Synthesis of Course

I have found that this course has helped me to prepare for my future classroom in many different ways. For starters, it really helped me to start thinking critically about my content area and how literacy is involved in that. I now know that literacy plays a role in just about everything that we do.

Just as important as it is to be able to read is really being able to understand and remember what you learn. I really want to incorporate this into my classroom on a daily basis. I plan on doing this by having different forms of presenting the material. Especially if I know that there are students in my classroom that are struggling with English or even just comprehending what we are learning, I am going to make sure that I have examples, that I am using demonstration, that I give them an opportunity to learn from each other, and also that I use hand gestures to really show what I mean and am trying to explain. While I was trying to learn Spanish, the teacher would only speak Spanish but would use a lot of gestures, pictures, and hand signs. This helped so much and I know how important it can be for the students.

I think that for the most part, I will be sure to incorporate whole-class and small group discussions. From this class I learned that there is a great deal of learning from the student-student interaction. Facilitating and allowing this to take place can give my students the atmosphere that they need to feel comfortable and willing to learn.

I am also going to make sure that I have a classroom library with texts that are high-interest to my students but really help them gain a superior understanding of the content and how it applies in their lives outside of school. I will introduce at least one text per day and give them the option of checking them out and rating them for their peers.

Coming out of this class, I feel that I have a better understanding of how to enhance learning in my classroom and facilitate a safe environment to keep that learning growing.

Self-Selected Project

For this Self selected project my partner and I decided to read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and also A Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. What I really enjoyed about these two books as a whole is that they were super engaging and easy to read but they also had really good messages for everyday life that could apply to everyone at some point in their lives.


The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is written out in a story book type of feel. It goes and explains how people who are famous got there and how they stay there. It really emphasizes how to treat people and interact with them. It is super sad to see how technology is taking away a lot of the human interaction in this world and I want to help be able to change that in my classroom. By reading this book I felt empowered and that I could change little habits and that those changes would make a huge difference. I want my students to be able to experience that very same thing and know that they can b very successful in what ever they do. For that reason, I would have this book in my classroom and I would use it as an extra credit opportunity. I would also present it and use excerpts from it during my relationships unit and even during my finance unit.


A Man's Search for Meaning is more of the developmental component of Human Development. It is a great read and it connects different contents as well! No only does it talk about a new developmental theory that Viktor Frankl live, tried, and tested but he tells the story of how it came to be and how he experienced it while he was in a concentration camp during World War Two. This story is great to help in hose two subjects but I really like it because it is very personal and he really helps the reader understand the theory. It does talk about the concentration camp war stories but he doesn't go into so much detail that it is graphic. It is a really clean book and really easy to understand. Because Logo Therapy is fairly new and not part of the standards in the classroom my partner and I decided that we could use this book in our classes to give the students more of an opportunity to think more critically about their own lives and how it could relate to the other theories that are out there. I would like to have this book in my classroom to really help my students be educated on everything that there is out there and help them understand how important it is to stay updated because everything is constantly evolving and people are coming up with new theories and studies.


Reading in the content is a great way to keep students engaged in class and really realize that this does apply to their lives' and that it will help them in the future. Over all these books were a great read and a very good use of my time. I know that the same will go for my students' time.