Reflection

= Reflection = = =  = = In order to organize this portfolio I wanted a variety of options to make it as accessible and user friendly as possible. I included several organizational methods within the e-folio: alphabetical order, by components (pre, during, reading), as well as by cross referencing each strategy under all the components it might fit under. I decided to break my strategies down so that they could be either reading or writing for each of the three areas: pre, during, and after. I also chose to put a strategy in more than one place if it fit there. For example, you can find the Book Boxes strategy under both pre and after reading as well as under the motivational strategy link. To help myself keep track of the strategies I added a cross reference page. This page just helps me to see whether it is a pre, during, or after strategy and which strategies fall into multiple categories and has everything right on one page. The references are located in two places. One is at the bottom of each strategy page and the other is a full list of references under the Reference button on the navigation bar. The references in this page are found in alphabetical order according to the name of the strategy. All electronic files listed on the reference page of the e-folio can be found in the binder in ready to copy form. I would like to make this e-folio available to colleagues. My goal would be that as a staff we all can add new strategies as we try them and share new ideas with one another. We would also be able to tweak and change things to make the current strategies more appropriate or fix potential issues. Another reason I would like to share these strategies it to make teaching reading consistent across the building and grade levels.  This e-folio will give me some alternatives to the things I do on a regular basis and help me improve others. The thing I like most about this is it stretches the activities I already do and forces me to think about diverse learners and alternative teaching methods. Also, as included earlier I would like to use it as an ever changing tool and share it with colleagues for consistency purposes. This is one thing that seems to be a constant issue and I feel that this e-folio will help to change that problem. If we are all using strategies to teach reading and writing, I would hope that the consistency helps to push our students along academically.  I have several goals that I want to put into action as a result of this project. First, I want to share this e-folio with the other teachers that I work with and show them specifically how to use the strategies as well as the wiki. I would like for the whole staff to understand how the wiki works and the benefits of using strategies to teach reading and writing. Once teachers understand how to use the e-folio, I would like for all of us to work on adding additional strategies. Preferably strategies the teachers have implemented in their classrooms. My hope is that with some in-service trainings the teacher will feel comfortable with both using the technology as well as the strategies. My main goal is improve student reading and writing. I feel that using this project will promote consistency among teachers and boost our students reading and writing skills. This project has helped to think about diverse learners as well as how I use technology and instructional groupings. It really helped me to think specifically about how the strategies I am using or chose for the project were good for a variety of learners. The strategies help me to look beyond the things I normally do and shake things up for my different learners. I often struggle with how to use technology within my day as a Reading Recovery and Title I teacher. Through this class I have come up with several new ideas for using technology, but would really like to continue to find ways to use technology in my specialty area. Instructional groupings are easier to do with my classroom, but I am rarely working with more than three students at a time. This allows me to do things together with the students or they can work in small groups together. Groupings are easier for me to monitor and keep on track with the small number of students I see at one time. Overall I enjoyed doing this project and feel that it has lots of purpose. However, I see some changes that could be made in the project. I tried to use strategies that I could see myself using, but sometimes I felt like I was picking to just pick something. My implemented strategies seem to be most applicable. I liked that the project was done online so I can use it from anywhere. The wiki program was kind of frustrating to use as far as formatting and other set up issues. I think in the future I might upload and link everything to a word document. Instead of putting the information about the strategy directly on a wiki page, I would have just linked the name of the strategy to a word document that had all the information about the strategy. This would have made changes and formatting a lot easier for me or anyone that might use this e-folio. = = = =