Field Advisory, April 15, 2008
One of the UIC students looks
at the classroom posters brought
in by Mary Peasley
We held the final field advisory for the 2007-2008 academic year on April 15th 2008. CPS partners brought in several interesting artifacts to facilitate teacher discussion, and UIC students continued to participate actively in the discussion by playing their roles of facilitator,
summarizer and timekeeper.
Alex Horn, a CPS partner who works with students having mild/moderate learning disabilities, brought in a chart of active reading symbols students could use such as '+' to indicate something important, ' ! ' to indicate interesting, '- ' to show that they disagreed and '? ' to mark a question related to material that students were reading. Students used post-it notes using these symbols and collated them all on a single chart. Using this in her classroom
generated richer discussions on the content that students were reading and also encouraged students to actively take notes while reading. Madeline, one of the UIC students, wondered if Alex noticed that students have trouble doing this process with non-fiction and this generated a discussion within the group.
Tasha McShan, another CPS partner, brought an artifact to depict how science and language arts instruction can be incorporated in teaching reading. She showed student work samples that connected science with several art activities. UIC students were intrigued by the possibilities of connecting science with language art activities. Tasha stressed that students had learned quite a lot of science related to corn and plants through the process of reading and arts.
Mary Peasley brought in posters she designed for her classroom. She uses them as visuals for kids to develop picture word association and to create a classroom community. For example, we saw posters for problem solving and active listening, which listed how to be an active listener. She also shared samples of word definition posters where each poster carried a general definition, pictures and example to go along with the word-meaning. For example, the word definition poster for "disguise" included the definitions that her students suggested. UIC students expressed great interest in this way of creating classroom rules.
Tania Petrasz brought in a worksheet to identify pictures of kitchenware that she uses with her students while developing life skills around cooking and eating. The worksheet required students to correctly identify an item of kitchenware and its uses. She showed how she modified the same activity according to the abilities of different students.
Paul Jedovnikcy engages UIC students as he explains his literacy artifacts
UIC students listen to the audio literacy artifact thatCPS partner
Dave Rench brought from his classroom
UIC students discuss the active reading symbols chart that CPS partner
Alex Horn brought in to share
