Post 10

As my girlfriend is getting back into town this week I got ahead of myself and finished my blog a bit early. Hope you enjoy reading it. For the optimum experience in this blog please listen to the song while reading: The end, beautiful friend

Post 10: Chapter 9: Writing as a form of learning.

            Much to my surprise, well, not really, there was a reference to the Enig article about how students are able to learn best when they are writing. What a novel idea (pun intended). The last chapter of the book; Multiple Voices, multiple texts,” talks about how writing is a very important part of learning. To this point, the book has focuses on a few things, first, that phonics is a crap way to learn past a certain point, the second being that a psychoanalytical approach is better in that it gets students to really learn, to bring it into their personal lives and then to use that to learn more fully. The book now takes a shift from reading and talks about writing. There are a ton of methods and ways the authors talk about that writing can help. I am not going to delve into any particular methods of writing (mostly because I want to focus on summing up the book in its whole and my responded to it) but the crux of it all is that students should be writing.

Let me say that again:

All students in all subjects should be writing.

They should be writing in journals about what they learn and about what they still need to learn, they should be creating original works (short stories, poems, narratives, opinion pieces) they should be writing in more formal and traditional ways. They should be writing essays and critical analysis of papers. They should be doing research papers and editing their own and other people’s work. They should be engaged with a pen and paper or a computer and keyboard, they should carry around a small journal full of ideas and things that come to them. Because there is this crazy thing that happens when a student puts pen to paper and writes things, they tend to learn it. When they make an idea their own with their own words then they are taking part in forming an opinion about something and that opinion will help them to carry forward with what they need to learn. The act of writing makes tem better learners, it makes them better readers and it will make learning easier and more personal. LET YOUR KIDS WRITE.

IN CONCLUSION I have spent the better part of a week digging deep into a book that had a lot to say about a lot of things. Most of the things I enjoyed and agreed with, it helped me to laugh at how everyone but the people who write standardized test thinks they are a bad idea. It made me think about what methods I have in my class and how I can make those more robust and better to reach my students. It made me think about what I need to do differently in my class. Where I need to push harder, where I need to back off. In short, because I was able to take my previous stock of information and add to it a critical and person analysis of what was being taught I exercised what Dornan Et. Al would applaud because I was able to reach an emotional and deeper understanding of the text fraught with personal emotion and interaction I gave the text meaning beyond what the words on the page were and as such, I feel that not only do I agree with this book in the majority of arenas but I was able to be a student and proof of their methodology whilst reading the book. Like almost a meta study of the methods presented. All being said, I enjoyed this book and though it is the end of the blog and the end of the book it is not the end of the learning that it has instilled in me.

Now, how to plan the lesson with these things in mind.

As my girlfriend is getting back from her summer trip I decided to get a little bit ahead of where I needed to be, so here are my last few blog posts.

For the optimum experience, please listen to this song while reading this post. We don't need another hero

Post 9: Chapter 8: lesson planning

            In the book “Multiple Voices, Multiple texts.” After having established that the way students should be learning is by creating an area of intrigue for them. By tapping into the curiosity and allowing them to dictate (at least in part) what they are learning and how they are learning the book gives a framework for which they feel lessons should be planned. It is a pretty basic framework. They feel that you should pre-assess what the students know, what the vocabulary they have as well as what precious information they are able to carry with them into the reading. After that then you get them to read and learn what you have intended. After they have learned those things then you are to have a post reading activity, this is to solidify what they have learned but also to exposed any gaps in the learning that the students have had.

As with previous chapters, the authors want to focus on the higher levels of blooms taxonomy, mainly with analysis and synthesizing information and ideas from what they have learned. The book is quick to point out that it is a must to get to know what the students already know. If you are able to tap into what they already know, and prime the fire of learning then the students will be quicker to understand new material, see the value in what they are being taught, and will naturally retain more information and be more likely to draw on their previous knowledge and use that knowledge to inform future understanding. How often have I heard my students say, when am I going to use this ever? And to be able to show this to students will help them to understand that there is a reason they are learning and a reason that they are reading and that it is to do them well in the future.

