This course has taught me a lot about the new literacy skills. These literacy skills—Questioning, Searching, Evaluating, Synthesizing and Communicating—are extremely important for our students to learn and understand.
At the start of this course, I felt I may have had an advantage over others. I felt that I provided my students a really good understanding of what these literacy skills are and how to use them. As we went through the course material, I came to a striking revelation—I might be teaching my students the new literacy’s, but not necessarily in the best way. I struggle the most with assessing my students and checking for understanding. I do assess my students, just not always the way that were suggested by Kuhlthau, Maniotes & Caspari (2007). Having gone through my lesson plans and looking at the way these new literacy's are used, I have edited my lessons and made them to give the students better understanding, but to also allow me to assess my students better.
I have learned about these new literacy’s and have developed ways to teach these to my students and be able to assess them on these. From here on out, I will have a better understanding of these literacy’s and be able to give my students all the necessities to be a 21st Century Learner. As I continue to teach, I am going to look at my lessons thoroughly. I want to really make sure things are planned out and then when I actually do the lessons I am able to reflect and edit them to make them even better. As time goes on, these literacy's will become old and newer ones will be developed. It is important to stay current with what is going on, so that we are not left behind or out of the game.
Professional development is key to being able to continue to learn new things and to develop your skills and knowledge. There are several things that I would like to do that will help to expand on these new literacy skills, but also technology skills. The first goal I have is to attend a summer workshop on technology in the classroom. This event has several speakers coming in to talk about different things that are taking place with technology and what I can do as an educator with those things. I have already signed up to be in it and have cleared my schedule for this to take place in June. The next goal I have is to complete my Masters Degree with Walden University in September 2011. Having been through several courses that have helped develop my skills in education and technology, I feel the courses that are to come will only help to make me even stronger. I have also started talking with some colleagues of mine about what we can do to implement these new literacy’s into our classrooms, but also get them into classrooms throughout our district. As a group we have talked with our administrators about the importance of these literacy’s and providing our students with the opportunities to become better 21st Century Learners. We are currently in the stages of putting together a presentation that will be given to the districts educators in May. The information I have learned in this class, and from the research we have done, I feel that educators will be impacted by this and ready to implement these into their classrooms.
Kuhlthau, C. C., Maniotes, L. K., & Caspari, A. K. (2007). Guided inquiry: Learning in the 21st century. Westport: Libraries Unlimited.
