Time Flies...

Well, I was hoping that my classes last semester would provide blogging inspiration but instead it left me buried in paperwork and exams. Has it really been six months since I’ve written a blog?!?! This semester is not panning out to be much different, however I will say that my classes are much more meaningful now that I can actually relate them to my career.
In my brief but glorious 3 week break from classes I read Debbie Miller’s book, Reading with Meaning. The books takes the reader through the school year with a class of first graders during their reader’s workshop. Man, was I impressed with what these first grader’s were capable of by the end of the school year! Several student artifacts were presented in the book and, from a developmental perspective, these students seem to be thinking at a much higher cognitive level than is typical of a 7 year old.
Her technique had a strong focus on metacognition and comprehension. She modeled, explicitly, the thinking process of readers and spent a significant amount of time characterizing qualities of readers. These first graders were making insightful inferences and comparisons. They were having thoughtful discussions and (in an unexpectedly abstract manner) making metaphors to describe reading. Below are a couple of quotes provided by her students, one about inferring and one about synthesizing:

“When we infer together, it’s like a wire that connects from my head to someone else’s head, on and on and on, all around the circle.” – Riley (Reading with Meaning, Miller, 2002)

“Synthesizing is like putting a puzzle together. You have to sort out your thinking and put it in the right place.”- Cory (Reading with Meaning, Miller, 2002)

Maybe its lack of experience spending enough time with first graders, but that seems highly philosophical for that age in my mind. It’s amazing to me that her method instilled such a deep understanding not just of the texts but of the process, the strategies which they will probably be using throughout their academic career. I guess I have become accustomed to expecting reading instruction to first focus on how to read, then to move into comprehension. I think Miller’s approach is brilliant. What resulted was that students became highly motivated to build reading skills.
I recommend this book, although some of the comments on Amazon stated that the book is probably more suited for new teachers. I learned a lot from her technique that I intend to use and will likely be re-reading this book a few times to re-absorb it.

An Abstraction of "Paragraph"

"I didn't have the vocabulary to say "paragraph," but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence. This knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family's house was a paragraph …. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, the deceased sister, my younger twin sisters and our adopted little brother."

This quote was taken from Superman and Me, an essay by Sherman Alexie,which was published in the Los Angeles Times, April 19 1998.

I just loved the way Alexie built upon his concept of a paragraph. As adults, it is hard to put ourselves in the mind of a child. It’s hard to imagine what those first moments of understanding a word, a sentence a paragraph and an entire work of literature feel like. It’s difficult to remember a time when we first put it all together and it became something meaningful.
The exploration of reading by Alexie, who grew up on a Reservation in Spokane, WA, was self lead and built on genuine curiosity in the meaning of the strange lines that covered the pages of his father’s books. I love the abstract thought that went into associating a paragraph with other meaningful groupings in his life. I think this is an excellent example of the kind of thought process I want to aspire to instill in students.

Modern Day Considerations

I’ve decided to challenge myself a bit when it comes to literary analyses. Part of my education to be an educator required that I choose a concentration area. As much as I wanted to fill the great need for math and science teachers, humanities has always been my passion and strong suit, so I chose English as my concentration.
I do love my reading and writing, probably in a different way than many others. I have long time been a big fan of the non-fiction genre, as my desire to learn overpowers my desire to escape into a good novel, although I also enjoy the latter. As a result of my obsession with non-fiction reading (and believe me, it goes way, way back- to childhood really) I am not well read in the fiction genre, and less well read in many of the classic junior novels that will likely be part of the curriculum I will someday teach.
I decided that in order to familiarize myself with popular junior novels, despite my lack of time for recreational reading, I will start getting books on CD from my local library and listening to them when I am in the car. While listening to them, I can begin to think about questions I might use in discussions with my students, if I were to teach this book.
I started this yesterday with “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. I am only a few chapters in but I already have some great ideas of critical thinking questions that I might pose to my class. But one thing I didn’t expect was to have all kinds of thoughts regarding the actual experience of listening to audio books as opposed to the experience of reading them. Back when I was in school, cliff notes were the only cheater we had to reduce the work of actually reading a book (now I relish in the thought of reading for homework!) But in this day and age, there are so many new ways for children to access information that I feel it necessary to ask myself, “how would I handle this in my classroom- if children choose to listen to books instead of read them.” It also makes me wonder how teachers are already dealing with this situation.
I can see that there may be both positives and negatives attached to audio books.
The first positive that pops into my mind relates to accommodation for disabled students. If I get to choose a book to use for a lesson, it would be beneficial from an inclusion perspective to choose books which are readily available in audio format.
Another positive would be to utilize the audio format in collaboration with the text to help students integrate the material with both visual and auditory sensory input.
On the negative end, the experience of listening to the audio book tends to color the readers perspective of the characters, much the same as watching a film about a book does. The reader on the audio book adds his/her own voice to the characters and reads in such a way that the listener begins to model the character to match the readers voice, instead of using the tone, imagery and characteristics of each character to create an impression of their own.
Also on the negative end is the affect on technical details, such as becoming more fluent and learning new vocabulary and synthesizing the material, lack of retention and the ability to “space out” or get distracted when not focusing visually on the text.
In the age of technology, there are many other considerations to make when developing lessons and assignments in order to ensure students do not short change their education by using technology as a shortcut. Even reading has become techno-fied (yes, I made that word up).
On the other hand, for teachers, all this technology can be an incredible time saving method of staying fresh and current on the curricular material and obtaining new perspectives and ideas on how to approach discussions with students.

