Reading Reflection #1
The "Focus
On" Closing the Achievement Gap readings (from the following link: http://www.nea.org/home/16454.htm)
contain information about several different cultures and how teachers can close
the achievement gaps. In other words, the general concept of these articles
come from the idea that teachers must be aware of their students’ backgrounds
and various cultures within their backgrounds in order to be effective
teachers. Therefore, by being aware of their students’ background teachers will
be able to close achievement gaps.
Specifically
in relation to Escondido High School and our Interdisciplinary Thematic Unit (ITU)
group, I feel it is an importance to focus on the growing Hispanic population
at the school. At EHS, the Hispanic population undoubtedly outnumbers all other
ethnicities. Strategies we will be able to use within our ITU are activities
such as discussions, story telling, building cohesive oral and written
explanations or other activities that draw on out of school experiences or
real-life examples that may involve the students’ culture, language, or
history. It will be beneficial to us if we attempt to bridge the gap between
school and culture, community, and home learning for our students. We
absolutely need to make sure our students are able to see the larger purpose or
meaning of the content they are learning. Other strategies that may help us
close achievement gaps for the Hispanic culture may be using direct feedback
and/or showcasing work to family and the community.
In
relation to our ITU and school, I mainly focused on the Hispanic population.
However, most strategies I have listed will not only help that specific
population it will be very beneficial to all other cultures and communities as
well.
Reading Reflection #2
Reading Reflection #3
I feel will be service learning will be very
important to our theme as we set out at the moment because it involves
community, and how community is very important. Students will be able to go out
into their community and learn more about how it is diverse, but also very
cohesive as a community. This is essentially what are unit is about. Therefore,
students will be able to apply what they learn in the community to the unit.
It will be useful for students to be able to use
the web to research or go more in depth into any topic they are learning
throughout the unit.
Class and group discussions are very important
strategies in any unit or learning process. In relation to our unit, students
will be learning about the community and the different cultures within the
community, therefore, it will be very useful to talk to their peers to discuss this.
Also, discussion works very well within the learning process so students will
be able to have conversation about what they are learning which leads students
to further understand what they are learning.
Roberts,
P. & Kellough, R. (2004). A complete guide to integrated thematic units.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Reading Reflection #4
I feel I will be able to most definitely be able
to contribute to the organization of the entire project, whether it be a
calendar or organizing specific tasks of the ITU. When reading the PowerPoint,
I felt I could contribute to the information being asked in Task 3 because I
have grown up and currently live in the same community as Escondido High School.
Another task that jumped out at me that I may be able to contribute to more
than other is of the creative and artistic part of the ITU. And, obviously, I
will be skilled at contributing to my area of expertise, the math portion of the
unit.
Reading Reflection #5
This is a draft of our cover letter and theme for our ITU.
Reading Reflection #6
In terms of a Personal Learning Network (PLN)
for our ITU, we established a blog in order to house all of our information and
tools that we will be using within our ITU. A link to our blog can be found in the above tab labeled "ITU on Diversity Blog". We have also created a hash tag
through Twitter (#csusmehs) to communicate throughout the creation of our unit,
this is along with using email and Google docs.
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