TPCK Chapter 3 Reflections

Margaret Nerney
EDU 583- Dr. Grace Ward
Chapter 3 Reflection- “TPCK in K-6 literacy education: It’s not that elementary!”
DUE: February 25, 2009

This chapter was an interesting one to read, as I am certified in Language Arts grades 7-12. It brought up a multitude of questions about the differences in the pre-service preparation for the elementary and secondary teachers. Some of the foundational instruction was certainly missing in my program. As a secondary educator, I lacked the training in how to teach someone to read. I lacked the direct instruction for improving grammar and vocabulary acquisition. I am not certain if this was due to the fact that standards indicate that students should be taught that earlier, but the reality is that students come to me without those skills. I do not think it is simply the teacher’s fault that had him/her before me. I think some students just need more time and different approaches. I am worried that the lack of knowledge that I have about those building blocks could limit my impact later on. I can’t build on something I don’t understand or know. Realizing a gap in my content knowledge was definitely a surprise. But it is something that I must work to correct. I have started working with the Kindergarten teacher once or twice a week for buddy reading. I know that she uses the Dibbles program, but I have never really sat down to see how the students that I get later on have been instructed in reading. That will happen soon.
This chapter focused a great deal on the shifting definition of literacy as well as the shifting strategies that are required to improve this new literacy. Although I have been aware of the shift and have tried to stay up to date on developing technologies, I have not been exposed to as many strategies (pedagogical knowledge) that meet the demands of these new technologies and literacy, as I would like. My colleagues and I are aware of the new ways in which technologies have created new reading skill needs. I am just not sure that I have ever really seen any strategies that were meant to tackle the new demands of hyperlinks and hypermedia within a text. This certainly gave me something to look into for my classroom. I have already made the shift to more non-fiction based study which better meets the needs of their real life instead of just focusing on plot and character development. However, I feel that many of the literacy strategies that I have learned are still for writing on a piece of paper in front of you or flipping through a book without the interaction that hypertext and hypermedia encourage.
The chapter suggested some interesting ways to approach the old skills as well. I have not had the opportunity to engage my students in digital storytelling before. I have only worked with 11th graders and storytelling was a smaller part of what we worked on. I am currently working with a group of 5th graders on rewriting fairy tales using the appropriate motifs, so this would work in nicely. They love technology and would probably be more interested in the writing process if there was more visual and artistic creativity. I will definitely be looking into this more. There were a few other sites mentioned that seemed like great ways to take my kid’s writing to a different level. The chapter highlighted a program called SubEthaEdit, which helps the kids to revise with the help of outsiders. I would have to review this more closely before trying it. I also noted www.kidspub.org that seemed to be a place for student’s to publish their work to a real audience! Authentic assessment is often hard to find, but this seemed like a step in the right direction.
Overall, I felt that his chapter reminded me of some of the great resources that I hadn’t returned to in a while (rubistar and ReadWriteThink) and it encouraged me to try out some others that may better engage my students and improve their level of understanding. The one thing that truly stood out to me was that the resources shared in this chapter were just as beneficial to someone teaching at the secondary level as they were to someone at the elementary level. Trying to break technology knowledge into grade levels is not the solution. We can all benefit from these new means. I agree with our sentiments in class: It is not the tool that creates the learning; it is what you do with it.