Cheryl Reflection #3

Cheryl De Roia

Reading Reflection 6/25

Subjects Matter- Every Teacher’s Guide to Content-Area Reading by Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman

Chapter 7-9 (pages 166-215)

Reading

Yesterday when I sat down to read these chapters, I was already exhausted and could not concentrate. I skimmed and thought to myself that since I wouldn’t be able to use a book group (club) in my classroom until later in the room I didn’t need to fully read the chapter. However, after some sleep and some much needed nutrition, I found myself enjoying these chapters and learning just as much as I had from previous chapters.

Chapter 8 is one in which I will use to plan my unit for this class. It is about creating lifelong readers and independent reading workshops. According to the text, lifelong readers engage in reading through personal choice. In other words, “Reading flows from intrinsic motivation (curiosity, wonder, pleasure, etc.), and is not driven by external rewards or punishments” (184). The authors argue that to have these lifelong readers, which many of us in this class are, we need to be giving students independent reading time in every class, everyday. No exceptions. Sure that seems almost impossible given all we have to cover but, as shown in the text, the workshops can range from very short articles to longer ones that would take up a class hr. The strategies given are a must use, and I can’t wait to determine the standard I want to use to pick articles and practice with workshops.

I know it takes time to find many texts at many levels covering the same broad topic but it is worth all of the effort if you keep this quote in mind, “…If it’s just one article, only a few people talk…” (186). There is little that bothers me more than having a socratic seminar where only a few people talk.

Chapter 7 talks about building a community of learners. It begins by quoting research on how test scores improve for students in a classroom with high “social support.” Then it continues to talk about creating a great supportive classroom environment.

Chapter 9 covered book groups, book clubs, and the most important part that came from this chapter is that books should be read as homework; yes, I said homework; and that the reading should be quick. Books should not be drawn out over months but rather only a few weeks.

**Just a side note, even though I was exhausted yesterday and frustrated at the amount of time I feel I will have to spend to complete the work for this class, I feel that I am already becoming a better teacher. That in large part, I owe to such a wonderful book.

Reading strategies

The first strategy I used was to stop reading when I realized I was not actually reading the text. I decided to come back to it another day when I would be able to concentrate.

Today I became frustrated with the pounding above my head and had to re-read sentences many times. I skipped over a chemistry section because never took it and I determined it wasn’t critical to my learning about workshops. I also coded the text to use with my group in our protocol. This I found to be helpful, though I might change around some of the coding. I also wrote myself a “cheat sheet sticky note” with the coding symbols and meaning as a quick reference to what I should be doing with the text. I liked the sticky note and since often, we can’t write in our school books, I think I will create sticky notes (using a word program) that are coded so all the kids have to do is pull off the sticky note with the code they want to use and stick it in the margin.

Group Protocol- Coding

I enjoyed coding, and it made it easy to go back over the text and quickly determine the important parts, either because I learned something knew or because I wasn’t sure of a comment. As far as a group protocol, it worked and was nice because we didn’t have to write anything before coming together as a group to talk. I can see this working better with a smaller text rather and three long chapters.

Reflection #3

Elizabeth Meyer-Chapman
Subjects Matter
Chapters 7-9

The theme of chapter 7 was “Students feeling valued”. I totally agree that a sense of community and a predictable classroom structure are key components to better reading and higher student achievement. A feeling of trust breeds a feeling of confidence. What teacher doesn’t agree with that one?
Chapter eight concentrated on examples of and step by step instructions for conducting independent reading workshops in content area classrooms. Included in the instructions were possible pitfalls a teacher or group might experience along the way and suggestions on how to rectify them. I found the suggestions, tips and instructions informational and I had a few light bulbs go off as to why I dreaded planning for and co-teaching reading workshops. Now I have some actual tools to use and I will use them. Just about the time I get frustrated with picking one of the longer books to read a chapter like this come along and it reaffirms my choice.
Chapter ten delves into book clubs of all forms. The most enticing book clubs combine two powerful educational ideas which are collaborative learning and independent reading. This is something I would like to work up to but this coming school year I will concentrate my efforts on explicitly teaching some of the new reading strategies I’ve learned to students and conducting successful reading workshops. I see myself using this book often in my individual planning and co-planning.
The protocol we used today was coding. I was the facilitator and actually picked this strategy for the group. I can’t say that I found it as useful as I would have hoped. I found myself wanting to annotate more than code. I realized quickly that not all protocols will work for all kids or adults. I accommodated for my own weaknesses by writing the codes on a post-it so they were right in front of me as I read. I didn’t like having to stop and say now which code belongs to this passage. But then again with practice and experience maybe I will find value in this protocol.

