Telling Stories

This story telling unit was something that was brand new to me. I had never been taught this type of unit in school and so it was interesting to see what other people came up with, and, also, how my group and I were going to create a unit worth teaching.

Being a student throughout these units was fun. I feel that I learned a lot about the concept of story telling and I had fun doing it. The different and varying activities all taught me something different about story telling and they all held separate values. I think high school and middle school students could benefit from these opportunities even more than I did because they might be less experienced than I was and they could learn the elements of a story, the history of totem poles, or the process of story telling.

Holding the role as a teacher was different than being a student. I was nervous that the information I was teaching was going to be too childish, or not hold enough depth for these students. I thought they would find my lesson childish. Although I didn't receive any bad remarks from the students, I still had a feeling that my lesson could have been aimed at an older audience. 

I think that the concept of story telling, and planning a unit around the idea of telling stories is something that can be academically viable. It is possible for this to be intellectually stimulating. But I think it’s a thin line. There is a way to make this whole unit too childish, and it isn’t hard. But if you can create an aligned unit that caters to both the story telling ideas, and the appropriateness of the age group, I can see a major strength in this. 

Ranking

I was thinking about the article that we read. In particular, the section about ranking. I talked about it in class, but I think it was a really interesting part. The kids that get A's, get too big-headed and overly confident in their work. The kids that get D's lose all confidence and do not want to try anymore. I find this to be true. Growing up, I got all A's. I thought I was beyond incredibly smart and never needed to improve on anything. My brother was quite the opposite. He needed the push of confidence and never got it. All his teachers gave him bad grades and it made him not want to participate in school anymore. Grading is a difficult subject and I know I still have a lot to learn about it.

A, B, C, D, F

Grading is something that I thought would be easy and simple to figure out and apply to real life situations. Through my findings in class on Thursday, I have seen that it is something that takes time, as well as, a difficult process to go through. Making sure the grading scale is appropriate and aligned with the assignment is a daunting task. I realized that I don't know the first thing about grading and I have a lot to learn.


I am interested in learning a lot of new information regarding the grading system and how to develop one on my own. This is a subject that I am extremely interested in and am excited to learn more. 

...and all the stars were aligned?

When the stars all align, are good things supposed to happen? Is everything in your life supposed to turn upside down and re-arrange in your favor? Alignment is something that has never happened in my life. Looking back at events, I am shocked to discover that nothing I have ever done has been aligned. Maybe it's because I am so awkward, clumsy, and freakish. Maybe not. But regardless, alignment is a new concept within my realm. 

Learning what educational alignment was seemed to make sense and be a simple concept - balance everything. I left class feeling it should be easy to teach a well aligned instructional situation. That feeling lasted about the same amount of time it took me to get to my next class. I would have never noticed how disastrous the lesson was. This class requires we read 15 books throughout the semester. One a week. We are supposed to "critically think and understand" all of these novels. During class, we are lectured on something other than those books. To think critically, I believe a better pedagogy would be to discuss topics related to the novels in which we were focusing on. That would make me understand them more. Also, there is no assessment to make sure we are understanding what we are reading. This could be worked on to create an alignment that helps students learn. 

Alignment. Clearly some others don't understand it either. It wasn't just me after all.