Blog 5 Heath Dunn

Specifics about past syllabi are difficult to recall, but I do remember some generalizations. Normally I utilized syllabi by looking at due dates, rules, and how I am being evaluated or the grading percentages. I don’t recall looking at the course goals and objectives all that closely unless I am really excited about a certain course and want to see everything I will be learning. If it is a discipline I am not all that familiar with, I think the unfamiliarity plays a role in the lack of interest.  For me, I don’t think the course goals and objectives helped that much. I probably was not being the best possible student by not paying more attention to them. Personally, I think the course goals and objectives are more beneficial to teachers because there are most likely too many students like myself that don’t pay attention to them. I find making a syllabus is very useful at keeping me more organized during the school year so I think a syllabus is more useful to me as a teacher than a student. There are some instances were syllabi has helped me as a student. The deadlines definitely helped me with my time management. Also, clearly laid out procedures for evaluating me was very helpful.

 I think it is very important to be aware of students’ sociocultural needs. In a L2 literacy course students are going to be coming from a wide range of backgrounds. It is important for teachers to know as much as possible about their backgrounds and try and realize the challenges they will face. Making prompts and topics relevant to students is very important so that you can see students at their best, and so that students can be more comfortable at times. I also think students should be challenged as well by giving them some prompts or reading material they might not be as familiar with so we can broaden their horizons. Depending on the future goals of students it would most likely be beneficial to teach students the sociolinguistic competences of the U.S. so they can be more successful here. The course plans should be aligned with the educational institution’s requirements and philosophy. Teachers should only work in places where they believe in the philosophy of the school so everyone is on the same page. Students should carefully choose schools that will meet their needs as well, and comparing institutions requirements and philosophies should help students make informed decisions. If teachers show contempt for the institutions philosophy and has different goals then there is a great chance the needs of students are not being met.

Literacy or composition courses differ from other content courses like history and physics in a number of ways. Because of these differences teachers must plan differently at times or have different strategies. For example, there could be several steps to a major deadline in a literacy course. If a writing project requires brainstorming, pre-writing, research, first draft, second draft, and revisions teachers must carefully plan all those working parts out. Often time’s papers in history just have one deadline and it is up to students to come up with a good final paper by the deadline. Literacy teachers will play a large role in helping students throughout the process until they turn in the final paper. There can be many different ways to help students create the best final paper and many different strategies to use such as how much peer review to use, or assigning groups to do research.

For me the most important aspect of a good lesson is when teachers make learning meaningful and show how it will help me in my life. Also important is how organized, clear, and understandable the lesson is to learn. I think the most important activities or tasks are those that have relevance to students’ lives. This will make learning easier, interesting which leads to motivation, and more understandable. It is also important when teaching literacy to keep tasks at the correct level with student’s abilities. For instance, don’t expect students who have little fluency in L2 to do a long research paper or to read an adult level book so they have to look up about every other word in a dictionary. Those types of tasks can cause frustration and when students are too frustrated learning is not taking place.  The sequence of lessons should be well organized. Lessons should build of each other and be in a logical order. For instance I teach the phonetics of Spanish before the cognates so that when I say words in Spanish that are similar to English they can recognize them. If I did not do this many students would not be able to recognize words like hotel, hospital, simple, posible, humanista, visitar, or decorar when I say them aloud. In turn, it also reinforces when we went over all the sounds in Spanish by having them guess the meaning.

Classroom management is very important and key to being able to have a productive lesson. There was one class I had last year that was so difficult it often times hurt the delivery of the lesson. In fact that class was so difficult I had to use more worksheets than normal instead of class activities which I prefer. In my opinion one of the most important aspects of classroom management is being engaged with students. I rarely sit down and do tasks like grading papers while class is in progress. When teachers roam around and are engaged with students I think it helps keep them on task, they know you are watching them, and helps build rapport with students which cuts down on discipline issues. In regards to the planning and delivery of a lesson it seems like lesson plans are very important. They help teachers stay organized, and I believe students can sense when you are unorganized which can cause discipline problems.