Comprehensive Exam Questions

The exam questions are available in Blackboard.

Mental Health Break

Avoiding Plagiarism

Here is the UNL statement on plagiarism:

The UNL Student Code of Conduct, section 4.2.a.3, defines plagiarism as: Presenting the work of another as one’s own (i.e., without proper acknowledgment of the source) and submitting examinations, theses, reports, speeches, drawings, laboratory notes or other academic work in whole or in part as one’s own when such work has been prepared by another person or copied from another person.

You can read more here>>>

Frog and Toad

This is fascinating. Arnold Lobel, the author of the beloved children's book series, "Frog and Toad", was gay and the stories, with a 2016 sensibility, can be read as exploring gay intimacy. I went back and read "Frog and Toad Together", and it is obvious: "In the end, the trials of their relationship are worth bearing, because Frog and Toad are most content when they’re together." Here is what Lobel's daughter said recently in an interview with Colin Stokes in the New Yorker:

Frog and Toad are “of the same sex, and they love each other,” she told me. “It was quite ahead of its time in that respect.” In 1974, four years after the first book in the series was published, Lobel came out to his family as gay. “I think ‘Frog and Toad’ really was the beginning of him coming out,” Adrianne told me. Lobel never publicly discussed a connection between the series and his sexuality, but he did comment on the ways in which personal material made its way into his stories. In a 1977 interview with the children’s-book journal The Lion and the Unicorn, he said:

You know, if an adult has an unhappy love affair, he writes about it. He exorcises it out of himself, perhaps, by writing a novel about it. Well, if I have an unhappy love affair, I have to somehow use all that pain and suffering but turn it into a work for children.

Lobel died in 1987, an early victim of the aids crisis. “He was only fifty-four,” Adrianne told me. “Think of all the stories we missed.”

Read more>>>

Reminder for tomorrow: find scholarly articles not practitioner periodicals

As indicated in the syllabus, the new, extending knowledge articles (books or book chapters) you find for tomorrow and for which you write an annotation must be scholarly: 

These should NOT include: commercial textbooks or textbook chapters (methods or otherwise), district curriculum materials, trade or practitioner periodicals (such as The Reading Teacher or Phi Delta Kappan), self-published books, or videos*. Why none of these kinds of texts? They are not acceptable forms of scholarship to be used as evidence in your comprehensive exam responses.

Here are examples of "practitioner periodicals" or magazines that are out of bounds: 

• The Reading Teacher

• Social Education

• Teaching Children Mathematics

• Science and Children

• Education Week

• Phi Delta Kappan

• Teach Magazine

Also, do not use things from the What Works Clearinghouse. 

Remember the rule of thumb: These kinds of texts are not useless! Rather, you must see them as resources: (1) that can help you see how ideas (such as assessment) can be organized and how language is used and (2) that have their own bibliographies that can lead you to scholarly works.
________________

*E.g., TED talks.

Fill out form

Please fill out the form that you just received via e-mail from Steve and send it back to him today. You can also find it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vzlof8uwp5c5zpd/Masters-FinalExamForm.pdf?dl=0

TEAC 889 meets in 16, not 116

TEAC 889 is meeting in 16 Henzlik Hall, not in 116 as previously noted.