These two chapters opened my eyes to what reading is now, and what it should be. It also reminded me of the variety of reading materials that can be included in a classroom, and how using more than textbooks and novels can get students more engaged. I’ve also never really thought about how I think when I read, and unlocking my own strategies can help me teach those strategies to others. When I think about my own classroom now, I think about assigning a variety of readings, doing jigsaw activities, and allowing students to find their own materials as well. I’ve never wanted a classroom of rows and columns and desks, but one that was more in a semi-circle, where the desks can be moved to form groups. These reading activities enforce that. I can’t just assign reading from a text book and have a quiz on it the next day because students do not gain anything from that. Instead, maybe I’ll assign an article, a primary source document, or a chapter of a book and have students write a journal article about it that both describes what they took out of the article and their personal feelings toward it, and then have them share their findings in groups. I want to be able to work with the students as well as allow them to work together. Students can go far if they are engaged in what they are learning about, and one way of doing that is to change it up and get out of the habit of assigning reading and then going over it the next day, and they will go farther if they have the skills take apart what they read and get to a deeper understanding.
I'm a big fan of indirect instruction in a social studies or history classroom. Part of that is because "history is written by the winners" and I'm not even 100% sure that how we learn history is completely accurate either. With that said, the way that cursive is being eliminated from the curriculum in many schools brings about a whole new challenge. If we give students' a primary source document, and they can no longer read cursive, then doesn't that eliminate the ability to use this form of instruction. Honestly, as history scholars we've all come across primary documents that we could hardly decipher because of the hand writing. Now imagine if we had never seen cursive. I may be wrong, but the whole concept of using primary sources for research seems to me to be in danger
"Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter." My History of Colonial Africa professor incorporated this quote into one of our first lectures and I really appreciated the message behind it; reading what you wrote Matt made me think of it. Anyways, I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you have to say concerning how you want your classrooms to be run Emma. I find that working in groups in such an effective way of working through the kinds of texts these Chapters warned us about. Students can build off of one another and help to build a mutual understanding of the material- with the occasional push from me as the educator if I find them stuck. I, too, hate the idea of a classroom with neat rows of desks every class, and I aim to move as far away from that model of teaching as possible.
The first thing that I learned was that I had a history teacher who was using some of this information back when I was in high school. He didn't call it an abstract, but each morning we had to deliver one paragraph summary and answer a few questions (the questions never changed) to his classroom BEFORE school. My guess, in hindsight, was that he read them before our class started to get a better feel of who grasped the content and who struggled with it. I'm definitely planning on using this method if administration allows it. I'm sure you can't read every single one, but you can take a quick snapshot at the very least. Second, I never really considered how much our own knowledge plays a role in our comprehension. It makes perfect sense after those excerpts in the book. Third, I LOVE the idea in chapter 1 about not every student reading the same text. As I got older I became more and more conscious that everything is written to serve an agenda. The rebuttal to Fast Food nation is proof of that. If students are like me, and the author suggests that most are not, they need to consider who wrote the text and why. I have never considered myself to be the best reader. My mind starts to shoot off to a million places, and I have to constantly return to the page before to make sure that I understood the selection. I think that may be why I got interested in History and Social Studies in hindsight. The teacher made us hand in an abstract every morning and because of that I always tried to make sure I had a complete grasp on what I was reading. Lastly, I understand what the author means by "we are all reading teachers." I don't think it matters where the student picks up, or sharpens, their reading skills. I do, however, believe that reading skills are the most important thing a student learns. Finally, one last note on the panel we had in class the other day... I was never much of a social, or peer, learner in high school. My friends all tended to be the less affluent students in the district, and quite frankly, I did their work for them most of the time. I did it because I cared about them, and the 3 minutes it would take me to do their homework was better than watching them drop out. Having met with the students the other day, they all seem to be very interested and positive when it comes to peer learning. I still struggle with it to this day, when the teacher tells us to turn to our neighbor and discuss, I cringe. Honestly, I thought everyone did. I now see that most students enjoy the opportunity to ask their own friends for help and information. I have seen the error of my own beliefs. Thank you students.
