filmed it with a big of a cold so my voice is a little scratchy.  Still I enjoyed this whole genius hour project I did.  I'm still considering doing continual updates on it, discussing how RPGs can be used within the classroom.  Perhaps devise some more activities or ways of organizing the class around RPGs and post them.  I would of course appreciate any constructive feedback on my TED talk or on any of my other posts for my genius hour.  I hope this was as enriching of an experience for you as it was for me.  Enjoy my TED talk!

Language and Literacy: Media Strand

Critical Interpretation and Sourcing

  One of the most important aspects of media literacy for me is critical interpretation.  So what is media literacy and how is it critically interpreted?  According to the Ontario curriculum Media literacy is "the study of the art and messaging of various forms of media texts" (Ontario Curriculum Grades1-8: Language, p.13).  This means the study of any media that intends to communicate a meaning to an audience whether it is done through texts, graphics, sound, or digitally.  So then what does critical interpretation of media mean?  Critical interpretation means the ability for students to differentiate between fact and opinion, evaluate the credibility of the sources, understand biases, what audience the media is targeted to, and why the media was produced.  It is these critical thinking skills that to me are the most important to get right when teaching media literacy, as it can help form the foundation for how your students take in all forms of media.

  In class we viewed a short Taco Bell commercial, in which elderly people act "young" while enjoying Taco Bell.  You can find the video embedded below.  What I liked about this exercise is that it deals with something that people experience every day: advertisements.  Having students watch, read, or view advertisements is an excellent way of interpreting what a target audience is and why it was produced.  This activity could also be taken a step further.  It has become a recent trend among online news sites and even magazines to have sponsored articles rather than intrusive ads.  These could make excellent examples of how to critically interpret media.  I would have the students read the sponsored article without telling them it was sponsored by a specific corporation or organization.  After they had read it and had received their opinions on it, I would then reveal that is was sponsored, and then re-evaluate what they thought of the article now.  This would be an excellent lesson in discovering biases, evaluating credibility, sourcing, while also continuing to question who the media was produced for and why.


  In our digital age where we are bombarded with information on a daily basis it is critical that we develop good critical interpretation skills for our media.  We must be able to educate students so that they are properly prepared to evaluate all this new media from its biases to its intended audiences.  From my experiences and time spent in my tech class I have learned of scavenger and treasure hunting activities.  Both are exercises in researching, sourcing, and evaluating credibility.  The only difference is that scavenger hunts provide students a webpage to search through and a treasure hunt gives students a search engine to use.  I would love the chance to use a scavenger hunt activity to teach media literacy, by providing a webpage, a quote, and a claim associated with it students would have to go to these pages I provided and search them to see if these quotes and claims are valid or not.  The activity can also be expanded upon by requiring additional independent research to determine its validity, potentially due to me leading them to sites with bogus information.

  Overall I believe that media literacy and the ability to critically intemperate different forms of media is a important life skill in the 21st century.  As educators we must find new and engaging ways we can use different media to illustrate these skills.