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.

Dunnington Reflection 3

Deb Dunnington

Multimodal Learning

Chapter 4 (pages 73-92)

Reflection #3

When I first began reading chapter 4, I was sitting at the table thinking, “Really, Really?” The chapter started off with a vignette about a student who is walking home from school and pulls out her Smartphone and begins narrating notes about her science project using the voice recorder feature. While in a perfect world this might be an awesome resource for education, we have to remember that we don’t live in a perfect world.

Our discussion touched on this idea a bit, and on the fact that in order to make the book universal for everyone, the author needed to write it as if we do live in a world where every student has a Smartphone with a data plan so that we can become familiar with the ideas and adapt them to our circumstances and the resources our students do have. Another technique Bean introduced in this chapter was the ISDAT strategy which means “slowing down to carefully consider and evaluate various sites in a search” (86). During our discussion we all agreed that kids often times take the fastest way of completing something or click on the first website on the Google search just because it’s at the top. We decided that it is important for kids to slow down and carefully consider things. We didn’t necessarily like the worksheet the text provided but we thought it would be wise to create something that we felt would work with our particular classes.

For our discussion protocol we used the 4 As. All of us seemed to really enjoy this technique and think that it can be a valuable discussion tool in the classroom. In our group, the majority of us chose at least one or two of the same parts of our chapter for one or two of our As, but it created a good discussion for our group. My concern with teenagers is that if that happened in their discussion group they might take the easy way out and just agree or say I had the same one. Before using this protocol I would give this some thought so that the discussion would stay rolling.

Our group discussed today that one of the major takeaways from the reading and the class as a whole is that we need to consciously show our students our thinking process. This is not something that is limited to the classroom either, but to life in general. We can’t expect people to read our minds and know what we are thinking when we tell them something, but if we consciously tell them our thought process than it creates a model for them to follow.

This hasn’t been on of my favorite professional books, but I do think it has value, although I am having to stretch my thought processes to find that value. Today while reading about the slow down and think carefully strategy, I realized that is a strategy I have to use with this book. The strategies and techniques are not going to fit in my practice with minor adaptations. I am going to have to slow down and consider their value and then devise ways I can take mini-parts of them or the idea of them and fit them into my practice.

Reflection #3

Robert Samsel

Reflection #3

Chapter 4

June 15 2011

Protocol: 4 A’s

The four A’s are

1. Assumptions of the author

2. Things the reader agrees with

3. Things the reader argues with

4. Something the reader aspires to

Each member of the group took a turn to share their A’s and we commented on each other’s A’s.

This chapter was insightful about really teaching students to evaluate what they find in the Internet. The acronym used was ISDT, Internet Slow Down and Think. I believe this is something that educators can do intuitively at varying degrees of proficiency. However, our students lack the experience and instruction about how to go about doing it. It’s a lot like reading in that although teachers can read they don’t always think about the process consciously and teach that process even less. Not only is there a lack of thought about strategies used. There are many different ones to use depending on the circumstance that it really becomes teaching technology literacy. Therefore, after reading, I have chosen to aspire to cognitively learn how to do this skill my self and then teach how this strategy to my students. However, it would be much more effective if all teachers did this because I alone can only use so many strategies in the time I am allotted and students need many different tools for the different content area specific strategies.