I like the idea of handing something in before class starts so that you know you're starting point before class starts and can therefore be better prepared, and I never had a teacher who did that so I never thought about that before. Also, with the panel, I am a little bit with you, sometimes I liked to turn and discuss and other times I didn't. I think it depended on whether or not I was confident in what I was supposed be talking about and how well I knew the person sitting next to me. I think its good to allow students to talk to and learn from each other, but keep in mind that there are those who are not fully comfortable with doing that. Finally, I completely agree with you about students reading different materials, I love that idea too!
I really like the idea of having the students hand in an abstract. It would make them more likely to read the text and read it closely. The abstract's could also be used as guides for discussion in class as well.
I really liked how the text talked in detail about the standards. Specifically how they mentioned both how they help, and also how they need fine-tuning. I really liked how they went into detail about how they need fine-tuning. I've heard allot of people saying that they don't like the common core, but I'd never really heard fully-thought out details about how the standards might be lacking, especially since when I looked at the standards they all sounded good to me. In this textbook the aspects that need fine-tuning are listed out in a detailed manner. Most of these aspects have to do with the actual application of the standards, something which I only know of hypothetically, which is likely why they didn't occur to me.
Students being assigned more engaging reading material has actually been on my mind since high school. I've enjoyed reading from a young age. I remember having a conversation with one of my friends in high school who hated reading. I asked him why he hated reading, and he said that everything he read was horrible, that there were no good books. When I exclaimed in shock he responding saying that there was one story he enjoyed, “The Most Dangerous Game”. I then realized that he had not read anything (or at least very little) that was not assigned to him, and the readings that were assigned to him made him hate reading. There are some differences between “The Most Dangerous Game” and the other things my friend and I were assigned to read in high school. “The Most Dangerous Game” was newer than allot of the other texts, the fiction especially. Many of the other fictional texts we read had a very heavy-handed moral message. “The Most Dangerous Game” had a message to be sure, but it wasn't heavy handed. I believe that students should be assigned texts that are engaging, relatable, and varied; texts that will engage the students into wanting to read more and learn more, which are the type of texts I want to assign when I'm a teacher.
I think one of the few books I genuinely enjoyed reading for school that I had not already previously read of my own free will was "To Kill a Mockingbird," and I find it extremely sad that there are no other titles that spring to attention when I think about the things I read in school. This is a huge problem; why are we surprised that kids don't like to read when they are told to sit down and try and stumble through Shakespeare when there is (relatively) so little in the tale of Hamlet for the average high school student to relate to. There is a plethora of other titles that students should be allowed to pick from, or that teachers can work with. I remember really enjoying the excerpts from that illustrated novel you used in your micro lessons for 406, Mark, so I definitely feel that you're on the right track when it comes to that.
Mark, I love that you want to assign more engaging text in your future classroom. I had a very similar experience in my high school ELA classes, as a lot of the material was old and hard to connect to. Luckily, I enjoyed reading and supplemented it outside the classroom. But for those who do not, they are not able to find a genre or even a book they can feel passionate about. A lot of times, kids find it hard making connections to books or even content areas because the only exposure they have to it is inside the classroom, doing things that do not interest them. I agree that students need to be engaged, and to do so we need to find things that interest them. I think by giving students books or materials that interest, engage, and inspire them, they will dig deeper and find what they like and are passionate about.
I think I'm a little on the line with this. I do believe that we should find books that students find engaging so that they can enjoy reading instead of looking at it like a chore where they have to trudge through it and they do not take anything out of it. However, while I was in high school, I liked that I was exposed to different things. I did not love everything that I read, but I now find that I do love Shakespeare and I never would have known that if I had not been exposed to his writing in the classroom. I think there is a middle ground where you can start with something the students will enjoy and allow them to open up to new things. If you haven't seen it, you should watch the Renaissance Man, which is about a teacher, Danny Devito, who is assigned to a Basic Training camp to try to get some of the less educated soldiers up to speed, and he uses Hamlet to do so. It's a great movie, and really funny.