This chapter was quite long and provided a lot of practical ways in which to structure a lesson plan and also to help it in information a unit plan or even a curriculum map. For the purpose of this blog I will focus on one activity that they suggest will aid in helping students to access previous information and use it to inform their thinking about what they are learning. To most people in the education arena this should not be news to  you, the use of the KWL, as introduced by Donna Ogle in 1986. The KWL stands for Know, want to know, and learned.  It is a simple process in which you are consciously asking students to tell what they already know of a previous topic, idea, theme, historical event, then it asks them to make a list of the things that they want to know, it is priming them and piquing their interest into a topic that they may know a bit about but want to know more. This step is very helpful in getting students to show what they are interested in. It also helps them to think more about what they already know and what types of questions they should be asking and what types of information they should be looking for in order to answer those questions. Then, the last part, they fill in what they learned, it is helpful to show them the progression of learning, the parts of what we know, what we seek to know, and what we end up finding out.

I have used this method a few times in class but with such a clear presentation on how to use this method I think I will use it more in the future. If, for nothing else, it helps to inform me the kinds of things students want to learn. If students read a book and want to know bout the foods eaten during that time, or the type of dress, I can find supplemental material to help students dig deeper into what they are learning and create a fuller picture of what is happening.

Divergent reading, or reading "Divergent"

As  my girlfriend has been out of town for the whole summer and is returning this week I am getting things done in time for her to get here so Enjoy my last few posts in quick succession. 

For the optimum experience, listen to this song while reading this post: Turn Turn Turn

Post 8: Chapter 7 divergent reading.

To this point, the book “Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts,” has been in a fight to convince the reader that the traditional method of teaching where the teacher asks a question and the student responds, to having the students all read the same things, do the same vocabulary by wrote memorization, are wrong. In fact the book wants students to be the center of learning; that a collaborative community of learners is not only a great way to diversify the learning experience but the best way to teach students.

            It the seventh chapter of the book the authors provide a lot of strategies to reach this out come in the classroom. The previous chapter talked a lot about the method in which teachers should analyze a students abilities so as to teach them in the most effective manner. The seventh chapter gives strategies on how to make that happen. This book was written in the late 1990’s and as such it is a little bit behind the times. They talk about bloom’s taxonomy as if it were on the outside of the education process whereas my undergraduate and the PD days that I have participated in have focuses on Bloom’s Taxonomy as it were church. The book talks about how important this taxonomy is to the students and how it is meant to allow the students to take an active role in their learning. The idea that a student vocabulary is important is not lost on the authors, however, they also show that the traditional way of having students go to a dictionary and memorize the words and their meanings is not the most effective way to help students learn more. They suggest a few methods that will aid in vocabulary building and retention. The thing I liked the most was to provide new words for students to learn and then provide a framework in which those new vocabulary words are part of. If a teacher wants students to retain the vocabulary words for the structure of a cell, instead of giving them the words and having them find the definitions they can create an activity where the students have to actively seek out the words and use them in the situation that makes most sense and as they synthesize information they will retain the information better.

            My favorite part of the chapter was when Dornan ET AL. were talking about the three levels of questions that will aid in students being able to reach the upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, The first is the literal level, these are the first level questions that most people see on a multiple choice test. They test how much info the student gained about the summary of the story. The second level is the interpretive (of comprehensive level) this is where the students try to understand what the deeper meaning is, what the author intends to say.  Question that appear like : Would the author agree with the current situation in politics…” “What do you thin the author would have to say about….” Do these facts imply that…” the reason for this second level of questions is to help students to understand what is really happening below the surface. The third and final level of question is the applied (or evaluative) level where students take the interpretive level and then place themselves in the situation they are able to link what they already know to what is happening around them. It is at this level that they make a judgment call about what is happening and whether they agree or disagree. I think this is a great idea because when a person is able to fully understand an argument thy are able to understand where they are in that argument and if they agree or disagree means that they are less likely to forget the lesson.

            All in all this chapter was very nice to see how to approach this type of learning and gives some practical methods to aid in the creation of questions and the selection of reading material to best reach the students.

Constant assesment of students abilities

For best results listen to this song while you are reading this post: The impossible dream



Post 7:

Chapter Six takes what was said in chapter 5 and now it says that this is how you are able to assess the students and their abilities within the classroom. They suggest that this step be taken before you assign things to students. That you must understand their abilities prior to picking what they should be writing and writing. I think that this is a hard thing to ask of teachers. To find a quick and easy way to know what they students are capable of. I think that previous information and understanding is important but with our education system students are pushed through with so many different teachers, writing styles and previous exposure that for me to assume that all of my 11^th graders read Romeo and Juliet in the 9^th grade and Macbeth in the 10^th grade so I can make references to those plays is a fallacy and it will harm my students because my assumption makes them feel like they are already behind because they don’t know something.

