Subjects Matter - Day 3

Christine Munzer
Subjects Matter
Chapters 7 – 9

The text for this go around was not as engaging as the previously read chapters. It could be because there were a lot less useful strategies to use and to some degree, some of the material discussed left me with more questions than it did answers. Chapter 7 had the focus on creating a community of learners. The items discussed in this chapter were nothing new to me as a teacher, as I already know the importance of creating an environment where kids feel comfortable in sharing in the learning experience. However, the chapter did get me thinking of the importance of creating a school wide community of common academic language. How magical would it be if teachers were using the same reading and writing strategies (and calling them the same) across all curriculums? Chapter 8 was by far the most engaging, as it discussed creating an environment with reading workshops. It provided numerous models for creating and running the workshops. I also felt that the “real-life” examples that teachers found effective made it feel that creating these workshops was obtainable in my own practice. Finally, Chapter 9 focused on running book clubs within the classroom. I love the ideas of having book clubs being part of my teaching units but I still just can’t imagine devoting the class time to them and in knowing my students, I just don’t feel they will actually do the readings. I do however see running a book club with my integrated partner could be something totally feasible. Also, a member of an adult book club, I loved the discussion in particular roles you could assign members of the book club to take the experience to a whole different level, rather than just discussing the text openly.

The protocol that we selected to use with our reading was coding. We used the codes already established by our book. As we discussed the book with the protocol, we decided that it would have been nice to maybe create more specific codes to yield a deeper discussion of the text. For myself in using the strategy, I found that I was actually doing less reflection of the text as I read because I simply replaced where I would write a reflection with just a check mark or star.