IPoem Draft: Dad from The Watsons Go To Birmingham-1963

I Am Dad

Stanza One

I am Dad.

I live in Flint, Michigan with Momma, Byron, Kenny, and Joetta.

I wonder about my son Byron.

I hear my children fighting.

I see the Brown Bomber.

I want to see my family happy.

I am Dad.

Stanza Two

I question returning to the South.

I feel satisfied with my life.

I touch Momma’s heart.

I worry about my family.

I cry from laughing so hard.

I understand the cold wind and snow.

I am Dad.

Stanza Three

I say I am content.

I believe I can make people laugh.

I dream about my relationship with my children.

I try to teach my children right from wrong.

I hope for a bright future for my children.

I once was single.

But now I am a family man.

I am Dad.

Final IPoem: Dad from The Watsons go to Birmingham-1963

I Am Dad

Stanza One

I am a comedian and a provider.

I wonder about my son Byron’s future.

I hear my children’s relentless fighting.

I see the Brown Bomber traveling across the country.

I want to see my family safe and happy.

I am a comedian and a provider.

Stanza Two

I pretend like I’m ready to return to the South.

I feel satisfied with my life in Flint.

I touch Momma’s heart with my joking.

I worry about being able to protect my family.

I cry sometimes from laughing so hard.

I am a comedian and a provider.

Stanza Three

I understand the cold wind and snow.

I say that Byron will be fine but I really am not sure.

I dream about the kind of relationship I will have with my children.

I try to teach my children right from wrong.

I hope for a bright and promising future for my children.

I am a comedian and a provider.

IPoems

In high school, I had to complete 2 different IPoems, simply called “I Am…”. My teachers used them as a “getting to know you” activity within the first few days of classes. According to the information provided in the PowerPoint, IPoems serve many purposes in the classroom, not only in Language Arts, but also in other subjects as well.

In the Language Arts arena, IPoems help students to understand a particular character, setting, or plot better from a story they may be reading. In other subject areas such as Science and Social Studies, students are given the opportunity to research the appropriate curriculum focused topic, take the information they may have learned from their research and write an IPoem based on the things they have discovered.

What surprised me the most about utilizing IPoems in the classroom were the results from the study that took place with second and fourth graders when they were invited to write IPoetry.  According to the PowerPoint, students were able to transform language and ideas and incorporate factual information into their poems; students wrote with emotion, vivid imagery and precise word choice (including an increase in vocabulary knowledge and recognition); students developed ownership over their poems; and students developed deeper understandings about their topics of study.

Reciprocal Teaching and Discussion Directing

Reciprocal teaching is defined as dialogue between teachers and students regarding a text they may be reading. This dialogue utilizes four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. Reciprocal teaching has many uses such as encouraging students to think about their own thought processes during reading; helping students learn to be actively involved and monitor their comprehension as they read; and teaching students to ask questions during reading which helps make the text more comprehensible.

Reciprocal teaching is appropriate for use before reading, during reading, and after reading and in individual, small groups, or whole class groupings. The steps are as follows: Put students in groups of four; Give each student a role of Summarizer, Questioner, Clarifier, or Predictor; Have students read a few paragraphs of the assigned text selection; At a stopping point, the Summarizer will highlight the key ideas, the Questioner will ask questions about the selection, the Clarifier will address confusing parts and try to answer any questions, and the Predictor can offer predictions about what the author will write next.

Similar to the Reciprocal Teaching reading, in the Discussion Director reading, students are encouraged to take on many different aspects of the reading and to develop questions and comments that will be beneficial to the group. I think both strategies would be very useful in developing student’s reading comprehension and understanding.

Morphology, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension

According to the authors of the article Breaking Down Words to Build Meaning: Morphology, Vocabulary, and Reading Comprehension in the Urban Classroom,  vocabulary, morphology and reading comprehension are all related and connected.

When students come across words that are unfamiliar to them, they need to know how to break the word apart into smaller, more familiar words. Root words, prefixes, and suffixes, are all important tools and strategies that students should know how to utilize. 

I really liked the suggestions that this article included for classroom use, such as a word wall and word charts with words from a selected text the students are reading. I have seen a lot of word walls in different classrooms and in my experiences, students do find them useful and helpful.  

I think that the Word Wizard assignments from the Pirate Diary Multi Text Unit directly addresses the information that was provided in this article and in the Vocabulary Overview handout. In the assignment, students are asked to think about many words and their meanings. I think one of the highlights of this assignment is that students are asked to find synonyms and antonyms of a vocabulary word from the text and also are asked to look at many different forms of the word, which is what Robust Vocabulary Instruction is about.

