Daily+Reflections

__**Day 1--07/11/2011**__ 1. After today's lesson, I can now outline my reading unit by choosing my text and selecting activities and standards to go with each part of the unit. 2. A couple main ideas I found useful in today's session: the five elements of a reading unit and the example reading units (Alan's) that we reviewed 3. My whole concept of introducing and having my students practice reading has changed--I now am getting to the point where I can make it more meaningful for my students 4. One thing I will use in the future from today's session that I learned are the linguistic and detail reading activities I can now incorporate into my reading unit 5. I am still unsure about some of the pre-reading and post-reading activities I want to use in my unit and how to make these accessible to students 6. Strategies that were reinforced today that I have learned in the past is the CBI lesson plan and it's components--the basics! 7. A miscellaneous/interesting fact I learned from today's session is how fun wikis can be and that Toni Thiesan has a treasure trove of resources that we can use! Thanks, Mike!!

**__Day 2--07/12/2011__** 1. I can now add standards to my lessons and address the multiple intelligences. 2. A couple of the main concepts in today's lesson were differentiating content in your lesson to address multiple intelligences and designing lessons via backward design. 3. Backward design has reminded me to start with the end in mind and to match activities with objectives. 4. One thing I learned in this lesson that I will use in the future is how to imbed documents and presentations inside my wiki. 5. I am still unsure about my text for my reading unit, but I have a good idea about what to use now. :) 6. A strategy that I used in the past that was reinforced in this lesson was assessing students using the three types of assessment: interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational. 7. Something interesting I learned in this lesson was how to use Scribd to imbed into my Wiki rather than laboriously typing away.

__**Day 3--07/13/2011**__ 1. I can now complete my unit because I have many samples and activities to choose from! 2. Main concept in today's lesson was the correlation between language acquistion (L2) and reading an authentic text (isthe interaction of learner to text just as efffective as leaner to learner, or face to face interaction) and tips on how to make students life long readers 3. My beliefs stayed the same for the most part, although I now want to incorporate free reading into my curriculum 4. One thing I will use in the future will be allowing students to free read so they can develop that sense of reading for pleasure 5. I am still unsure about essential questions--how many do I have to have? 6. Almost all strategies used in today's session I have used--i.e. the different components of an ACTFL reading unit, just not as a cohesive unit. I usually have used these to have students read the articles in the textbook and then do activities with the reading. 7. Something interesting from today's session: everyone is stressed!! You said interesting, not something "surprising" :P

__**Day 4--07/14/2011**__ 1. Completed my unit 2. No concepts, just unit work 3. No beliefs, just unit work 4. One thing I will use in the future is more activities that require students to exhibit higher order thinking skills and a lot of those come with post-reading activities 5. Sure about everything at this point 6. I have used "Side of the fence" activity that I have included in my post reading 7. Something interesting: there is a GREAT Chinese food place called Great Wall Express a few blocks away from SAILN office--thanks, Marlen!!