CI 414/504 Fall 2024 Coppola

I watched one of the documentaries provided by Free Spirit Media and one of them was on gun violence. Gun violence is an extremely prevalent concern within our nation and in our schools. While the documentary doesn't specifically touch on gun violence in school, but rather it talks about what could be the root of gun violence. It mentions our communities, the flow of guns and where they are coming from, the right to bear arms, all things that relates to guns and some thoughts about it. There is a part in the documentary that mentions the disparity of gun distribution in our city of Chicago. It was said that there is not many guns on the north side of Chicago. But rather, many of the guns are in the west and south side of Chicago where there are many minorities. The question that they posed was, why is it that there are more guns in the south and west side than the north? Is it our politicians or people in power and wealth that do nothing to help those communities out of that violen...

 ( Digital Literacies for Disciplinary Learning: A Call to Action )      This week's reading on literacies highlights a critical truth about modern education: information is abundant, but understanding and application continue to pose challenges and complexities. While access to digital tools has revolutionized the ways we engage with knowledge both inside and outside the classroom, it also raises the question about how we prepare students to thoughtfully and creatively navigate all information they can access with just a few clicks. As expressed in the reading, as digital change accelerates, educators can no longer rely on traditional practices and simply expect leaders to find the connection and apply them in online contexts. For me, it stresses the need for the design learning experience to go beyond consuming information, but to encourage deeper engagement with disciplinary practices through digital means.      One notable takeaway from the reading...

 I am mainly going to be focused on the reading about Mullen High School but it seems that for this week's readings overall there is a discussion about the use of including digital resources towards instruction.  What I liked about the Digital Atelier (DA) that Muller High School is the fact that it wasn't focused on one thing and about content material that they have learned in schools but instead on the students interests. On top of that mentors, that monitor and instruct students at the DA, are open to using online resources that will help students improve on their disciplinary trajectories instead of just relying on their disciplinary knowledge / expertise. Wilson points this out in the fourth paragraph of  Verbs, Language, and Culture , as teachers we tend to forget the wealth of our knowledge and try to rely on that when instructing students. There are so many digital resources now that could better visualize or explain something to a student and might lean towards ...

The focus of this week's readings is standardized testing / classroom assessments, in particular they make a point of the importance of having different forms of assessment and that what should be our goal is understanding how well students are doing. Like what most of our readings have pointed out at this point is that students have various backgrounds and identities that influence the way they think and learn content. This implies that we cannot get a grasp of their understanding through just one type of assessment but instead need a variety and should take into consideration of student involvement.  In Classroom assessment of literacy growth and content learning,  abbreviating to CALGCL, one of the chapters sections mention how it is important to have multiple and overlapping sources so that planning for instruction is appropriate. This reminds me of our Text-Set assignment and although I did find it to be a lot, it was also very helpful in giving me ideas of what I can inc...

This week’s readings made an important point about assessments, to truly understand how well our students are doing, we need to assess them in different ways. Not all students learn the same, so we can’t expect them to show their understanding through just one type of assessment. Whether it's small check-ins, oral assessments, written tests, projects, or even homework, offering a variety of assessments helps us get a fuller picture of where each student is at. So, if that's what works best for learning, why does it feel like standardized testing is the complete opposite? One of my biggest issues with standardized tests is the time limit. When students are preparing for exams like the SAT, too often the focus shifts to teaching them tricks to "beat the test." Instead of really teaching kids how to read and analyze a text, they learn how to skim it quickly to catch just the main ideas, read the questions first and then search for the answers, or memorize shortcuts to so...

  “It is very possible you too will be ranking your choices.” After listening to Tweak the Vote , I got an unsettling feeling of uncertainty mixed with hope. Uncertain of what is to come, the reactions of the public yet hopeful that younger generations become active and willing to be involved.   Explained in the podcast, the ranking system is a unique method intended to be a more fair and “useful” voting method. Fracassa explained how a pair of candidates teamed up during the 2018 San Francisco mayor race and used the ranking system to their advantage. This change of direction surprised people since politics “ends up being a zero-sum game, oftentimes, in which you are relentlessly attacking your opponent(Tweak the Vote, 2018). This quote goes to show that individuals have pushed this notion of the need to defeat someone else more the need to win. Even now it feels as if current elections are to be joked about, making viral videos to reach audiences and use it to mock thei...

Wilson-Lopez's article, Critical Literacy, Disciplinary Literacy: Reading the Engineering-Designed World  was the clearest example of this week's essential question of " How can teachers support critical approaches to literacy that engage in social justice work with texts? "   In the article, it mentions the four major themes within literacy instruction:Domination, Diversity, Design, and Access are explored in the contexts of an engineering class. This last theme of access reminded me of the two pages of DeStigter's article: On the Ascendance of Argument: A Critique of the Assumptions of Academe’s Dominant Form . Where in order to critically engage with a text we need to provide students with access to bodies of knowledge and dominant practices.  In the Ascendance article, DeStigter briefly mentions the decision at Tejada High School to require all students to take a full year of AP English. This decision was made in response as many students from this school wo...