SCAVENGER HUNT

1.     How many schools are in the city? Colleges and Universities? I have discovered that Central Falls contains no Universities/Higher Education, however, outside of Central Falls High School, the city has six public schools. There is the Captain Hunt Early Learning School, which is prekindergarten. Second, there is the Margaret Robertson Elementary School. Thirdly, there is the Ella Risk Elementary School –which holds grades one through four. Fourth, there is the Veterans Memorial Elementary that holds grades one through four. There is also the Calcutt Middle School holding grades five through eight, and lastly the Central Falls High School holding grades nine through twelve.

2.     Is there a post office in town? Yes. Surprisingly I only stumbled across one. In exploring Central Falls, I realized how many of the major sites are in walking distance of Central Falls High School. In being raised in East Providence, I thought East Providence was fairly small till exploring Central Falls which is an even smaller and tight knitted community.

3.     How is the local education system structured? What level of education do people from each generation complete? The local "public" education system is structured into pre-school, elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. The education system is supported by the Central Falls School District and is funded by the State of Rhode Island Department of Education. It is until now, as of the year 2000, that residents of Central Falls have an advanced degree/ a continuing education proceeding high school.

4.     What is the major religion in the city/town? Are there churches/synagogues/mosques/temples? It seems to me that the major religion in this city is of the Catholic branch. I found many Episcopal churches when exploring the town. The culture of this town appears very similar to the culture of my own. I was raised in a Portuguese Catholic household, and in my town there are Portuguese markets, Catholic Churches, and everything related to the religion and culture, and so I found Central Falls to be very similar to that, except it is based on the Spanish culture which shares many similarities to the Portuguese I have discovered throughout this scavenger hunt.

5.     Visit the CF library. What events and resources are available? In visiting the CF Library, or rather the Adams Memorial Library, I was able to speak with a librarian and she guided me throughout the library. I was pleased to find out about the library’s children section and the librarian informed me of how many events and fundraisers the library has on occasion in order to raise funds for the Adams Memorial Library. There are about twenty computers. This is the only library (or so I’ve seen) located. 

6.     There are three professional baseball players from Central Falls. Name them. Jim Siwy. Max Surkont. Charley Bassett!

7.     She was a champion of the underdog and with the help of her husband helped slaves escaping to Canada. Later she worked for the rights of women. Harriet Tubman!

8.     Other? What did you find? In exploring the Adams Memorial Library, I read up on the history of Central Falls and learned that the 72^nd governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Almond was born in Central Falls. Also I was impressed to find out that Viola Davis, a successful actress who won two Tony awards was also born in Central Falls, Rhode Island.

9.     British Soldier, Irish revolutionary, a fugitive from justice. He escaped on the Catalpa and landed in Central Falls. Eamon De Valera visited him on Cross St. James Wilson!

10.  What is the name of the local newspaper? Driving around Central Falls, I landed at a set of lights and saw a building called The Times. I believe, however, that I was nearing my way into Pawtucket, Rhode Island... but in exploring Central Falls I could not see any other broadcast buildings and so in researching further, The Times seems to be the local newspaper for Central Falls, Rhode Island.

Teaching Backwards

I believe chapter one of the UBD reading to be the most insightful reading regarding teaching for me. At first I didn’t understand what exactly UBD meant, until reading further as it clarified the “understanding by design”. Through this reading, I believe understanding by design concerns how to get students to understand the content by a unique instructional design/approach. The instructional design this chapter refers to is the “backward design”.  As a future teacher, I was eager  to learn about how there are different ways to go about an “assessment” that differs from the traditional “teach and end instruction with assessment”. With this backwards design, it helps the teacher gain insight on what the student already knows and sharpening the teacher's focus from there by framing their unit or course on how to get one’s students from what they already know to what the teacher wants their students to gain an “understanding” of by the time the unit or course comes to a close.

As this chapter gives insight on a backwards approach towards assessing and teaching, it continued to explain different sorts of assessment methods that I found helpful. Instead of relying on a pre assessment and an assessment at the end of a unit, this chapter offered a “continuum of assessment methods” ranging from an easy understanding of students by “informal checks for understanding” to a more complex understanding required from students through “performance tasks and projects”, and all of these various types of assessments are to be thought of as a collection of evidence.

Lastly, I found it interesting that this chapter not only explains the backward design approach while offering insight on assessment methods, this chapter also explains how a teacher can “organize” what is worthy of understanding. In example, the chapter offers a framework of what the teacher should organize its content into: “worth being familiar with”, “important to know and do”, and “enduring understanding”. The “worth being familiar with” and the “important to know and do” can be viewed as “pre-requisites". The enduring understanding is the “big idea”—it is what the teacher hopes the student will take with them beyond the classroom.

            This chapter gives a unique and helpful insight on organizing instruction. It departs from traditional instruction that I view to be "lecture and test at the end of course" by instead offering a design that appears to be beneficial for student learning and understanding.

Chapters 1 and 2 of Subjects Matter!

Chapters 1 and 2 of Daniels and Zemelman’s Subjects Matter gave me a different perspective on reading and how to teach reading. I found it interesting that Chapter 1 mentions how the Common Core State Standards for the 6-12^th grades are divided into two sections, one concerning the English Language Arts, and the second concerning History, Science, and other technical subjects. This shows how critical is it for students to not only read but also comprehend what they’re reading. I think  Chapter 1 tried to advise future teachers to not focus word for word on the CCSS instruction of reading across the curriculum because, for one of many reasons, the CCSS have a “new criticism” type of outlook towards reading, meaning that it expects students to read a text and join together to find a single and unified meaning. Chapter 1, however, makes sure it goes beyond that to instruct future teachers that we can’t just have a student dive into complex reading and expect them to critically think and analyze difficult texts as the CCSS seem to expect adolescent students to do. 

Chapter 2 extends on Chapter 1 by noting that even though the CCSS can be helpful in many areas, it is important as future educators to adolescents to keep in mind that not many student’s will have a pre-knowledge on the content one may be teaching. If we expect a student to independently read about certain content, we must provide them with preparatory work in order to ensure that they have all the vocabulary and key concepts in order to comprehend these “complex” texts. It’s not just about activating schemata, as this chapter emphasizes, but it's about providing our students with background knowledge to make sure that the student has an understanding of content before our expectations of activating a student’s schemata that might have not been earlier developed.

 All in all, these two chapters really reached out to me because it didn’t believe in teaching to the text book, it revealed a genuine care for getting students to engage in reading across the curriculum by helping the students to learn how to read- as opposed to focusing solely on getting the students to read. It’s about engaging the students and helping with their developmental skills in order to sharpen their reading strategies, these chapters recognize that reading and its comprehension do not just simply happen with any content. These two chapters reveal to be sensitive to the student's needs in learning how to get to a point that, well, satisfies the standards as well as  getting a student to the point where they will feel inspired to develop a love for at least one content area as well as a growing desire to explore and research in order to learn more.