I once read online that Europeans often find the way Americans approach sports rather ironic. In Europe, soccer- the continent's most popular sport- is very capitalistic in the way that it's run. Privately owned teams compete against each other, although only a select few- those with the most money- can genuinely expect to achieve some level of success. In contrast, socialism and socialist programs are much more widely accepted in areas of education, labor, and agriculture in Europe than it is here in the United States. Meanwhile, American sports teams are forever aided by our various leagues via first draft picks or allocation money for the sake of "parity," as what's the fun of watching any sport if the league isn't "fair," if not everyone has a shot of winning? This approach to sports is very socialist in nature, particularly when compared to the European model, and yet socialism remains a very real "taboo" in American politics. Europeans find it ironic that Americans recognize the need to maintain relative parity among their sports teams to keep the playing field "fair," and yet resist leveling the playing field in the same areas that Europeans have been doing so for decades, areas that very much need to be leveled- like education. The fact that our wealthiest areas are outperforming the rest of the world while our poor linger in mediocrity immediately reminded me of that small tidbit I had read awhile ago, and it makes me angry that this disparity has been allowed to not only to continue, but has been allowed to widen. Having ranted a little bit, I have to say that I really enjoyed the book's cricket analogy in the sense that it forces you to "come back down to Earth" a bit. As it discusses in the text, being a secondary level educator necessitates being passionate about a given field, and this particular analogy was effective in reminding me that not everyone is as interested in studying the effects of the Berlin Conference right off the bat as I am- that there has to be an awful lot of scaffolding that takes place beforehand in order to allow students to truly explore the topic. I have always really liked the idea of interdisciplinary themes that are commonly used in middle school teams and what Chapter 1 discussed concerning the McDonald's assignment; themes are constant and so broad in scope that you can bring in a number of different materials into the mix to aid the learning experience, as well as allowing you the freedom to incorporate fresher material as you stumble across it. That freedom is something that I want to incorporate into my own teaching identity. I want students to have the opportunity to explore, to venture out on their own and to find something that they find interesting. I want them to want to learn, to enter my class and know that- while it might not be their favorite subject, or it might even be their least favorite- that I will do anything and everything within my power to keep them invested in what we are doing.
I've never really thought about the relationship between our sports and education systems compared to that of Europe before, and it is a very interesting comparison. I think that our priorities, as a country, are out of order sometimes, and hopefully we will get the chance to start to turn it around. The whole thing is especially ironic because Europe was able to obtain their socialist programs in education and health care through the United States' money via the Marshall Plan. Also, I love the idea of interdisciplinary themes, and hope that it can be brought up from middle schools to high schools. I think students gain a lot from them especially because if teachers from different departments communicate with each other more and work with each other to create a project like this, then they can help create a better school as a whole.
Chris, I agree with you that interdisciplinary learning is quite powerful. I think it allows student to make a connection to the material in a variety of ways, and they can really hone in on different aspects that they like more. I really liked how you connected sports and education systems, and I feel as though there have become a lot of similarities in the way they are run. I do feel as though that as a country, our playing field is not currently fair. We do not give the same opportunities to all children, but expect the results to be the same. I personally find it disheartening that there is still such a wide achievement gap between the socioeconomic groups of students, and as future educators, hopefully we can make strides at changing this.
