Blog 6

    Ahh notetaking.  For as long as I can remember I have been taking notes.  Taking notes because I was freaked out about the test, taking them because I need a way to make myself stay awake in class, and taking them because I was sincerely interested in what I was learning.  I am a definate notetaker and I found Chapter 7 to extremely interesting.  I found myself as I was reading deciding on how I would present the idea of notetaking to my classroom one day.  I find that it is extremely helpful to take notes and therefore I will more than likely suggest it in my classroom.  I love how in the chapter it gave different ways to take notes for different subjects.  Personally speaking, I always struggled taking notes in math (possibly why I always did awful) because there was no set way of doing it.  All it was a bunch of numbers that I could make look presentable on my paper.  I know that for students like myself notetaking is a must, however, not all students are like me.  I know some people that can pretty much write down random words on their paper and when it comes time to study they know exactly what was meant by those words.  I enjoyed how in the book it talked about setting a specific way of notetaking for your class.  This seems that it would be super helpful, especially when you have those students that deny you ever taught something that was on the test. 
    In one of my classes our teacher had a set way of notetaking and it made the class instructional time seem to run so much more smoothly.  When she got up to teach you know exactly what to write down because she told you.  You knew what was very important because she would say, "Get out your purple marker and make 10 exclamation marks after that sentence."  This made it extremely easy to organize and study my notes.  Throughout the week our teacher would also take notes and when it came time to reveiw for the test she would go over her notes with the class. 
  I beleive that note taking and note making are very important.  Obviously, you need to take notes because that is what you will be tested on.  Note making is just as important though because the way you make your notes is directly related to how easy you will be able to prepare for the test.
  Although I think it is a great idea to set a systematic way to take notes for your classroom what would you do if you had a student who just didn't understand the notes that way?  How would you choose the format for your class notes in the first place?  Classroom Vote?

Blog 5

Chapter three was a very interesting chapter on vocabulary.  It offered many different concepts and strategies that one could use for vocabulary instruction.  The strategy that stuck out to me the most was definately the word wall.  In many classrooms that I have been in for general observations and practicum expeirences I have seen a shift in the "norm" of vocabulary teachings. 

I always expeirenced vocabulary in the "look it up" strategy as I would call it.  We would have our list of vocabulary and throughout the week we would be responsible for looking the words up in a dictionary and their would be a test on them on Friday.  This is probably the one thing that I dreaded most about literature in general.  However, it is refreshing to see that in today's classroom there is a much greater focus on vocabulary and teachers have gotten very creative in helping students learn these terms. For instance, in a 2nd grade classroom that I have observed in they had a word wall that literally was an entire wall.  It was so colorful and informative.  Each week the class would post seven new words to the wall.  Throughout the week they would define these words in their own terms and act them out each day.  They would also add illustrations to the wall throughout the week.  I thought this was just stellar. 

We went to a professional development seminar Friday and they spoke about how it is great to incorporate movement into the classroom and I think that with vocabulary there is a great need for movement since students retain 90% of what they do.

I am so excited to use some of the vocabulary strategies in my classroom.  There are some things that I am unsure about such as, how much time would be sufficient for teaching vocabulary each day? Also, what would be some was to scaffold the students learning of the vocabulary each week?