Teacher Moment

Last night as I was reading a book about creating quality lessons, I had a teacher moment. I envisioned myself teaching a literature lesson. We were having a whole class discussion about a book and I was trying to pull examples of themes, found in the book, from my students. I imagined asking one of my students to recall what a theme is and share it with the class. Then I would elaborate on that definition and ask for students to share their thoughts about what themes may be present in the book, as I create a brainstorm model on the board with their answers. I imagined a student responding with a portion of the plot and me replying with appropriate feed back: “that is an excellent observation Jimmy, however rather than a theme, you shared a portion of the plot.” Then I would differentiate the definition of a theme and a plot and suggest we use Jimmy’s plot observation as a platform for building on to find the theme. I would use a visual model of the building blocks of a story, say a pyramid.

I would then use Jimmy’s example (a small fragment of the whole) to find the individual elements involved in that portion of the plot, then as a group, determine what we think the theme to that segment of the story could be. Once I felt the students understood, we would then start brainstorming other themes present in the novel. At the end of the instruction portion, I would encourage any questions and ask students to write the models from the board in their writer’s notebook, as reference for their assignment.
The assignment would be to use the themes present in the story to find a angle in which the story is relatable on a personal level and write about it in their journals. What I would be expecting is identification of the chosen theme, and explanation of why that theme was chosen, 2-3 valid comparisons between the story and the personal experience as it relates to the chosen theme and a conclusion which states at least one valuable insight that the student can grow from that was discovered while analyzing the similarities.
This of course was just an imaginary account of how I might approach a lesson on literary analyses of theme and teach children how they can find deeper meaning within works of literature. This is an example of why it would be great to work with 4th- 8th grade because of the possibilities for more complex lessons and assignments.
Since I haven’t gotten into any methods courses yet and have nothing to go on except some basics on educational theory, I often feel as if my path is blocked by a giant question mark. I have a good general understanding of administrative structure, educational policy, educational style/approaches, theories on teaching diverse learners, inclusion, classroom management, room set up and the general responsibilities of teachers. But vary rarely do I get any sense of what executing any of this is actually like, how does it all come together into a meaningful experience for students? What will I say when I am standing at the front of the room with all those eyeballs focused on me? I really try to put myself in as many imaginary situations as I can but when there is missing knowledge and no understanding of curricular requirements, those teacher moments don’t feel complete. I have so far to go yet, but at least it’s a vision that I can hold and build on, something to bring me closer to closing the gap between theory and practice.

