C4T #1

My first C4T assignment required me to read and comment on posts from educator Annie Palmer's blog Breaking Education Barriers. The two posts that I read were very interesting and will be very helpful to me in my future classroom.

Comment #1:

The first post that I read and commented on was titled Feedback: Lessons from the Ball Field. In this post, Palmer makes a lot of comparisons between her time in the classroom and her time on the softball fields as a young adult. She first explains the importance of giving specific, verbal feedback rather than just a score. She says that scores indicate that the learning is done and that there is no room for improvement. Next, she says how crucial it is to keep feedback and praise separate in the classroom; she does so by expressing that praising students affects their self-esteem rather than their level of achievement. Her final point in this post includes her expressing how important it is to constantly give feedback during the learning process instead of just providing it at the end.

In my comment, I focused on the first two points that she made in her post. I agreed with her about how important it is to give verbal feedback rather than just an end-result score because there is always room for improvement. As far as her second point goes, I told her that I had never really thought about it much before. I said that I have always found it to be very important to praise students, but after reading her words on how praise should be kept separate from feedback, I completely feel the same way. Her words from this post will definitely help me tremendously in my future classroom.

Comment #2:
So, How DO You Teach Fluency? was the second post of Palmer's that I read and commented on. This post focuses on the importance of fluency instruction in the classroom. She also explains how important it is for teachers to have resources to help them teach fluency in their own classrooms. She then provides the reader with several different resources including articles, videos, and lists of books.

In my comment, I expressed my interest in her post and told her how helpful the resources will be in my future classroom. I mentioned that I was particularly pleased with a video that she shared titled Foundational Reading Skills: Fluency (K-2). I told her that I hope to be able to teach that age range one day and that I loved the ideas that the video provided. The video mostly focuses on the use of songs in teaching fluency, which I told her I thought was an excellent idea. I think that this post will also be extremely helpful for me in my future classroom.