These two chapters made me think about the types of reading I did in my high school history class, and how I am as a reader. During high school, we solely read out of textbooks, and it was easy for me. I was fortunate enough to have a teacher in my junior high career that taught me how to read a textbook and comprehend it effectively. But for many of my peers it was very difficult, and much like the classroom of Steve Cosgrove in the reading. While I do feel like a textbook is a useful and important tool, this reading has reinforced my personal feelings about how I want my classroom to be. I want to give my students opportunities to explore different documents in history and social studies, and work and build off their peers. I feel as though when working with a group, students can gain much more out of working with a text, rather than working and reading by themselves. I also really liked that in the text it discussed students reading different documents. I think that students can do their best learning when they find something that intrigues them or that they can connect to. The McDonald’s example in the reading was a really good example of this, as the main message was conveyed to everyone, but everyone was able to focus on different parts that they felt needed more attention. I think by the generic standard of everyone reading the same thing out of the textbook is killing kids creativity and ability to expand upon ideas and concepts. If we are able to diversify our classrooms to be more creative, and give more opportunities for kids to explore the content, I think it will be much more impactful. I also think that having interdisciplinary reading or lessons is a really good tool to reinforce an idea. I have found that this is mostly done in middle schools, but I really think it could be effective in a high school setting, as many ideas and concepts already overlap. And this could be the key to a student learning to like a particular subject. As discussed in the reading, content area teachers are passionate about their content and they try to invoke this passion into their students. Obviously, it is hard to make everyone love history, but I feel as though if we give students the opportunity to learn about the topic in a way that they will like, a new way in which they can at least appreciate, or connect it to something that they know or love, they could learn to have a new appreciation for it. I think that this reading has helped me start to form my future teaching identity. I know that it will be an impossible task to make every student passionate about history, but I plan on trying to keep every student intrigued. I want every student to be able to make a connection to something in my class, and want to discover more new things either about that topic, or something that builds off of it. Currently, the way we read and educate in classrooms is just not working for every student. In this video https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U Sir Ken Robinson describes the education system as how we know it and why it isn’t working. He sees creativity being killed in the classroom, and how many education systems simply label children as having ADHD when they can’t pay attention. He feels we put so much emphasis on the mathematics and sciences, when we should be stimulating kids creativity with the arts and what they like. He also feels as though instead of medicating kids who supposedly can’t pay attention, we should be waking them up. As educators, we should be promoting creative and different ways of thinking. Just like the textbook, not everyone can read and comprehend it. So why would we think that the traditional education model works for everyone? Simply put, it doesn’t. So it is up to us as future educators to find new ways to reach our students and help them find what they are passionate about, and how to succeed in our classrooms.
These two chapters opened my eyes to what reading is now, and what it should be. It also reminded me of the variety of reading materials that can be included in a classroom, and how using more than textbooks and novels can get students more engaged. I’ve also never really thought about how I think when I read, and unlocking my own strategies can help me teach those strategies to others. When I think about my own classroom now, I think about assigning a variety of readings, doing jigsaw activities, and allowing students to find their own materials as well. I’ve never wanted a classroom of rows and columns and desks, but one that was more in a semi-circle, where the desks can be moved to form groups. These reading activities enforce that. I can’t just assign reading from a text book and have a quiz on it the next day because students do not gain anything from that. Instead, maybe I’ll assign an article, a primary source document, or a chapter of a book and have students write a journal article about it that both describes what they took out of the article and their personal feelings toward it, and then have them share their findings in groups. I want to be able to work with the students as well as allow them to work together. Students can go far if they are engaged in what they are learning about, and one way of doing that is to change it up and get out of the habit of assigning reading and then going over it the next day, and they will go farther if they have the skills take apart what they read and get to a deeper understanding.
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of indirect instruction in a social studies or history classroom. Part of that is because "history is written by the winners" and I'm not even 100% sure that how we learn history is completely accurate either. With that said, the way that cursive is being eliminated from the curriculum in many schools brings about a whole new challenge. If we give students' a primary source document, and they can no longer read cursive, then doesn't that eliminate the ability to use this form of instruction. Honestly, as history scholars we've all come across primary documents that we could hardly decipher because of the hand writing. Now imagine if we had never seen cursive. I may be wrong, but the whole concept of using primary sources for research seems to me to be in danger
Delete"Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter." My History of Colonial Africa professor incorporated this quote into one of our first lectures and I really appreciated the message behind it; reading what you wrote Matt made me think of it.
DeleteAnyways, I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you have to say concerning how you want your classrooms to be run Emma. I find that working in groups in such an effective way of working through the kinds of texts these Chapters warned us about. Students can build off of one another and help to build a mutual understanding of the material- with the occasional push from me as the educator if I find them stuck. I, too, hate the idea of a classroom with neat rows of desks every class, and I aim to move as far away from that model of teaching as possible.
