Brooke Ramos
Teacher, Mentor, Fun-Seeker
Brooke Ramos' Showcase of Literacy Through the Means of Technology
As a literacy enthusiast, the option to focus on Literacy in my Masters in Education was a given. I hesitantly coupled that focus with Technology with a sense of trepidation and curiosity. We live in a digital age and our students are constantly connected to their devices. I know I have to teach them on their own level of interest if I want to be an effective teacher. So, this is a showcase of my journey toward being a technologically inclined Language Arts and Social Studies teacher. I have organized my experience into five categories: Keys to Creativity, Getting Technical, Social Studies, Classroom Management, and Reading & Writing. Also, each of the images is a link to either a Prezi or website.
Keys to Creativity
Getting Technical
CEP 818 Creativity in Teaching and Learning
This is the project I am most proud of. I explored the elements of history's most creative geniuses and applied them to my own life and teaching. This website is a showcase of my discoveries and how it has forever changed my approach to teaching.
Classroom Management
CEP 832 Educating Students with Challanging Behavior
My favorite part of teaching the creativity it allows for. When I entered my first classroom I naively thought the students would be as interested in narrative writing and rhetoric as I was. I quickly crashed back down to reality and realized I was ill-prepared when it came to classroom management. I quickly enrolled in "Teaching Students With Challenging Behaviors." This prezi presents one of my most challenging students to date and how I helped maximize his ability to learn in spite of his hostile-aggressive behavior.
Accompanying PDF research paper
CEP 882 The Nature and Design of Compelling Experiences
Creating a compelling environment for my students is crucial. I want them to enjoy my class and to love learning. I have always wanted my students to look forward to having class with me, so I needed to understand how to compell them. I learned that the architecture of the space is just as important as the style of presentation of information. This is my "Letterman style Top 10 List" of the nature and design of compelling experiences for our students.
TE 831 Teaching School Subject Matter with Technology
I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to use iMovie and making my own videos. This video was one of my first and it engaged my first grade ESL students when we were learning about subject pronouns. They in turn made their own videos on Puppet Pals and an example can be found below my video.
Social Studies
TE 865 Teaching and Learning K-12 Social Studies
As an International Studies major and after spening most of my childhood in Asia I became fascinated with different cultures. Now as a teacher I want to impart tolerance and understanding to my students. This paper and prezi were used with my fifth grade ESL students to address author Chimamanda Adichie's concept of "Single Stories." Her TED talk explains the importance of destorying stereotypes or "single stories" as she refers to them.
Accompanying research paper:
ED 800 Concepts of Educational Inquiry
We are so caught up in cramming what we believe to be truth down our students' throats that we often leave out beauty and goodness. Howard Gardner explains the importance of these three virtues in our ever-changing, technological, science and math-driven society. The role of these three virtues and teachign our students how to decipher what constitutes them is key to education. Gardner transformed my teaching philosophy and inspired me to write the following paper:
Reading & Writing
TE 848 Writing Assessment and Instruction
Rhetoric is one of the hardest writing concepts to explain and now I'm an expert in the enigma that is rhetoric. I even have an entire book on it! This was one of my first prezi's and I designed it to be used in my middle school Language Arts classroom in the future. It is an interactive introduction to the concept of rhetoric that will be used in whole classroom instruction with small group interjections.
TE 849 Methods and Materials for Teaching Children's and Adolescent Literature
Reading has always brought me joy in the same way writing has; however, I wondered if the interests of children had changed over the years. I discovered that while some preferences and styles had changed, the underlyign messages and sheer enjoyment of the magic of chidlren's literature remained the same. The following paper is a synthesis of an array of 20 titles and the conclusions I drew from the comparison study.
TE 848 Writing Assessment and Instruction
Teachers spend so much time teaching that they are at risk of forgetting what it is like to be the student. As a Masters student I was rudely reminded of the late nights, endless reading passages, and writers block. I was also reminded of the satisfaction of a completed essay, the beauty of poetry, and the fun of narrative writing. My teacher for this course, Kati Macaluso, gave us a chance to be students again. In the following genre portfolio I got to experience the frustration and satisfaction of writing; as well as the fear of sharing. In this work I was both student and teacher as I created the work of a student, but critiqued with the eye of a teacher.
TE 846 Accomodating Differences in Literacy Learners
Everyone learns differently. We all know it to be true, so why do we keep trying to teach an entire class of students the same old ways? This research project allowed me to explore different ways of teaching with consideration of my specific student. I researched, assessed, and developed a lesson specific to my second grade English Language Learner student and the results were positive.
Research paper:
Accompanying Appendix: