Foot: Final Reflection

I must say this course has taught me a lot and many of the activities that we engaged in throughout the semester will be included in my future classroom. From the beginning of the semester we have been engaging in ice-breaker and small group activities that ultimately allow students the chance to be active in lessons. I never thought that simply playing a small ice-breaker game could have a profound impact on how students become alert and more committed to the next activity/lesson. Overall, the most important thing I have learned this semester is what defines multiple modalities. Knowing all the different ways I could include different modalities into any given lessons, allows me the chance to truly capture my students' attention. Utilizing blogs, facebook, twitter, wikis, ect. will give students a broad range of activities for lessons. I found that a lot of people believe that multi-modal always has to do with technology, but that is not always true. Multi-modal concerning education is taking different approaches/modes to teach a specified lesson. With that being said, I believe one of the most influential activities we did this semester was creating the Canonical Wiki. One the surface it is important as a Language Arts teacher to know and recognize the Canons. Moreover, it was important to actually research different lesson plans that could surround one book and a canon at that. I learned that there are some many activities that could stem off of one piece of literature and as a teacher I do not have to traditionally teach and assess the book. I learned there are plenty of meaningful activities that can be used that will tap into students' critical thinking and would benefit them more in the long run.

Another thing this course taught me was how social networking could be used in the classroom. I absolutely love the idea of including social networking in my future classroom, especially when it comes to discussing literature. Online literature circles have become one of my favorite activities to discuss literature amongst students, but I never thought about using social networking sites with it. Also, I loved how we discussed concerns with certain lesson plans, especially when the internet is involved. I believe we agreed that incorporating parents and having an open line of communication is the best way to advoid problems when it comes to internet use.

The class as a whole was ultimately complicated and quite a bittersweet experience. I learned information that will help me when I begin to start teaching, but this course also was structured in a way that I did not learn as much as I believe I could have. I loved the activities that we engaged in and completed, but sometimes the activities took away from formal instruction. As a learner, I need a balance of formal instruction, as well as demonstration. I believe the course was just a little taboo when it came to the organization of it and that is what threw off my learning process. I will say the nature of the course is probably a reflection of the organization. I have never taken a course that focused on engaging students in a non-traditional way, so I did not know what to expect. This course was very non-traditional and it reinforced the aspects of multi-modalities that we had been learning.