ELA Instruction Reflection:


  I have been lucky enough in my current job to teach a plethora of different subjects, one of them being ELA.  As a GED Prep teacher, one of the main focuses of my teaching is the English language and all of the different things that a student needs to learn and absorb about it.  There are five key features of the  ELA standards that must be taught to students k-12, each of them dealing with English language proficiency and mastery for college and Career readiness.  These five key features of the ELA standards include reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language.  
  The reading component involves students having the ability to make connections among a wide range of texts and making gains in reading.  The writing component involves the ability to plan, revise, and edit many different types of writing.  The speaking and listening components involve using oral presentations and listening activities to communicate important information and perform other projects and tasks.  Lastly the language component involves using the standard conventions of the written English language effectively and using appropriate  vocabulary in ELA.  These five features can and should be addressed not only through and English teacher, but also through content teachers such as social studies and science teachers as well.  
  The key is to incorporate these standards through your regular content and make sure that students are constantly working on these skills.  The Common Core standards set aside guidelines for teachers to see what skills their student must maintain at any specific grade level, however they are broad enough to allow teachers, administrators, superintendents, and state educational officials, to set up their own individual curriculum's in order to meet these goals.  The best way to tackle all five of these components is to have assignments built into your curriculum that can meet many of these different standards at the same time, rather than doing one at a time.  Having these strong and thorough assignments with skill building practices will enhance our students abilities and if done on all grade levels will lead to higher achieving students who are more ready to enter college and start a career.


Helpful Technology Tool:


A good technology tool that i have discovered recently that can help assist each of the five components is a tool called Google Docs.  These five components including reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language can all be addressed through the use of Google Docs's various tools and options.  Google Docs is basically an online cloud where people can access from anywhere there is a computer with Internet connection and a Google account.  The thing which makes Google Docs a great tool to address the five components is the fact that any document added to Docs can be shared with as many people as the author wants.  For example, i could have my students create and edit a research project on Google Docs easily with a few clicks of the mouse.  The program allows an infinite number of people to view and edit all different types of documents which makes it ideal for an ELA assignment.  Some examples of ELA assignments that could be done using Google Docs are group writing assignments, editing, book or movie reviews, presentation projects, quizzes, the sky is the limit!


ELA Teacher Interview:


I have the privilege of working with a few different ELA teaching at my current job and i was able to interview one, Mrs. Kennedy, recently about any issues she currently has with integrating technology into her curriculum.  After discussing the topic for a while the main frustrations she has with integrating technology are technological limitations at our place of work along with a lack of fresh ideas to help motivate students.  In talking about the technological limitations of working in our facility Mrs. Kennedy stressed many times that the Internet capabilities can often times cause limitations to assignments due to lack of bandwidth and things of that nature.  Along with this is the fact that we are teaching in an incarcerated setting which makes use of the Internet very tricky and difficult.  Students are extremely limited to what websites they are permitted to go onto which makes things like email, blogs, wikis, and other web based tools almost impossible to use for correctional reasons.  This unchangeable fact makes it indeed hard to use computers for things other than word processing and project creating.  Along with Mrs. Kennedy's frustrations with the lack of Internet access she also expressed that she often has challenges thinking of ways to use technology aside from basic computer assignments.  This frustration relates directly with the lack of Internet access but is still something Mrs. Kennedy wishes she could do more about.  Students at the jail cannot use any manipulative's so computers are often the best way to do assignments.  In the future Mrs. Kennedy said she will continue to look for new and creative ways to implement her ELA curriculum and she hopes to learn about new and exciting products through my work in graduate school as well!


Dropbox:


I currently already have a Dropbox account that i created for a previous class!