Reading Strategies and Communities

Reading Strategies and Communities

            These two chapters, to me at least, really hit the point home when it comes to reading and learning.  In chapter 5 the authors go into how to make the students into the readers and writers we want them to be.  The book has told us that we need to get them engaged and get material that is relevant in the real-world.  After we do that the question is how to get them to become those readers.  In chapter 7 the authors go into making the classroom a community so that we can actually teach and the students can actually learn.

            In chapter 5 Daniels and Zemelman propose many different strategies that should be used when teaching students reading and writing.  As I was reading them I realized I did many of these activities without even knowing what they were.  One that I found that I do a lot of was the “Sketching My Way Through the Text.” (p.120).  When I read whether it was a history, English, or even a math assignment I would draw what I was reading, to the best of my stick figure ability, what was happening.  It might have been a castle from a story to understand the setting, or a map of a battle in history class it just helped me visualize what was going on.  I see in my kid’s homework.  They both draw out their math word problems.  Since it is Halloween season many of the word math problems focus on candy and monsters and to see her drawing the monsters and the candy out to figure multiplication really shows me how it does work.  The other one I found the most interesting was brainstorming.  (p.104). I have used this in my professional career when coming up with ideas from others to try to solve an issue, or how to increase one metric or the next.  You will get information from the group and like the authors state it will “help students realize what they already know about a topic…” (p.104)  I think this just helps the individual and the group as a whole.  The students will realize that they know more than they think and the will also see other ideas that they might not have considered.  I can see myself using this in a World War I lesson on nationalism and letting the students brainstorm how is nationalism showing up again in today’s world, like in Ukraine for example.

            In the next chapter we something that must be in every classroom a sense of community and a place that is conductive to learning.  A teacher can have all the strategies in the world and all the great intentions but if there isn’t that feel of a safe place to learn or of a place where there isn’t support, nothing is going to happen.  The authors go into many different ways to make the classroom a community, “a place where students feel to take the risks involved in learning…” (p.168). In my opinion one of the most important is getting to know your students and then relating their interests and their real life to the subject that you are trying to teach.  I’ve seen it in CF high and I’ve seen it in Gilbert Stuart Middle School that when a teacher really knows their students, it goes a long way in helping that student become a learner.  For example, when a teacher knows that s student has a game and they actually take the few seconds to ask them how they played and how the game went you can see in the student reactions and body language that the teacher actually knows something about me outside a grade book, they actually care.  It only takes a few seconds and it really is the small stuff.  I saw a teacher ask a student how her little sister was feeling as he knew she was sick.  Just asking that one question let them connect on a level beyond the classroom, which in turn makes the classroom easier to foster a community.  The authors state to know just ten things about each student and their lives and then connect it to what you are teaching. That connection will go a long way to making your classroom a community.



Microteaching I

Please post comments on how my microteaching went.  Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Textbooks and Assignments

Textbooks and Assignments

 

            The first chapter for this week was chapter 3.  It reminded me of a day a professor told me about his class.  He stated it was like a lake that was 10 miles long but only an inch deep.  The textbooks according to the reading just have too much in them and they do not go into enough.  It states that “…the really key concepts, the big ideas of the field, don’t stand out clearly, aren’t giving enough time and depth for students to grasp them.  Two pages on slavery, a paragraph on Hiroshima, or a sidebar on Einstein’s theory of relativity, just doesn’t get the job done.”  (Daniels and Zemelman, p.59).  The textbooks just don’t get into the important details, the reasons, the implications or the what if’s.  I remember a high school history class when I was a junior I think.  We covered all of World War I in half a period and the book only had at the most three pages, probably closer to two.  We have all seen it the whole of world history in one thousand pages.  Image that one thousand pages when you have The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon in six volumes and about 4100 pages.  I’m not saying that school have to go out and get it, though it is a great history, but the schools and teachers have to realize that the textbooks are not the be all and end all that there are proper uses for the textbook, which leads us to the next reading.  It follows the reading from Understanding by Design by stating we need to ask just what are the “:..big ideas.” (p. 146) of the textbook and have to do those have to “…slow down, dig in, and ‘uncover’ ideas, not just cover them[.]” (p. 146).  The chapter then goes into different ways to use the textbook differently and more effectively.  They are all very good suggestions, especially to supplement the textbook with other and different sources. (p. 148).  I also found that using other resources besides the textbook was a great help.  As I said in an earlier post the book Red Badge of Courage just made that part of history come alive, and then to compare it to an actual battle really made me think and got be interested.  So the point I really think from both of these readings is that the textbook shouldn’t be relied on as the sole source of info, but it should be used in conjunction with other sources and used in different ways.

            I found the designing assignments reading a fun read.  The sarcasm at the start with Darth Vader, since I grew up on Star Wars, yes the originals, was great and just plain fun to read.  Using Vader the authors were showing that assignments that were just given to fill time, to do them just to make it look good, to have tests that do not really challenge the students, to not work together so they don’t share their interests and so on will not help them learn and think, they will just turn out “…lackluster prose.”  (Strong, Assignments by Design, pp. 94-96).  He sets forth ten design principles to make sure that we as teachers are making assignments, and assessments, which actually have meaning and which actually test what the students know.  All of them make sense; they all go beyond just the restatement of facts.  The one about being a Lawyer arguing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on the “Separate but equal” case in 1892 (p. 100) is just an amazing idea.  The assignments are interesting, pointed, specific and even fun.  In these ways the students actually know what the teacher is looking for, the assignment servers a purpose, it is meaningful, it provokes thought and again it is fun.   All of the readings have something in common, using the old ways just will not work anymore, but they can be a starting point to make something, whether it be a textbook or an assignment, better.



English Language Learners

English Language Learners

 

            When I started to read this brief I tried to put myself in the seat mind of a student whose first language is not English.  I realized how hard it must be on students, who speak little to no English, to try and understand academic language that not is in their first language.  Not only are these students trying to learning English but they are expected to learn academic language.  It is not just the words, but it is the grammar, the structure of the sentences, it is even colloquialisms that we use in out text and instructions.  These are just a few of the parts of reading that must be extremely difficult.  The question then turns to how do we as teachers teach students that are English language learners? 

            The brief goes into many different techniques and ways to help these students in learning the content while learning the academic language.  The techniques I think are all very good not just for English language learners.  They can be used for all students to get them interested in the subject matter.  Using, as the brief states, “…non-verbal means such as pictures, demonstrations, charts, and graphs,” (p.3) will be beneficial to all the students.  It keeps the material fresh and not just a lecture.  People, I believe, in general learn more when there are visuals attached to the subject they are learning, more so for those students in which English is not their first language. It’s the old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  Many of the techniques for teaching differently, or differentiation will work in any classroom and if implemented, will help not just the English language learners, but all of the students.  For me I will have to figure out how do to this in my classrooms that will make the lesson, the teaching, work for all the students.  It has to be in a way in which the content will be taught to both the English language learners and the students that have English as their first language.

            One aspect of this brief that I found interesting is that the English language learners need English language instruction at the same time.  That is they need instruction in grammar, sentence structure and so on.    As the brief states, “the challenge for teachers is to make language comprehensible so that the academic content can be conveyed and understood.” (p.2). The students need the basic instruction on how the language works, in how it is read, pronounced, and structured.  This seems to go against what we discussed earlier that we need to teach our young children not just the grammar or the phonics but teach them the love reading, read for more than the words.  They, like the English language learners, still need the basics; they need to be able to pronounce the words, structure sentences and so on in order to read.  I just think that if we are teaching the English language learners the basics of reading a new language shouldn’t we be teaching our young children, who are also in the process of reading a new language, the basics??