            While I do not completely agree with everything that is being said, any book that takes 20 pages to go over how standardized testing has its flaws and how they can be political, situations, racial, or just plain poorly written is in my good graces. Instead the authors want to focus on more than standardized testing, they want to gauge student abilities in reading writing which is good but from there they want the teachers to also find gauge the abilities of the students in their subject and also the interest the have in the subject. I love this part of the book; they want to make sure that students want to be in the class, that they are able to be in the class. If I know what types of things my students like to read about I can bring in books about them. With the craze for werewolves and vampires I can work with that. Students who want to talk about the oppression of a people I can work with. My students are huge into super heroes I can cater an entire unit on the idea of a hero and what makes a hero. Bring in traditional ideas of heroes with traditional books of what a hero is. I can talk about "the Odyssey" or the "Iliad" and juxtapose that with the "Don Quixote" and other anti heroes we can even watch the movie "Birdman" and talk about how the world sees heroes and how they see themselves. I can create a multi-genre project based just on how happy heroes make my kids. If my students want to talk about skin walkers we can talk about the lore of the tribes her and do a compare and contrast piece on the lore of different indigenous people from around the world. Talk about the similarities and differences. Read books that cover things like that.

            The authors mention a few ways to gain this information from informal questions, to surveys, to reading assignments, and grades. They also point out that this is something that needs to be going on CONSTANTLY, that as teachers, we should be finding out what our students abilities wants and needs are so that we can adjust to them and make them work for us. I really liked this chapter and am excited to use some of these methods in my own classroom approach.

Selecting text for your classroom

For optimum experience please listen to this song while you read :Both Sides Now

Post 6: Selecting texts for your classroom

            In the fifth chapter of the book “Multiple Voices, Multiple Texts” the focus is now on how to pick that will help the students to learn, to grow, to assess previous knowledge, to build for future knowledge, to entertain, and not to alienate. It has to do a lot of things and the authors know that there are many factors that need to be taken into account when picking a text. This is the first chapter that I have not heard them talk about traditional phonemic teaching and how bad it is for the students, I guess 70 pages in and 5 chapters later they feel like their point has been made.

            The authors are quick to point out that the face of “literature” as we know it is changing. They talked about being able to use movies and clips in a classroom and how they can be great supplementary texts and in some instances a primary source for students in the classroom. I agree with this concept completely, students do not read as much as they used to and as sad as that is I think that we can use film to bring students back to the idea that reading and writing can be helpful. I want to do a screen writing portion for my students and help them to see that writing theme, plot, setting, characterization is as important in a movie as it can be in the books they read.

            And though this book was written in the 90’s it talks a lot about the changing climate of education and the culture of the classroom and how diversity is ever increasing and that the traditional majority is becoming the minority. I teach In Gallup and this is especially true. The authors talked about how a text needs to be relevant to the students that they need to have it in their lives and in their understanding and it needs to be a part of who they are. A bunch or rich dead white people have less to say to them personally than a Native American author who struggled where they struggled and found a way to add to the conversation of authors. So, by using texts that are near and dear to them with ideas and landmarks that they can not only visualize in the pages of a book but they have seen them for themselves. A book about the grandeur of the Grand Canyon can only do so much, whereas if they have walked angels landing and enjoyed the majesty of it they will be that much more likely to give it a chance. And, if they are anything like me, when you give a book a chance it usually draws me in.

            The authors want to point out that textbooks have their places and especially modern textbooks that have taken all the research into account can give a lot to the students. But they talk about all the things that aren’t book, the movies, the music of the age, the artwork around them. I have my students do a unit project that is a multi genre project. They pick a few possibilities from a list of about 10 things in order to respond to the unit question. They can take a picture, paint something, compose a song, a poem, and write a traditional essay, a political speech, among other things. The book talks about how making the student creates information in a myriad of ways can be helpful to their learning and their growing. Find a way to take what they know and show that they have learned with doing things they know how to do.

Read out loud in my classroom

For the most enjoyable experience please listen to the following song while reading this post. Letter Read

Post 5 Influence of language and literacy development and the teaching of reading.

