Reflection 4

D&Z ch 4-5

This has been one of my favorite chapters! Starting out with the idea and development of E=mc^2 was particularly touching for me because it was one of the books in physics that got me interested in the subject when I was around 14! Besides that, my mentor teacher is a teacher who has nearly abandoned using the textbook. Students are all issued one but only use it as a reference. Problems and reading are not assigned from it.  His homework problems mostly based on published data he found or measurements he took himself. D&Z claim that english is one area that focuses more on process than just content. A lot of modern research literature is arguing the a similar method for science. Students should be learning the content through scientific processes. In the recommended content I was surprised by how many titles I had already read. Some of them on my own, (A Lesson Before Dying, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, E=mc^2) and others that my teachers assigned or suggested (Nickel and Dimed, Warriors Don’t Cry). One thing I have a question is about the authors suggest letting students choose their own titles.  Choosing a google title that can accompany class time to effectively replace textbooks is a delicate task. Finding multiple books for the same section may be difficult to make sure all the kids are developing a good base of knowledge. The only thing I can think to help is if we have class presentations where students teach what they learned from their title.

Reflection 3

My favorite reading this week was Ch. 5 in D&Z, Tools for Thinking: Reading Strategies Across the Curriculum. It outlines different teaching strategies for different purposes. D & Z did a great job at providing examples, particululary examples for reading in other content areas!  Some examples, (such as coding text) are things I already do and just did not realize it. I always considered myself an ‘active reader’ but sometimes debate its effectiveness compared to time consumption. Reading some of these strategies helped reinforce my attitude that good learning is often time consuming and that that’s okay.  Some strategies (Sketching my way through text) I found to be even targeted for math and science.

Ch. 6 did have some useful information but honestly, for myself, I use many of the strategies in Ch. 5 even when I’m reading textbooks. The closing of this chapter (Find a better textbook) really reminds me of my mentor teacher, who writes nearly all of his course materials in entirety. This is (not surprisingly) very very time consuming. On the other hand, I have the impression that were these materials turned into a textbook… It may be one of the best for physics. (Like Feynman for high schoolers!)

For the Content-Area Literacy, I can already tell how I feel about reading in content courses is in transformation. I’m a huge reader, and a huge part of what I read is on physics. There were already some reading activities I had planned for my future class, but haven’t decided yet how I was going to do that. Also, when I initially came up with some of these activity ideas, it was simply because they are things I love doing. (ex: sections of the Feynman Lectures) Now I’m starting to actually be able to justify the importance of activities like this, rather than ‘because I like to do it, so they will too.’ I do believe students enjoy learning, so after they gain the skills of reading to learn-- they will enjoy reading too!

and…. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to keep this under 300 words.

Reflection 2

^cheap attempt at posting earlier from my phone, because I didn't have wifi to transfer text from my laptop. baha! Text posted later below:

This week’s readings focused on how to teach reading.  Chapter 3 in Tovani entered the chapter by stating that our community does recognize the value in reading things other than literature as much as they should. In particular, she uses the skill of reading blue prints as an exmaple. Other reading skills include reading math problems or directions. The segment on reading directions also really stuck out to me. Being able to read directions well would help in almost every area of life! 

She used the ‘Di Tri Berrese’ exersize as something useful she uses to get teachers to recognize the process they use to read. When I first read it I thought it was kind of pointless because it’s a different process than you use to read most materials, but actually now that I’m writing this I see the point was more to show teachers that there is a process for reading all materials. They probably just don’t notice it anymore.

In Chapter 4 I was most interested in the Finn vs Huckleberry Finn comparison and I’m actually interested in reading it just to see how close they resemble each other. I loved the idea of using multitexts to bring the class focus to concepts rather than particular facts. Its a much more productive way to gain authentic knowledge for the students. Especially because it more closely resembles how we gain knowledge outside of school.

I can also tell in the Tovani text that the author really uses her own advice in writing a book that is easy and motivating to read. 

The Bakken & Whedon article was on how to teach reading expository texts, rather than narratives that most students grow up reading. I thought all the techniques were helpful for teachers but the biggest thing I took out of it was for my own kids.. I’m definitely inclined to expose them to more expository texts earlier. When they ask me a question, we can all go to the dictionary, or encylapedia, or whatever, to find the answer together than than looking it up myself and just sharing what I learned.

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and just a comment for my own sake on postings: I realized today 200-300 words is not very much and I did to waste them less on summaries and just jump into reflecting. We all read the readings, I don't need to summarize again. Right?

Reflection 1

This week’s reading were focused on the importance of community in learning. Chapter 7: Building a Community of Learners in Daniels & Zemelman discussed building a community by making material relevant to student interests. It outlines five main strategies to accomplish this. One that I think is most important is making your classroom a safe place for students to take academic risks. Quiet students are often the ones that ‘fall through the cracks’ because they are too shy to bring up questions or concepts they don’t understand. For me particularly as a physics teacher, because success in physics has been correlated to tolerance for academic failure. Many physics problems don’t have an obvious correct approach so its important to feel comfortable starting the problem without knowing if it’s the correct solution. It’ll also be easy to show how I, myself, commonly hit ‘dead ends’ before reversing and trying a different method and finally reaching a solution. D&Z also mentions the importance of sharing personal struggles in that manner. I thought most strategies covered were natural to use in a physics class. There’s a few science magazines that would be easy to bring into class and have students read.  They can pick which magazines or articles to engage in and share their understanding with the class.  It would also be a good opportunity for book clubs, as suggested in this chapter.

Fitzgerald & Grave covered useful reading supports for all types of students. The importance of scaffolding is being able to increase the difficulty of material students can read and understand. The scaffolding experience involves a set of pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading activities and can be used on a various types of text. This may mean having a smaller focus for certain students, but better for those students to have a manageable task they can accomplish versus feeling overwhelmed and retaining little from the learning experience.

Hart & Risley studied the effects of poverty on student’s academic growth.  They started with vocabulary in young children during the start of their language development. They noticed that vocabulary size and frequency used already showed disparities when children turned 3. They figured that the amount of disparity already was equivalent to about 150,000 words per week for the welfare child compared to the child of a professional family. The conclusion of this information was to stress the need for intervention early in a child’s life- otherwise intervention is unlikely succeed in closing the gap.