Reflective Essay

As I created my unit plan for teaching new literacy skills to my students, I learned a great deal about how to effectively teach students how to evaluate websites. Growing up, my teachers demonstrated correct formatting to evaluate and cite resources such as books, encyclopedias and newspapers. However, as the Internet became more developed, my teachers did not teach me how to cite and evaluate websites. I, instead, taught myself, and realized how important it is to determine the validity of the information being presented. This is one of the most important things I could have learned about citing new references, and I will be sure to pass it on to my students.

The biggest way this new knowledge will affect my teaching is that I will teach my students the correct way to cite their resources, and give credit where it was due. One of the things that sticks in my head about respecting work, and I have already started to have my students do this, is to have them copyright their work. During one of the videos presented in the course, one of the speakers brought up how effective it is for students to copyright their work because it not only gives them ownership, but it also makes them realize that all other work that they find online is the product of someone else’s hard work. From there, they should show respect to the creator by citing them as a reference to their work.

To take this one step further, not only will I work on having them copyright and respect their work and their peers, but I will also show them the correct way to document resources before they use them. Part of the unit plan that I created focuses on gathering information and learning how to cite them. The unit that I created is on a topic that I usually focus on early in the school year. It will be a great time to lead them into proper citing and respect towards other sources. As a result from my planning, I have one main goal that I will work on in the upcoming year.

My professional development goal based on my new knowledge is to properly educate my students on how to evaluate sites and cite them correctly. This is something that I know I have not done effectively in the past. I realize that it is important, and that it is the proper way to do so, but I have often felt that it is not my duty, and that other teachers should teach them proper procedures. Instead, the next time I teach the unit, I will demonstrate and expect nothing less than the proper citation procedures because I realize the importance of students respecting other creators, and properly giving credit where it is due. As an individual, I will always properly cite references for my students as a way to model the method for my students.