One of our readings this week was on Adolescents' motivation to read by Pitcher et al. These researchers surveyed and interviewed adolescent students to investigate their motivation to read what types of text and the influences affecting their motivation. One thing that stuck out to me was the influences Pitcher et al discovered to have the biggest impact. Some I thought were expected such as: reading material relevant to students, students being given a choice in what they read, and using different types of texts that students are already reading themselves (online material, magazines, etc). Some of the influences I had not already considered were teacher talk and modeling books and authors, teachers enthusiasm for reading and assignments, and modeling strategies for comprehension. These influences all make sense I just did explicitly consider them before. Modeling comprehension strategies I have read about as something teachers
should do but it reinforces that idea to see it as a result of student interviews. As for the teacher enthusiasm I guess I figured all teachers should have this. Of course we are here for the students, but teachers should love their content areas too.
When I was browsing through the CCSS website one thing I thought was interesting was in the Algebra standards. It wanted teachers to use authentic math models for physical phenomena to teach algebra skills. This is really cool and all but the example it gave was V=IR.
Very few students coming into high school physics have a good conceptual model for current, voltage, and resistance. Therefore, unless introduced and taught correctly I think teaching these topics too early or out of context can be harmful to students. This is also reflected in statement by Steve Robinson (reading not assigned in this class).
"Of course, knowing the subject matter
is also important, and teachers who
lack that knowledge can do serious harm. I
would even go so far as to say that many of
my students would be better off if they never
had a science teacher before me because
they have to unlearn so many bad things from elementary school teachers who were
afraid of science."
No comments:
Post a Comment