It was quite a long title chapter for quite a long chapter (about as long as the previous 3 chapters combined). That being said, it was also the most fascinating chapter for me. After the authors get in their customary jab at the traditional phonemic way of teaching reading the get into a lot ideas about how readers organically begin to learn to read and write. How early readers take letters or symbols that they recognize, the M on the McDonalds, the Coca-Cola symbol, and they affix meaning to them. The M may mean hamburgers or chicken nuggets, but it may also reference to a letter in a child’s name. The authors of “Multiple voices, multiple texts.” Are arguing that the natural way for a person to learn is in imitation. In fact, they take a lot of time in this chapter talking about dialects of students and how there is no real ‘standard’ way of speaking and that students follow not only the syntax of the area that they are in but also the patterns of words that they are in as well. This does not mean that a student is less smart than others. In Boston, for instance, a teacher will not correct a student who reads the word yard, as ‘yahd’ but in classes outside of the Boston area a teacher may correct that word. Studies found that this is detrimental to students and in fact, a student who is allowed to, at least partially, use their dialect that they are better readers and perform better on reading tests. There was a lot of discussion in the book about dialect and how it affects the classroom but to in order to make this synapsis short enough I am going to skip to the part I thought was most interesting:

How should I correct my students in the classroom? I am an English teacher, my philosophy is that student who read and writes more do better on reading and writing tests. I ask all of my students to read aloud and I am in the practice of correcting students when they make a mistake whilst reading. These are not dialectic mistakes but instead mistakes that are mispronouncing a word, and this book, which I really like the book, has challenged me in this thinking. In that I wonder at how much I am going to correct my students in all of the areas. The book does say that if a students reading of a word changes the meaning of what is being said than a correction can be made but that it is no necessary otherwise to correct the student and may actually do more harm than good.

            I think that in the future I am going to do my best to do some research on how my population of students (predominately Native American) respond to different types of reading. Studies have shown that some Native American population students need a less structured form of classroom discourse than the teacher led traditional model and I think that this may be the way I want to go. I guess it means I will have to bite my tongue when a student says “Anyways.”

Who is in Charge?

Post 4: Who is in charge.

For the optimal experience please listen to the following song while reading the blog: End Boss

            In this chapter the authors make another thinly veiled attempt to provide a bipartisan approach to reading. The behaviorist (who thinks that syntax, phonics, and the minutia of words matters most) is pitted against the psychoanalytical approach to reading. The authors ask this simple question at the beginning, “Who is in charge?” Is it the author who wrote the words and put them in a particular pattern and with particular vocabulary and syntax. Or is it the reader who is in charge. The reader, that takes the words and creates meaning within themselves based on previous information and experiences.

            If you have been following this blog, or if you have been reading this book then  you know that the author is steering (ironically) the reader into thinking that the reader is more powerful. They use fancy terms like: reader prediction, schema, Social Constructivist, and others to try and make the point that the author provides a framework in which the reader should take all the ideas experiences and previous knowledge that they have and to create meaning from it. In the conclusion the authors point out that students should use what they read to become active participants in the synthesis of information. That they should create meaning from the ideas presented before them. To critically analyze what is being said and most importantly how they feel about it. If they agree of if they don’t agree.  

            As a reader I feel that this is absolutely true. When I am interested in a book or in a topic I am much more likely to delve deep into the book and the meaning. My discussions are much more lively and I feel more strongly about how I feel and, especially, how I feel that way. The book does make concessions that people need to know the basis rules of the language. For instance, in the English langue they need to know the structure of a sentence, how the parts of speech fit together and how to sound out words and combine them to create meaning. They just feel that to focus only on what they words are and how they put together is not as important as the interpretation.  During my Undergraduate studies in English I took a poetry-writing course, and I was always amazed at the meaning that others were able to find in something I had said. Mostly I liked it because they always made me sound so smart and thoughtful. But it did teach me a few things, principle among them, was that the meaning of the author takes a back seat to the meaning that the reader assigns to it.

            When asked the question by the authors, “who is in charge?” I agree whole-heartedly that it is the reader who is in charge. From opening the book and deciding to read the book that puts them in charge, if you take my previous experiences with similar texts it changes how I see things. If I had not already formed an opinion about the two main methods of teaching writing I may not be so apt to agree with this book. We are the sum of our parts and the whole of us is greater than the parts themselves. Reading is no different.