This team-taught course, the first in a series of four seminars, supports emerging teacher candidates (TCs) in answering four questions: What are essential features of a productive classroom? How can I use technology to enhance teaching and learning? What are the professional behaviors, ethics, and responsibilities I need to cultivate? How can I as a teacher support equity, diversity, and inclusion? Learning in these areas is connected to TCs’ experiences in field-placement classrooms.
DLL 4197 is a required course for all secondary education majors. It is designed to provide you with a foundation of engaging research-based strategies for learning and teaching with digital technologies—and for continuing to build on this foundation beyond the end of the semester.
The primary goal of the course is to provide students with research exploration of a specific topic of interest to the individual student. Students in this course may conduct individual or group projects focused on research, literature review, or extension/enhancement of other coursework. All work is conducted under supervision and evaluation of a departmental faculty member. This course requires departmental approval to enroll.
This course will cover students’ development and assessment/instructional methods for phonic knowledge, word recognition and meaning strategies (sight words; decoding by sounding out each letter; using meaning, syntax, and letter cues in combination to recognize words; using context clues to determine meaning), fluency, orthographic knowledge (letter name-alphabetic and within word pattern stages), composition that includes multiple modes (letters, sound, drawings, etc.) of meaning representation, oral language (speaking, listening, word meanings, concept development, dialect, etc.), and comprehension (comprehension monitoring, retelling using text structure, inference, critical thinking, connections, etc.) with typically and atypically developing students. Digital texts and tools will be used to transform teaching across these areas of beginning literacy development. Teacher candidates’ (TCs) active learning about students’ identities and cultures and experiences will be used to strive toward more culturally sustaining pedagogies and exploring relevant social justice topics through beginning literacy. A critical lens will be used to explore and respond to texts and create new and counter texts. TC’s application of beginning literacy knowledge will be used to partner with families at the community partnership site in which the course is embedded through 8-10 sessions teaching typically and atypically developing students.