Another insight that I will take from this chapter is to use WebQuest as a resource to model what kids should use and even produce finished projects.

My strategy:

I like to just read everything first and then review the text and go back to big ideas that stuck out along the way. I also made a couple of questions in the margins and then they were answered later in the chapter.

Sage Rebuehr

Reading Reflection #3

Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry by Jeffrey Wilhelm

Chapter 5 & 6

In these chapters we got to the meat of inquiry.  Wilhelm explains questioning schemes “to help connect ideas from lesson to lesson and text to text, so that each day’s activities are threaded together, like beads on a necklace.” He discusses ReQuest, Question Answer Relationships (QAR), questioning circles, authorial reading, questioning the Author (QtA), and Hillock’s hierarchy of questions.  That’s a lot of questions.  The goal is to understand that comprehension is the first step in reading.  Each of these frameworks brings to the surface the various levels of meaning.  They attempt to show the various levels of meaning readers create as they read.

In various forms, I have tried to use several of these schemes in my teaching, but I usually became frustrated and abandoned them.  QAR is the one I use most and I really enjoyed seeing how Wilhelm adapts, modifies, and uses it in his classroom.  I always want to jump right in and forgot to scaffold the learning as must as I do.  As I continued reading, I was thinking “Gosh, do we really need four different ways to talk about different types of questions?”  I am thinking it is best to keep the terminology consistent and simple so the students will grasp it.  I did really like, however, when he introduced Hillock’s 7 levels of questions.  It would be a great tool to use as a teacher to determine where student’s comprehension stalls (probably at level 4 or 5) and how to push them to high level thinking. 

As a discussion protocol, we did “It Says – I Say – And So”.  We picked passages from the reading for “It Says” and then added our thinking in the next two columns.  I found myself making lots of connections and agreements with the text and I found it difficult to complete the “And So” part. 

Day 3 Reflection

Sara Williams
Multimodal Learning for the 21st Century Adolescent
Chapter 4

So I have to tell you a secret. This class is making me a better parent and wife. Last night, my husband and I were getting ready to go work at our rental, and we were trying to wrangle our kids and get out the door. My 3-year-old, Cameron, was doing his thing, playing, and not listening to us beg him to get his shoes on and get ready to leave. After asking him for the third time and saying for the millionth time, "Cameron, I need you to make a good choice," I realized that I hadn't told him what a "good choice" looked like in this situation. I made my thinking visible and was explicit, explaining, "a good choice right now would be to say 'Okay mom, I'm getting my shoes' and go upstairs and put your shoes on." Miracle of miracles, he did it immediately. Similarly, I've been frustrated that my husband doesn't make the bed, as if we're teenagers or something. All I did was making my thinking visible - I verbalized why I like a made bed (I think I said something crazy like, "Getting into a made bed is like opening a present for me every night, and it makes the room look so much cleaner.") I have been seething about him never making the bed for LITERALLY years, and it took me 30 seconds to say it out loud, explicitly, and now he does it everyday.

Sorry to get so personal, but those stories just highlight my biggest takeaway from this class and our professional book. We have to say exactly what we're thinking and we must explain the process we go through when reading, when searching a database, when encountering a problem with technology, when we do just about anything, if we want those around us to learn. It seems so obvious, but it wasn't to me. What a revelation! :)

Our group has talked a lot about the author's assumptions that all students have access to the tech he describes and that all of our students have full buy in to whatever project we're working on. (His "classroom vignettes" are especially laughable - it's like he's recording the conversations of perfect little student robots) We've generally been pretty negative about it, talking about how his scenarios just aren't plausible, but today, our tone changed. We discussed that even if we impact 5 kids, or if we teach 3 kids some tech skill they didn't know prior to our class, we are effecting change. Teaching and learning is NEVER going to be perfect, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Bean's ideas might be pie in the sky (or "pie in the eye" as my sleep-deprived brain spat out in our group discussion) but I admire his enthusiasm. :)

I liked our discussion protocol today - the 4 A's. (Author's assumptions, Agree, Argue with, Aspire to) Typically when I read a professional text, I'm black and white - I'm all in or I think it's all a crock. This forces me to find something good and something questionable in the text, and also helps me to articulate what strikes me as meaningful and authentic or doesn't.

