Reflection 15

History is not present in the elementary curriculum and personally it should be, but it should not be the center of the social studies curriculum. History along with all the other sections of social studies are important part of the curriculum, the main purpose of social studies is to provide students with enough knowledge to make good decisions. According to Mead, he views history, anthropology and other categories important to the curriculum. In a way all the subjects found in the social studies parameter are in one way or another connected to each other, humanities and history are almost the same except that humanities focuses on arts and the culture while history focuses on the development of a civilization.
The problem is not whether the elementary students will be able to understand or have conceptual abstract but if the teacher uses effective strategies to teach the subject that the students in will be able to learn history. The learning depends on the skills of the teacher, personally even if the students in elementary do not have history as a subject history should still be taught because it is everywhere. One finds history in geography, humanities, etc. it is all about how well the teacher can integrate history to her unit. But like I mentioned earlier I do not think that it should be at the center of the curriculum, the teachers should find a way to incorporate it to the lesson so that the students are able to make a connections.

Quiz 6

Reflection 14

Mr. Bennish was Colorado teacher that was having a class discussion about the speech that President Bush made when addressing the state of union. He compare some of the comments made by President Bush to those that Hitler said, one of the students recorded the discussion and presented to his parent. When the parent heard he was very upset so he contacted the school principal. The principal heard the recording and place the teacher on administrative leave until the school board completed an investigation. But from the whole situation the reason the student was upset was because the teacher had only given one point of view of the situation and he did not provided students a balance and fair discussion.
Now looking at the national social studies standards the teacher did not provide the student with a balance point of view but just stated what his opinion was. The reason for social studies is to provide students with reliable unbiased knowledge so that the students can make their own personal opinion about the situation. Social studies is to provide the students with various knowledge so that they can become an active citizen, the consequence to Mr. Bennish comments is that some of the students are not really given the opportunity to make their own decision about the discussion. The teacher could of approach this discussion some other way, but as the student that made the complaint said that the students were just going to take what the teacher said as if they were facts and not an opinion.

Quiz 5

Reflection 13

The balance approach is when both the whole language and phonics are used in a classroom to teach children to read. During the past centuries teachers have been using either whole language approach or phonics approach to get the children to read but there has been a great debate for years about which one is better. The only problem is that both approaches have been used in various setting but the child reading still has been low. This has cause for teachers to use both strategies to teach students but so far there has still been no real drastic change and according to the article is stated that the balance approach is the mixing of both approaches but how is this accomplished accurately that depends on the teachers.
The most important part of this situation is to try to get the students to actually enjoy reading and not see it as something boring. Personally I have never been a big fan of reading because all the experiences that I have had has been bad, teachers would make me read stories that are boring and that I would have no connections to them. In a way the teachers should not put so much focus as to which of the two approaches is better but instead focus on the style that each child has to learn. Some students might learn by the balanced approached, while other from the whole language/ phonics approach or it can be from an approach that no one has really discovered yet. The focus of the teacher should be the students and not the approach. In the article it even stated that there has been research performed from the two approaches and neither has given much of positive results, so there can still be a better approach out there that has not been found. The research recommended that teachers should try to do something different or to look beyond those approaches that have been used.

Reflection 12

The main focus of the phonics instructions vs. whole language is that in the United States and many other countries use mainly the whole language instruction. The teachers are teaching mostly whole language instruction meaning that the child just follows along with the teachers and memorizes the sound of the word as a whole, instead of breaking down the sound of each letter. One of the controversies is that teaching phonics is boring and very repetitive to the students but with whole language the students is compelled to enjoy reading more because of the story that they read. At the same time both instruction are repetitive but one thing is what a child will do when they approach a word that is unfamiliar.
Emergent literacy is the beginning steps to become ready for conversations. The early signs of this process are when the child begins to babble or coos showing that they are trying to begin the conversation process. Emergent literacy involves speaking, writing, listening and reading. A generation ago parents were told by teachers that they need for the child to show signs of reading readiness before they begin to read to them, but today the parents are told to read to them from the moment that they are born so that when they start school they are ready or ahead in school.
Now looking at emergent literacy vs. reading readiness conversation the difference is that one is the beginning process while the other is when the child is ready for conversations. Comparing that to the whole language what I think is that parents if they read to their child for birth they would be already exposed to words as a whole so when they begin school they are able to be phonics to actually be able to break down the sound of each letter. The important part is that the child needs the support of both parents and teachers to be literate.

