Wednesday+August+28th.

2. I really liked the article on how to start assessing your students earlier on. I thought it raised some good points about teacher expectation while addressing student expectation as well. I think the latter is an underutilized source. The way that I would spend the first 45 minutes of the class would probably to have them fill out a survey or questionnaire about who they are. I would then have them swap with someone that they don't know in the class and have each of them write up what amounted to a article feature piece on the other one. The class introduce their partners allowing me to assess skill levels as well as get to know the class. I hope it would achieve the goal of making the class more comfortable with each other as well.

3. a. value. What we value in curriculum building is an ever changing process that should be focuses on the needs and questions of the learner instead of being dictated solely by those doing the teaching. b.My interpretation of the chapter is that the old ways of evaluating knowledge and ability are doing the way of the dinosaur. The old ways of testing are rigid and only test have you been educated in a certain way not the amount of knowledge you may potentially have. In fact given one way of life a person may be very intelligent more so than someone with what was prior to this point a conventional education. People like hillbillies face ridicule of their use of language but if you were to put a person with the conventional education in a situation that is commonplace to a hillbilly the person with the previous conventional education that may have one been classified as more intelligent would be likely to struggle. C. I would ask the authors that if we are going to have such an open minded situation based on the questions of learners then where will set the bar for individual achievement. 1. How will we go about determining the new standards of achievement?

2. What will those standards be in the end ?

3. Is it enough to talk about a need for change without providing definitive answers for what the change will be?'

D. 1. Be mindful of having any previous expectations or prejudices when heading into the year with a new class. 2. Be aware of the diversity of people's background and the wealth of different types of knowledge it can bring to the table. 3.Build my lessons upon the questions that my students ask so that they feel like they have a stake in what is learned.

E. 1. How were you taught the world came to be?

2. Who sets the standards for the language we speak?

3. Is language something that should change with time?

4. Is there a limit to the change that language should be able to undergo?

5. Can we be both open accepting to the dialects that all people bring to language and remain able to assess proficiency in it.

4. a. I thought that the standards that they listed were interesting at first but in the end I thought they were a little redundant. It seems the primary goal is to have students participate in a wide variety of experiences and that could possibly be summed up in one standards. b.In this section there seemed to be more specificity than in the other standards. Instead of just having a wide variety of knowledge there is specific content examples given on occasion hat students are supposed to learn. Also there are skills specified when it comes to writing and the completion of projects. c. I think the differences reflect teachers versus bureaucrats to a certain extent. I may be wrong in assuming the common core is not necessarily constructed by teachers while the NCTE standards are but the NCTE standards do seem to reflect the attitude of someone who has experienced first hand the lessons being in a class can teach. I think that in order to understand language, literacy, and culture one has to be out among it experiencing it first hand. That way they are able to see which methods are helpful or not in bridging the gaps between different groups of the three categories. It is fine for someone to say in the Common Core a person not speaking English should be able to use their native language to bridge the gap and find solutions in English but what are we doing to help them? What are the strategies we as educators are implementing them? There are similarities in both standards though. They both want to drive home a wealth of experience with the NCTE seeming to focus on that on a greater scale. I think what you have to do is a teacher is absorb all these standards and have them in your mind while you are in the classroom. That way you can blend them with your first hand experience to create the best possible learning environment for our students that is both efficient and supportive.