Thoughts from last week's interactions

I found the links on blackboard to the state standards and testing very helpful. I am going to be able to incorporate some of the information found in these links when I write my paper. In particular, I am going to point to the information I found under the California Approved Reading List, where it states that the parent and the child are the persons who knows best which books are appropriate to read. In this section, it also talked about motivation and applicability. I will also pull in the information from the standards where it is stated that if students are behind in the reading by the end of the third grade, that they have a slim chance of ever catching up.

As for our readings, I felt Gee's theories were in line with others we've read. The point that students need to be able to apply what they are learning in their daily activities is one we've heard echoed by other authors. What I hadn't thought of is the idea that the learning that occurs in the classroom may help provide students with strategies for tackling different discourses. While students may not acquire a specific secondary discourse, they can become what Gee refers to as "mushfakers," and in this way they can accomplish what they need to accomplish within secondary discourses without necessarily being "true" members of that discourse. So while we hope that our students will "acquire" knowledge, we must also realize that teaching strategies that will help them to "cheat" in other discourses, and society as a whole, is just as important.