The first thing that I learned was that I had a history teacher who was using some of this information back when I was in high school. He didn't call it an abstract, but each morning we had to deliver one paragraph summary and answer a few questions (the questions never changed) to his classroom BEFORE school. My guess, in hindsight, was that he read them before our class started to get a better feel of who grasped the content and who struggled with it. I'm definitely planning on using this method if administration allows it. I'm sure you can't read every single one, but you can take a quick snapshot at the very least. Second, I never really considered how much our own knowledge plays a role in our comprehension. It makes perfect sense after those excerpts in the book. Third, I LOVE the idea in chapter 1 about not every student reading the same text. As I got older I became more and more conscious that everything is written to serve an agenda. The rebuttal to Fast Food nation is proof of that. If students are like me, and the author suggests that most are not, they need to consider who wrote the text and why. I have never considered myself to be the best reader. My mind starts to shoot off to a million places, and I have to constantly return to the page before to make sure that I understood the selection. I think that may be why I got interested in History and Social Studies in hindsight. The teacher made us hand in an abstract every morning and because of that I always tried to make sure I had a complete grasp on what I was reading. Lastly, I understand what the author means by "we are all reading teachers." I don't think it matters where the student picks up, or sharpens, their reading skills. I do, however, believe that reading skills are the most important thing a student learns. Finally, one last note on the panel we had in class the other day... I was never much of a social, or peer, learner in high school. My friends all tended to be the less affluent students in the district, and quite frankly, I did their work for them most of the time. I did it because I cared about them, and the 3 minutes it would take me to do their homework was better than watching them drop out. Having met with the students the other day, they all seem to be very interested and positive when it comes to peer learning. I still struggle with it to this day, when the teacher tells us to turn to our neighbor and discuss, I cringe. Honestly, I thought everyone did. I now see that most students enjoy the opportunity to ask their own friends for help and information. I have seen the error of my own beliefs. Thank you students.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of handing something in before class starts so that you know you're starting point before class starts and can therefore be better prepared, and I never had a teacher who did that so I never thought about that before. Also, with the panel, I am a little bit with you, sometimes I liked to turn and discuss and other times I didn't. I think it depended on whether or not I was confident in what I was supposed be talking about and how well I knew the person sitting next to me. I think its good to allow students to talk to and learn from each other, but keep in mind that there are those who are not fully comfortable with doing that. Finally, I completely agree with you about students reading different materials, I love that idea too!
DeleteI really like the idea of having the students hand in an abstract. It would make them more likely to read the text and read it closely. The abstract's could also be used as guides for discussion in class as well.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how the text talked in detail about the standards. Specifically how they mentioned both how they help, and also how they need fine-tuning. I really liked how they went into detail about how they need fine-tuning. I've heard allot of people saying that they don't like the common core, but I'd never really heard fully-thought out details about how the standards might be lacking, especially since when I looked at the standards they all sounded good to me. In this textbook the aspects that need fine-tuning are listed out in a detailed manner. Most of these aspects have to do with the actual application of the standards, something which I only know of hypothetically, which is likely why they didn't occur to me.
ReplyDeleteStudents being assigned more engaging reading material has actually been on my mind since high school. I've enjoyed reading from a young age. I remember having a conversation with one of my friends in high school who hated reading. I asked him why he hated reading, and he said that everything he read was horrible, that there were no good books. When I exclaimed in shock he responding saying that there was one story he enjoyed, “The Most Dangerous Game”. I then realized that he had not read anything (or at least very little) that was not assigned to him, and the readings that were assigned to him made him hate reading. There are some differences between “The Most Dangerous Game” and the other things my friend and I were assigned to read in high school. “The Most Dangerous Game” was newer than allot of the other texts, the fiction especially. Many of the other fictional texts we read had a very heavy-handed moral message. “The Most Dangerous Game” had a message to be sure, but it wasn't heavy handed. I believe that students should be assigned texts that are engaging, relatable, and varied; texts that will engage the students into wanting to read more and learn more, which are the type of texts I want to assign when I'm a teacher.