Reflection #3

Katie Horne
Multimodal Learning for the 21st Century Adolescent
Chapter 4

The chapter we read today focused on slowing down and taking the time to evaluate multimodal texts. While the opening vignette showed an utopian setting (a student recorded their notes on their smartphone while walking home), it also showed what teachers can aspire to in their own classroom. The rest of the chapter discussed taking the time to slow down and evaluate websites and multimodal texts. There was also a brief overview of fair use; however, most of the information was from 2008 and as of today, it's outdated :) The chapter also introduced us to the idea of webquests.

We used the 4-A protocol: one assumption, one agreement, one argument, and one aspiration about the text. As we discussed, many of the same themes resignated throughout. Our assumption was the author assumed students had access to all the wonderful technology. Our group pointed out how many students might have cell phones, but not smartphones. We did agree that students need to take the time to pause and evaulate a text and/or website. We argued how not all students have access to technology equally. Finally, we all aspired to integrate more technology into our classrooms.

I used a variety of strategies including rereading, highlighting main ideas in the text, reviewing vocabulary words, and marking the text.

Amanda Reflection 3: Engaging Readers and Writers

This section of reading dealt a lot with types of questions. I already use reQuest questioning: on the lines (identification/comprehension), between the lines (drawing conclusions), and beyond the lines (inference/analysis) with varying degrees of success. I liked how in this section the demonstrated to scaffold these questions more than I normally do. I tend to jump ahead or want my students to just "get" all the levels when really we need to build on them. A drawback for this section is that it goes over a lot of differing types of questions. While it was nice for me to think about the types, I think it would be overwhelming to try to use all of the types of questions Wilhelm explains. It would be good for a school to set a questioning protocol so that students can transfer inquiry based questioning to other classes.

Our group utilized the protocol of "It says, I say, and so" for this section of reading. I liked this protocol because it helped me reflect on what my thoughts, beliefs, and actions actually are then how the reading influences me. I reflected on questioning students over a section of reading.
It says: "What are the most important details so far?" (139).
I say: "What happened in this section of reading?"
And so: I realize that I am actually asking my students for plot:what happened. I really want them to be thinking about the larger implications of the text by my word choice keeps us on the literal level. By asking for details rather than events the discussion shifts to more thematic and insightful topics. Wilhelm also suggests questions to help students take notice of the text. "What do you think the author wants us to know?" (136). This type of a question helps lead students to drawing conclusions and thematic connections. I think it would be especially useful in studying character and setting. This makes me think about the imagery Steinbeck uses in describing George and Lenny in Of Mice and Men. What is Steinbeck saying about Lenny's character when he is compared to a bear? What conclusion can be drawn from this comparison? Again, these questions shift the discussion from plot or on the line questions to more inferencing.

I was surprised to learn that "6 percent of graduating high school seniors are adept at seeing and justifying complex implied relationships and authorial generalizations" (145). I feel like I focus on this so much but when I look closely at my actual word choice I am leading my students more to simple comprehension. I firmly believe that the use of inquiry based learning will support my students in better being able to analyze more advanced relationships.

