Blog #5

The strategy that I really liked was reading conversation strategy. This is the strategy that Naomi did about impressionism. This strategy would be great for physical education. One way to use this strategy in physical education would be to use it after I have thought all the students about a sport or type of exercise. I like how this strategy because it makes the student recall information that they have learned. This strategy is also great because the students share what they have written down and do journal and add to the other students journal. With this strategy, the other students can see what they know and help each other with what they don’t know or remember. I would also want to integrate this strategy because it will help the students write down what they remember. This is very helpful because it works on their writing skills and helps them elaborate what they have learned.

Blog #4

         I don’t have a lot of experience with classroom libraries but I do remember in high school when we did have a kind of classroom library. The book says that magazines are also considered appropriate books in the classroom library. When I was in our class, we have a project that required magazines. In this project, we had to find magazines with pictures that interested us and cut them out. We were making a big collage poster. This was a great project to use classroom libraries because we had to go through magazines and search for pictures and phrases that we liked. This project was great because it made students read.
        It is very important that teachers acquire books related to their content area because this would be another way that students can learn about their subject. A lot of the students can learn from only their textbook. Having other books, that may interest students, will lead them to read books about the same content and understanding it better. This motivates the student to learn.
        My content area is physical education which means that I would have books related to sports. I feel that having sports book in my classroom would help motivate the students who are not physically active. After reading a book, they may feel inspired to re-create or be like the characters in the book. I believe that after reading sports books the students will also have more sports literacy. One of the ideas I liked about the book was that it gave a great example on how to be resourceful and acquire books at book sales, garage sales, and book clubs.  

Blog #3

       I was never the best reader growing up. I believe the only reason I first started reading was because in elementary we were required to read books and take a computer test about them. The books all had a different score based on their difficulty of reading. We were required to have a certain amount of points scored by the end of the year. This method was great because we were able to choose our own books. This led to us choosing books that we wanted to read. After having to mandatory read, I started to enjoy reading.
I first started to read a lot of sports related small book when I was in elementary. Sports were always my favorite genre of reading when I was a child. I did not learn English until  first grade. This is why I enjoyed reading sports books because most of them had many pictures. My reading was not that great but I kept trying to learn. As I got older, around fifth grade, my reading got better and I started reading goosebumps books. I always loved the mystery. I tried to read all the books in order and I believe I did finish them eventually but I don’t remember them. This was the period I believe I read the most. I didn’t have much homework and I wasn’t in athletics or any other extra curricular activities.
In middle school, I stopped reading as much as I used to read. I believe the main reason was that I made time for other hobbies. I started playing sports and hanging out with friends outside of school. Extra reading was also not required in middle school. I did still want to read so I read one of my favorite series which was The Chronicles of Narnia. After reading this series, it inspired me to start reading the Bible. The Bible was extremely hard and difficult to read. It has so many words I can’t pronounce and words I have no idea what they mean. I didn’t get to deep into it because my parents weren’t religious and I had no help from anyone. I believe this was the period I read the least in my life. I was just learning to balance school, athletics, and social life.
In high school, I started reading bigger books because my vocabulary improved. Reading books became so much easier to understand. I started reading the Harry Potter series, The Hunger Games, Eragon, The Chronicles of Nick, and I started reading the Bible again. All of these books, except the Bible, are adventures books. I really enjoyed them because they all have a quest or destiny. I used to picture myself in the characters shoes and imagine that I was the one on the quest. Now that I am in college, I still enjoy reading but I never have a chance to read because I am always busy with school, my wife, and other hobbies that I enjoy more than reading. I believe that when I get older and I can’t be as active in sport I will continue to read more.

Blog #2

I have learned a lot in content area reading. Many of the things I have learned have come easy to me because of prior knowledge and personal experiences. One of my favorite part was learning how to activate students prior knowledge. To activate students prior knowledge, we have to know our students. This is why it is important to build personal relationships with the students. Building relationships with the students will let the students know that you care about them and their success. This will motivate the students to want to learn. After building a relationship with their students, we can now figure out what type of literacy works best for them. There are many types of literacy that can be used such as media, text, and images. These are just a few of them. Anything that the teacher can use to connect with the students can be used as literacy. I am looking forward to learning more in content area reading!      

Blog #1

      In middle school and high school math and Athletics were always my favorite subjects. I really loved math because numbers were very easy to understand and they just came natural to me. Athletics was also my favorite subject because we always got to play sports, be active, and have fun. My least favorite subject was English language arts. English was my second language. It was very hard to learn English which made everything else harder. That is why English language arts was my least favorite subject. It math, my teachers were always very supportive and willing to help out when I didn’t understand the question. They always gave homework because they said the key to being good at math was repetition. In athletics, the coaches help me build character and discipline that transferred to the classroom. This led to better successful in the classroom. In ELA, the teachers never did anything negative I just believe that they could of repeated themselves a little more because I always had trouble hearing. The most positive thing that my teachers did was build a relationship and got to know me. This was great because it motivated me to try harder because I knew that the teachers cared if I was successful. I am not currently teaching but I know that I will take all the positive experiences from my past and apply to my teaching to help students be successful in the classroom.