I think one of the few books I genuinely enjoyed reading for school that I had not already previously read of my own free will was "To Kill a Mockingbird," and I find it extremely sad that there are no other titles that spring to attention when I think about the things I read in school. This is a huge problem; why are we surprised that kids don't like to read when they are told to sit down and try and stumble through Shakespeare when there is (relatively) so little in the tale of Hamlet for the average high school student to relate to. There is a plethora of other titles that students should be allowed to pick from, or that teachers can work with. I remember really enjoying the excerpts from that illustrated novel you used in your micro lessons for 406, Mark, so I definitely feel that you're on the right track when it comes to that.
DeleteMark, I love that you want to assign more engaging text in your future classroom. I had a very similar experience in my high school ELA classes, as a lot of the material was old and hard to connect to. Luckily, I enjoyed reading and supplemented it outside the classroom. But for those who do not, they are not able to find a genre or even a book they can feel passionate about. A lot of times, kids find it hard making connections to books or even content areas because the only exposure they have to it is inside the classroom, doing things that do not interest them. I agree that students need to be engaged, and to do so we need to find things that interest them. I think by giving students books or materials that interest, engage, and inspire them, they will dig deeper and find what they like and are passionate about.
DeleteI think I'm a little on the line with this. I do believe that we should find books that students find engaging so that they can enjoy reading instead of looking at it like a chore where they have to trudge through it and they do not take anything out of it. However, while I was in high school, I liked that I was exposed to different things. I did not love everything that I read, but I now find that I do love Shakespeare and I never would have known that if I had not been exposed to his writing in the classroom. I think there is a middle ground where you can start with something the students will enjoy and allow them to open up to new things. If you haven't seen it, you should watch the Renaissance Man, which is about a teacher, Danny Devito, who is assigned to a Basic Training camp to try to get some of the less educated soldiers up to speed, and he uses Hamlet to do so. It's a great movie, and really funny.
DeleteI once read online that Europeans often find the way Americans approach sports rather ironic. In Europe, soccer- the continent's most popular sport- is very capitalistic in the way that it's run. Privately owned teams compete against each other, although only a select few- those with the most money- can genuinely expect to achieve some level of success. In contrast, socialism and socialist programs are much more widely accepted in areas of education, labor, and agriculture in Europe than it is here in the United States. Meanwhile, American sports teams are forever aided by our various leagues via first draft picks or allocation money for the sake of "parity," as what's the fun of watching any sport if the league isn't "fair," if not everyone has a shot of winning? This approach to sports is very socialist in nature, particularly when compared to the European model, and yet socialism remains a very real "taboo" in American politics. Europeans find it ironic that Americans recognize the need to maintain relative parity among their sports teams to keep the playing field "fair," and yet resist leveling the playing field in the same areas that Europeans have been doing so for decades, areas that very much need to be leveled- like education. The fact that our wealthiest areas are outperforming the rest of the world while our poor linger in mediocrity immediately reminded me of that small tidbit I had read awhile ago, and it makes me angry that this disparity has been allowed to not only to continue, but has been allowed to widen.
ReplyDeleteHaving ranted a little bit, I have to say that I really enjoyed the book's cricket analogy in the sense that it forces you to "come back down to Earth" a bit. As it discusses in the text, being a secondary level educator necessitates being passionate about a given field, and this particular analogy was effective in reminding me that not everyone is as interested in studying the effects of the Berlin Conference right off the bat as I am- that there has to be an awful lot of scaffolding that takes place beforehand in order to allow students to truly explore the topic. I have always really liked the idea of interdisciplinary themes that are commonly used in middle school teams and what Chapter 1 discussed concerning the McDonald's assignment; themes are constant and so broad in scope that you can bring in a number of different materials into the mix to aid the learning experience, as well as allowing you the freedom to incorporate fresher material as you stumble across it. That freedom is something that I want to incorporate into my own teaching identity. I want students to have the opportunity to explore, to venture out on their own and to find something that they find interesting. I want them to want to learn, to enter my class and know that- while it might not be their favorite subject, or it might even be their least favorite- that I will do anything and everything within my power to keep them invested in what we are doing.
