Reflection

After taking this course, I think the most striking revelation that I had about the teaching of new literacy skills to my students is that these skills really do need to be taught. When I was a student, which was really not that long ago, I was not taught all of these skills. However, I did manage to pick them up along the way. I think that I just assumed that these are skills that students, by the time they get to high school, just know. I was wrong. Each of these skills need to be taught to students, and they need a chance to practice using the skills as well.

What I have learned in this course will impact my teaching practices greatly. After taking this course, I plan to spend time every semester on a project-based unit in which students are taught not only the mathematics concepts from the standards that I am expected to cover, but also the new literacy skills that they need to know to thrive in this ever-changing world. I would actually like to implement the unit plan that I created throughout this course. I want my students to learn these new skills, but I also want them to realize that they can do research on mathematics topics as well as the topics that they choose for other classes like English and Social Studies.

I think I would like to help implement a program at my school that requires that all students are trained yearly on Internet ethics before being allowed to access the Internet at school. It is so important that students are actually taught these ethics, as suggested by Dr. Warlick in the class learning resources. We have a program at our school called "Eagle Time," which is much like homeroom. We meet every two weeks with our "Eagle Time" classes, and I think that this would be the perfect opportunity to train our students on Internet ethics. In fact, they could be trained on the first day of school in "Eagle Time." After they view the training PowerPoint, I would like for students to be required to complete a short quiz answering questions about what they were trained on. After passing the quiz and getting parent permission, students would then be given Internet privileges at school.