Instructional Level Trade Books Article

The article Integrating Instructional-Level Social Studies Trade Books for Struggling Readers in Upper Elementary Grades was one that I think is very useful. The article discussed the use of trade books, or books that are more consistent with a student’s reading level, and how they can be used to complement a text book in the classroom which may be too hard for a student to read. In the past, I didn’t see many teachers differentiating instruction, especially for other subjects such as Social Studies. Too many times they just decided that their struggling students have to learn to read some how, it might as well be through the textbook. As the article stated, this technique just doesn’t work. Personally, I never struggled with reading as a student, but I definitely had classmates who did and to see them get so frustrated over reading a textbook was not a good feeling for me. I think that today, teachers do a better job of trying to recognize student’s different reading and instructional levels, but sometimes it is limited to the language arts arena. Of course, language arts is connected and intertwined with other subjects, and  teachers should recognize this by determining the reading level their students are on and then based on that, finding appropriate texts for them to read in any given content area. In this class, the Reading Assessment is the tool to determine student’s reading levels. After that, this article recommends wonderful resources to be used in the Social Studies curriculum, therefore, we should be well equipped to match student’s with the appropriate texts. Also from this article, I took away that within our Multi Text Units, we should take into account the different levels that may be present in our classroom and choose appropriate books for all students to be able to read and understand.

Character Sketcher [Pirate Diary]

Character Sketcher

Modeling

The article Shared Readings: Modeling Comprehension, Vocabulary, Text Structures, and Text Features for Older Readers discussed 4 different ways to model reading.

The first was Reading Comprehension where students are encouraged to use strategies like activating background, inferencing, summarizing, predicting, clarifying, questioning, visualizing, monitoring, synthesizing, evaluating, and connecting. Teachers can model these strategies for students during read alouds simply by thinking aloud. Like the examples in the article, the teachers were making inferences, asking questions, making visual connections, all aloud, which encourages the students to do the same and therefore comprehend more.

The second was Vocabulary where students were encouraged to utilize context clues, word parts, and resources. I think this strategy is very important so that students can learn how to decode words for themselves, which is a tool that they most definitely need. By using context clues, or “outside-the-word” strategies, teachers demonstrated to students how to focus on embedded definitions, synonyms, antonyms, comparisons, contrasts, descriptions, and examples to learn new vocabulary words. By using word parts, or “inside-the-word” strategies, students were shown how to use prefixes, suffixes, roots, bases, word families, and cognates to learn vocabulary. By using resources, students were given access to another person or the internet in order to find out new vocabulary words.

The third strategy of Modeling looked at Text Structures. The authors gave examples of Informational Texts and Narrative Texts and the things that compose them in order for teachers to show students key information in a reading, such by using graphic organizers or signal words.

The final strategy involved Text Features. According to a participant from the article, things in a reading such as headings, captions, illustrations, boldface words, graphs, diagrams, and glossaries are included to aid students in comprehension.

I think that all 4 of these strategies would prove useful in modeling reading and in encouraging students to think critically about the things that they are reading.

Pirate Articles

The article Pirates in Historical Fiction and Nonfiction:A Twin-Text Unit of Study, detailed several innovative ideas for use in both Language Arts and Social Studies lessons. When I began reading this article, I was very surprised to see all of the Social Studies integration that the piratical unit offered. Who would think that from 3 children’s books, so much knowledge would emerge?! Another important aspect of this article was having students compare the things that they learned from one book (fiction) with another (nonfiction). The differences between fiction and nonfiction are important ones and this unit helps students further distinguish between the two.

The article Swashbuckling Adventures on the High Seas: Classroom Activities for a Unit on Pirates was very interesting to me. I liked the ideas of researching individual people, making a Data Retrieval Chart, and then creating a Wanted poster about that person. I think that often times students are told to read a book and answer questions about it and that is all that ever happens so the creativity and independence students can experience in this unit is invaluable.

The article Internet Workshop and Blog Publishing: Meeting Student (and Teacher) Learning Needs to Achieve Best Practice in the 21st Century Social Studies Classroom outlined many important points dealing with internet and blog usage. Some highlights for me from this article were all of the ways that interent research is useful for students. The authors state that students are introduced to strategies for exploring the internet and relevant background knowledge, which is important for future online interaction and for learning pertinent information. Two other andvantages that the authors stated were that students develop content knowledge and literacies that help them to evaluate information. These are essential tools for learning about any subject and skills that will continue to be useful.

My Name is What?

I think Ms. Buckner has wonderful ideas about how to get students writing. Her ideas are original, yet something that the students can relate to at the same time. I have never been given the option of writing about my name and I’m sure it would excite many students just as it did me. My second grade teacher took time out one day to tell all of my classmates and myself what our names meant and that made us all feel very special.

According to behindthename.com, Cierra is a variant of Sierra, which in Spanish means Mountain Range. But I already knew that. However, my mom was not thinking of beautiful Mountain Ranges when she named me. She is an avid Soap Opera watcher. There was a character back in the day on one of her favorites named Cierra. Go figure, that’s where she came up with my name!  

What I didn’t know is that my last name, Ferguson, is Irish/Scottish and means “son of Fergus” from Irish Mythology. Who would have thunk?! My dad’s family is from Surry County and most of them are deceased. It really saddens my dad to think that the Ferguson name will end with me, because he didn’t have a son. He is trying to convince me to name a son Ferguson, but I don’t know. At least that would be a unique first name, right?