More Great Ideas

Another great idea came from this blogger. To help first graders get in the reading mode, she is taking photocopies of the covers of all the books she reads to them as a group (and has multiple copies of each book in the class library) and hanging the pictures up so that the kids can identify which book it was that they remember and want to try to read on their own. I really loved this idea because children are so visual. They are much more likely to make the connection that “hey, that is that book the teacher read that I like” and then pick up the book themselves.
I also think that this concept can grow with students into a visual card catalogue. The photo copies of the covers can be stored in a binder by author and then have a simple color and or number coding system on the classroom shelf to help students make a visual connection with identifying books by author and title as they will encounter in the real world- libraries and bookstores. Plus it’s a great way to organize a classroom library and keep an inventory of what books have been collected over the years and which are student favorites. A check out system can also be created. Some organizational methods that can be built from this idea:

• Colored dots can be used to indicate reading level, then secondary to the color dot can be a letter/ number system similar to the dewy decimal system.
• A sign out sheet can be used, possibly a simple paper with columns for the week kept in a child’s work folder. Bingo daubers that match the color codes can be used and the number of the book to indicate what the child is taking home for the week.
• Items checked out can also be interwoven with writing lesson plans- ie, children must write an entry in their journal citing their thoughts on a book taken out that week.

There are a lot of benefits in creating a simplified mock library within the classroom other than just encouraging kids to read. It can also serve as an introduction to library skills and as a platform for writing.
There is also a great opportunity for teachers to collaborate on this so that the skills are built upon each year (of course this may once again be my perfect world in my student mind, do most teachers really even have the opportunity [or in some cases probably open mind would be more likely!] to collaborate?) I read about some schools where the teachers seem to work really well to make the transition from each grade smooth, but I imagine that many schools are also not that collaborative in nature. Hmmm, maybe something to consider when I am looking for a job someday.

Priceless Resources

One reason that I am benefiting (rather than regretting!) going to college later in my life is that I now have the benefit of the internet as a resource. That is not to say the internet wasn’t around when I finished high school, but it was still a new concept to the public, most businesses were just beginning to advertise websites, so it wasn’t quite the networking resource it is now, and there certainly wasn’t nearly as much information to be found as there is now.
Teacher blogs and websites are some of my favorite places to peruse. Some experienced teacher’s have the best ideas for fun and engaging lessons, like this teacher who uses “Kung-fu Grammer” to teach the rules of punctuation, and this teacher who uses a book club format to get children to explore literature and engage in meaningful conversations about books with peers who are at the same reading level as them. What I love about these ideas is that they are both simple enough for a new teacher to use. I’ve seen some other great lesson plans that I just don’t know if I could pull off as a new teacher because of how meticulous of a process implementing it is. Somehow, I am expecting my first few years to be a bit overwhelming, so simple and effective is key.
Last night, I watched this video on the website that goes with my textbook. I think that this activity, although pretty intricate, would be a good activity for the beginning of the school year to help learn what kind of learner each student is so that I can plan more effective lessons. It uses the Multiple Intelligence theory and allows children to be active and creative. I love the fact that there are ideas in which they have to work, but no concrete rules, so you can provide the framework within which they can explore and come up with their own ideas.

Retention

Last night I was up late attempting to get ahead with the reading for my Survey of Exceptional Children class that starts in a few weeks. The textbook is 720 pages of small print in an oversized book. The class is only 6 weeks long, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get started right away! I have been working on the first chapter for 2 days now. It’s incredibly dry. In my experience, the first chapter is always the worst in a textbook because it has nothing specific, is full of references to research studies and attempts to justify the rest of the book. Once I get through the first chapter, the rest should be much more interesting (I hope! This book did not get the greatest of reviews from other students.) I literally struggled to keep my eyes open and at one point attempted osmosis, although not intentionally.
This isn’t the first textbook that has put me to sleep. I often wonder why professors would choose such un-motivating text. With the plethora of information available on just about any topic, isn’t it more effective to find material that generates excitement and interest in students? Sometimes it feels as if I am reading nothing more than regurgitated research on a topic. I would learn so much more to read about real experiences, people who put ideas into action and what they observe and what about the students, what do they think of these methods, how about the parents of students? I would like to know how this stuff translates into the real world.
I wonder if sometimes we look at education in a backwards way. Do we want to be filling young minds with as much information as possible regardless of how it can be used? Or, should we spend time developing concepts, putting them to purposeful use and teaching students how to manipulate that knowledge in several ways? My opinion is that quality should take priority.
An elementary age child is no different from a college student when it comes to learning. We both need to be engaged in the process, we both need to develop a deep understanding to retain information and use it consistently throughout our experience.
This is something I need to remember as I enter my career, that the process is just as important as the outcome.