Teaching Newbie!

by Denise
(KW)

Thanks. Ideas + rationale = Huge for me since I am a new teacher and want to integrate authentic literacies and nervous about what I say if challenged by principal or parents.

Real World reply: Whatever you call us as we begin our careers - teaching newbies or teaching newcomers or teaching novices or practice teachers or student teachers or first-year teachers - we want to make an important difference in the education and learning of our students.

You can fit a selection of Real World content into the mix. It becomes another example for you to add to the other examples you use or an introduction or a review or a response vehicle or something else you can use to make your teaching point. These uses will meet any challenge.

Your student can just as easily count - or add, subtract, group, weigh, float, sketch, pitch - sports cards or LEGO blocks or Tinkertoy parts as anything else!

The great advantage Real World content gives you is its practice edge! Your student continues to work with that Real World material after and before school because it resides in the Real World. The cards, the blocks, the toys are already in the student's world. The counting or reading activity will continue as the student leaves at the end of the day, now able to apply something from School World to the Real World where most of that student's time is spent.

This site gives many concrete suggestions about useful materials. We are always building. We link Real World content ideas to teaching objectives and give immediate "take me into your classroom now!" activities. All of which, by the way, come from real teachers and real students across many grade levels of real use.

Whenever you try out Real World content activity, Denise, and find students engaged in and demonstrating a level of mastery of one of your course objectives, we hope you will return to this site and share it with us!