Reflection 11

In the article of McGlothlins, he looks at the acquisition of the first language of a child compare to that of an adult. He has heard of a theory that god gave children magic to learn languages but as they get older the magic runs out, so he begins to see if it is true or not. He uses one of his children and begins to write down every word that he learns till a certain age. And as the time passes he begins to notice that a child compare to an adult that is trying to learn a language has a lot of advantages that an adult does not, so it makes it easier for a child to learn. The child has an environment without pressure, time limit, and grammar. The child environment provides many opportunities to learn the language and the language is water down to their understanding. When the child is not interested in learning a word he/she just does not worry about learning the word, he/she focuses on their primary interest. The child is constantly repeating the word whether it is correct or not but the parents are not forcing the child to correct the word, instead the parents adjust to their words.
The experiment was very interesting seeing how his son from a certain age begins to develop language, but was not very scientific. There was only one child involved and it was his point of view of “normal” child. I agree with him in the fact that the environment and strategies used are important for both adult and children to have to learn a language, but it also has to do with the way the brain process. After a certain age the child stops using the Broca’s area of his/her brain to learn language and some scientist say that that is a reason why it’s easier for a child to acquire a second language because he/she is using the same to learn multiple languages. But I did enjoy a different perspective of language acquisition between adults and children.

Reflection 10

Integration of Language Arts is not often found in the curriculum and practices of teachers for various reasons. One of the reasons is that the teachers are unfamiliar and second is that curriculum is not supporting integration. First, when the teacher is not prepared for integrated curriculum this would make it difficult for them to do, because they don’t feel comfortable with the method or delivery they have never give. Personally some teacher are not going to step out of their comfort zone because the result is not known, they are afraid to try something new so they rather not try it at all then to get bad results.
Another reason is the way that public school curriculum is organized: there is little time to actually plan integration. In the United States the curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep, so the teachers have a lot of content to cover and not enough time to cover it in. The teachers are been discourage when they see the curriculum and the constraint on time to teach, so how are they to learn to integrated language arts, if they spend most of their time planning the curricular content.
The way that I see this lack of integration is that some teachers have not been trained to integrate curriculum. So many of the issues with integration can be solved by training and helping teacher see that integration of curriculum can be more effective than to not integrate. Another thing is that there are some teachers that no matter how much training they receive they refuse to try something new, one thing that I have learned is that the hardest people to work with are the one that refuse to try something different. So the best way is to teach pre-service teacher integration so that at from the beginning the teacher can know and understand what curriculum integration is, and some of the benefits to using curriculum integration.

Quiz 4

Reflection 9

In the article “Models of Integration” the author described three models for integrating curriculum which are: interdisciplinary, problem-based and theme-based models. The first model of integrated curriculum is the interdisciplinary model. In this model the subjects are broken into four sections: core subjects, foreign language, electives, and physical education. The core section is given to a team of four teachers that have about 110 students which they rotate throughout the day. The teachers have two hours of planning, one for common planning and the other for learn on their own. They can use the block in any way that they want, the advantages is that teachers work together, limited number of students and it supports traditional curriculum. Some of the disadvantage is that the teacher can continue to do the same thing without paying attention to integrated curriculum. This type of model is seen in secondary education.
The second model is the problem-based, this is the one that has at the center a technological problem and all the subjects or disciplines are used to solve the problem. The advantage of this integration is that is able to identify relevant and motivating problems but the model is hard to keep in the frameworks of the state and/or national standards. The third model is the theme-based education, in this model the connections of the state and national standards are easier to integrate in the curriculum. The only problem is that there are some cases that are almost impossible to connect the theme with the specific discipline, and the teachers can lead the students into an irrelevant topic. The three models still serve as a common factor that is to connect or integrate curriculum, the important part is that the students are able to work together to apply the knowledge in order to solve real life problems.

Reflection 8

The learner relevancy is to design a curriculum that meets the needs of the students. Since curriculum is applicable to the learners, the students need to be engaged by various means. One way is to combine the general content with specific. Second is to center curriculum to the students’ values, discoveries, thinking processes, experiences and culture. Third is by creating a curriculum that makes or creates learning situations that shifts learning into knowledge. The last one is by using the knowledge and applications to connect it to diverse problems, situations and contexts.
The importance of integrating curriculum is to as the basic question of teaching-learning paradigm. The focus would be to ask what students need to know and what are they going to be able to do? The integration of both school and work curriculum is going to influence the skills, information, how students will learn and transfer the skills/knowledge to real word situations/applications.
The way that I would answer the question is that the knowledge and skills that are been taught in schools should be able to transfer over to the real world. Curriculum needs to be focused more on the skills that the students will need instead of a lot of information that has no connections the real world. Personally I believe that a person should be cultured so that no matter where they go they are able to make knowledgeable decisions and conversations with other people.