Engaging Readers and Writers with Inquiry ch 5 and 6

Chapters 5 and 6 were interesting and eye opening. These chapters emphasized the importance and value of teaching students to think critically vs factually. The author gave examples of strategies using the inquiry model to take students to that higher level of thinking. He gave examples of how he uses a three-level reading guide to get his students to think about the questions they are asking and their level of sophistication. He discussed the power of making connections through questioning. "If our students do not learn to do this kind of work, they will be mired in information, instead of empowered to create and use knowledge." (129) I thought this quote was so powerful because we have created a society of fact finders versus deep thinkers and problem solvers. According tho the text, only 6 percent of graduating seniors are able to make geralizations and think in a complex manner (145).
As a group, we discussed the benefits of the inquiry model. We were in agreement that we often allow students to stop short at the factual, literal level when all it would really take is a subtle change in the wording of a question to get students to a higher level of discussion and thinking.
The reading protocol we used was "It says...I say...and so..." I have never used this protocol but really found it helpful. The purpose of the protocol is to extend thinking based on what is said in the reading and what one already knows about the topic. I will use this in my classroom because the three step process requires that students make meaning out of the reading versus pulling out information.
While reading the chapters I found myself reflecting about how to better use the inquiry model in my classroom. I annotated and used stickies to mark examples and strategies used by the author. I am really enjoying this book and have not found myself daydreaming and off task at all.

Robert Samsel

Reflection #2

Tuesday June 14, 2011

Chapters 2-3

In this section of the book I finally got to get into some of the meat and potatoes. There were several websites given that provided resource to enhance the development of vocabulary. Many of which were unknown to me, some of them were. By the end of high school a student could have a reading vocabulary of up to fifty thousand words. This made me pause and wonder how students get there. Several tools were highlighted. All of the tools were just another way to expose kids to vocabulary in a novel way. According to research it takes many repetitions to the same vocabulary in different contexts for it to become part of their reading vocabulary and many more exposures in order to become part of their working vocabulary.

Four key components were given to increase students’ vocabulary

1. Provide rich and varied language experiences

2. Teach individual words.

3. Teach word-learning strategies.

4. Foster word consciousness.

I’m not sold that all examples given in the book accomplish all of these goals so it is probably necessary to use more than one of them to teach vocabulary that will take time. Time that I hope won’t interfere with the amount of content that also needs to be learned.

Strategies:

I focused on the suggestions given and thought about how I might apply them in my world. I annotated in the magi's to that when I came back to it later I would be able to remember what I was thinking at that time and maybe even develop that idea further in the future.

Amanda Reflection 2: Engaging Readers and Writers

This section of reading focused on the components of creating strong inquiry based questions. Wilhelm views standards as being more “as goals than standards, and they float out there, in isolation” (45). While I, of course, believe standards are important and they help me create a unit of study, they don’t necessarily help me in how to engage my students. The beauty of inquiry based learning is that guiding questions should be open ended, arguable, and addresses the perspective of the student. Wilhelm advocates for a strong personal connection for students to the guiding questions. As an English teacher, I sometimes get too wrapped up in the literature that I almost forget about the student. It’s funny because in my reading class I recognize the importance of personal connections for students but I don’t do too much in a traditional novel unit of study.
In my book study group we used text rendering as our discussion protocol. All three of us selected, in some form, a passage that deals with overcoming the “what” type questions. Is it really important in To Kill a Mockingbird for students to be able to identify that Calpurnia makes a crackle cake for Scout and Jem on Scout’s first day of school or that Calpurnia demonstrates her love for the children by making a cake for them? “Facts are important, but only if they are in service of deeper understanding” (56). Do I really just want my students to be able to simply recall information or do I want them to engage in both the reading and thinking? Using “how” or “why” questions help shift this type of thinking. For example, instead of asking students about story elements, ask them how a character reveals her essential character. I know that I know this but I sometimes forget it and slip into lower level thinking and questioning. This leads to another area our group discussed which is the “guess what the teacher thinks is the right answer.” I cringe when I think about when this happens. This tends to happen at the beginning a day’s lesson when students might be simply confused about what literally happened in the reading. A possible solution for this utilizing a summarizing strategy such as “Somebody, Wanted, But, and So” for a warm up at the start of class. Once it has been established what literally happened students can then move on to more of the higher level thinking and questioning.
As I read, I found myself re-reading a lot. Wilhelm suggestions are a shift in thinking for my philosophy of teaching. His teachings build on my beliefs but go about reaching them in a different way. I often found myself pausing and thinking, “Okay, so what do I do when I teach this?” and “How can I apply this to my units?” It appears that, I too, and using inquiry based learning for myself. Hmmm…