I've never really thought about the relationship between our sports and education systems compared to that of Europe before, and it is a very interesting comparison. I think that our priorities, as a country, are out of order sometimes, and hopefully we will get the chance to start to turn it around. The whole thing is especially ironic because Europe was able to obtain their socialist programs in education and health care through the United States' money via the Marshall Plan.
DeleteAlso, I love the idea of interdisciplinary themes, and hope that it can be brought up from middle schools to high schools. I think students gain a lot from them especially because if teachers from different departments communicate with each other more and work with each other to create a project like this, then they can help create a better school as a whole.
Chris, I agree with you that interdisciplinary learning is quite powerful. I think it allows student to make a connection to the material in a variety of ways, and they can really hone in on different aspects that they like more. I really liked how you connected sports and education systems, and I feel as though there have become a lot of similarities in the way they are run. I do feel as though that as a country, our playing field is not currently fair. We do not give the same opportunities to all children, but expect the results to be the same. I personally find it disheartening that there is still such a wide achievement gap between the socioeconomic groups of students, and as future educators, hopefully we can make strides at changing this.
DeleteThese two chapters made me think about the types of reading I did in my high school history class, and how I am as a reader. During high school, we solely read out of textbooks, and it was easy for me. I was fortunate enough to have a teacher in my junior high career that taught me how to read a textbook and comprehend it effectively. But for many of my peers it was very difficult, and much like the classroom of Steve Cosgrove in the reading. While I do feel like a textbook is a useful and important tool, this reading has reinforced my personal feelings about how I want my classroom to be. I want to give my students opportunities to explore different documents in history and social studies, and work and build off their peers. I feel as though when working with a group, students can gain much more out of working with a text, rather than working and reading by themselves.
ReplyDeleteI also really liked that in the text it discussed students reading different documents. I think that students can do their best learning when they find something that intrigues them or that they can connect to. The McDonald’s example in the reading was a really good example of this, as the main message was conveyed to everyone, but everyone was able to focus on different parts that they felt needed more attention. I think by the generic standard of everyone reading the same thing out of the textbook is killing kids creativity and ability to expand upon ideas and concepts. If we are able to diversify our classrooms to be more creative, and give more opportunities for kids to explore the content, I think it will be much more impactful.
I also think that having interdisciplinary reading or lessons is a really good tool to reinforce an idea. I have found that this is mostly done in middle schools, but I really think it could be effective in a high school setting, as many ideas and concepts already overlap. And this could be the key to a student learning to like a particular subject. As discussed in the reading, content area teachers are passionate about their content and they try to invoke this passion into their students. Obviously, it is hard to make everyone love history, but I feel as though if we give students the opportunity to learn about the topic in a way that they will like, a new way in which they can at least appreciate, or connect it to something that they know or love, they could learn to have a new appreciation for it.
I think that this reading has helped me start to form my future teaching identity. I know that it will be an impossible task to make every student passionate about history, but I plan on trying to keep every student intrigued. I want every student to be able to make a connection to something in my class, and want to discover more new things either about that topic, or something that builds off of it. Currently, the way we read and educate in classrooms is just not working for every student. In this video https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U Sir Ken Robinson describes the education system as how we know it and why it isn’t working. He sees creativity being killed in the classroom, and how many education systems simply label children as having ADHD when they can’t pay attention. He feels we put so much emphasis on the mathematics and sciences, when we should be stimulating kids creativity with the arts and what they like. He also feels as though instead of medicating kids who supposedly can’t pay attention, we should be waking them up. As educators, we should be promoting creative and different ways of thinking. Just like the textbook, not everyone can read and comprehend it. So why would we think that the traditional education model works for everyone? Simply put, it doesn’t. So it is up to us as future educators to find new ways to reach our students and help them find what they are passionate about, and how to succeed in our classrooms.