Class 1 Readings

In both readings for this week , it is clear that specialists suggest that students not only inquire and do hands on work, but have the opportunity to talk about what they are working on and what they have just experienced. In Ready Set Science, they mention the strands of science and how important it is that all the strands interact, but rarely do. Similarly, in the Gunckel reading, she mentions how inquiry is good, but if there is no explanation to back up what just happened, the students are missing as much as if they hadn't done the hands on work at all.

Although I am just starting to observe Science everyday, I do know that my students have time to experience the lessons on there own. That being said, I'm not sure whether or not they have the opportunity to then explain what they have experienced and how they can replicate what happens in the classroom again in the outside world. I truly believe that not being able to see how science concepts transfer to life outside of the classroom means that the students are not understanding the concept completely. Seeing a two sided bouncy mall rotate around a yellow lamp is one way to show the moon revolving with the earth around the sun, but if the students don't see how the moon's phases change throughout the month, then they aren't making the transfer of information and therefore are not fluent in the information.

This is going to be a huge challenge for me. I see my students everyday so I should have time to work with them to make them become experts on the topics and be able to transfer the information from the class to the world, but I know that it requires a lot of reflection, and a lot of practice if the students are to be successful learners of science.

Class 1 Reading 2

Ready, Set, Science!: Putting Research to Work in K-8 Science Classrooms
Sarah Michaels, Andrew W. Shouse, Heidi A.

 

This chapter from "Ready, Set, Science" makes clear what is important in terms of science learning. Many of the stated strands in the article are not present in my classroom. Although not comforting, this article does state that some of the strands are often missing from classrooms, and this can be detrimental to students understanding of science. "Strand 4 is often completely overlooked by educators, yet research indicates that it is a critical component of science learning, particularly for students from populations that are underrepresented in science." (pg6) Students need to be involved science, not just learn about it. 

Unfortunately, students are "doing" very little science in my classroom, and only being told about it. Therefor strand 3 is also missing from the classroom. Strand 3 is explained in the article as bringing "the nature of science into practice, encouraging students to learn what it feels like to do science as well as to understand what the game of science is all about." (pg 5) Both strand 3 and 4 are imperative to student understanding and retention of scientific principals.

Class 1 Reading 1 - Story of Science

Using Experiences, Patterns, and Explanations to make School Science more like Scientists’ Science.
Kristin L. Gunckel

By teaching in a hand on museum, I had hoped to come into teaching this year with an inquiry based - explore, discover, experience - attitude. However, much to my dismay, the art of teaching science in schools is not what most would call exciting. "Traditional school science focuses on providing students with many facts, diagrams, definitions, and isolated skills." (pg4) This is not only boring for the students, and detrimental to their learning, but boring for the teachers themselves. Its hard to hold students accountable to learning material that teachers aren't even excited about teaching. A typical science classroom focuses on the explanations of science, without allowing students to observe the patterns and behaviors of science that lead up to the explanations. "By concentrating on explanations, students only learn the story of science." Students need more than just the story of science, they need to explore - discover - experience science for themselves in order to fully understand the story of science. This beings excitement into the classroom, not only for students but for the teachers as well.

Astronomy Resource

Conferring in the Writing Workshop - Joanne Hindley Salch and Marianne Marino

Conferring in the Writing Workshop

by Joanne Hindley Salch and Marianne Marino

including

The Writing Conference: Breaking the Silence
by Ralph Fletcher, Author/Consultant, Durham, New Hampshire

This article is about conferencing with our students, and the importance it holds in writers’ workshop. It includes guidelines such as respond first as a reader, ways in which to praise, short conferences, student involvement, etc. Another part of the article touches on the roles and responsibilities of teacher, with the focus on listening to our students – their thoughts, values, what they hold important. By showing genuine interest, students are more open to writing and sharing their feelings. To do this, teachers must LISTEN to what their students are saying, what they are writing, and how they are feeling.

I would love to be able to do this with my classroom. As of now, students hand in their work, and we return the work with comments on what was done well, what could be improved. I think adding in confronting would help students make great strides in their work, as they will be able to discuss with the teachers their thought processes. This could take place in a time slot within our writing period, with a few conferences a day, while still being able to conference with every student once a week.

To be able to do this, I will need to grow in my abilities to look at writing pieces with a “writer’s eye”. With doing this hopefully I can be more effective in advising my students in areas of weakness, while finding areas of strength to praise. This feedback will be essential to my student’s growth and development as a writer.

The unit that I am planning is writing, so this module was very helpful for me! Learning about writers workshop, in general, has been very helpful in thinking about my unit plan. This article that I chose to read was especially helpful as I have been planning on conferencing with my students during my unit. Not only did this give great advice on what to talk about during conferencing, but also the important roles teachers AND students play in this process. This is especially important as my students have not been conferencing and will need to learn their roles as well.

Martin, Elementary Text Discussion

I chose to read "Elementary Text Discussions" by Martin (2010) because I thought it reflected what I will be doing in my reading class. The article discussed quite thoroughly (for 32 pages) how important it is to engage students in text discussions even in elementary school settings. The author acknowledged that doing so in classrooms with young students may be a challenge, but it is necessary to their growth as learners, speakers, readers and writers. These discussions can include talking about thoughts, feelings and emotions of a text, a focus on text comprehension or classroom interactions around a common text. In these discussions it is the students responsibilty to talk and teach the text to their peers, highlight the important aspects of the text, and actively help interpreting the text.

Although I am not technically teaching writing this semester, I thought that I can use many of the overall themes the author discussed in this article in my reading classroom. My plan is to encourage as much "table talk" as possible, so that students get used to the idea of sharing their ideas and interpretations of a text. At this point in their classroom, the students rarely work in groups, and if they do, they do so individually but come up with a collective answer. My goal is slowly build the students up into doing group work so that eventually (maybe even next semester) discussion will be easy. I truly believe that a student cannot be a good writer without being a good reader and vice versa because to be able to understand how to write a good text, one must be able to understand a text to begin with. For this reason, I think the article although based mainly on writing practices was applicable to my future lessons.

In order for all my planned discussions to be successful I need to continue practicing my classroom management skills and come up with a technique (probably the same one I will use during math discussion) so that the students have consistent rules and expectations when it comes to their discussions. I hope to continue to learn these techniques that will make the idea of a discussion less daunting.

Clearly, based on the videos and articles, assessing the students in writing (and reading) requires ample methods. A teacher cannot judge a student based on one assignment just like they can't judge based on one discussion.

Book Club Plus

Writing and reading are two separate periods in the students’ schedule, and are not taken back-to-back. Writing has been focused on narrative pieces. The writing process has been stressed, aiding students to first develop ideas, then add details, sequencing, drafting, editing, and publishing. The ways in which my CT, and I teach writing resembles ways in which one should teach strategies. They are modeled for the students and give student ample opportunities to practice these strategies.

Reading, although seen throughout all subjects, is a separate period from writing. In reading, students do a 1-minute read aloud, where they are introduced to a new book every day. They are then asked to practice a skill ie) predicting, summarizing, etc. Students then move onto daily oral language (DOL). DOL is used to help work with vocabulary and grammar. After this the students do work with vocabulary. These works will all be similar in some way. ie) similar prefixes, suffixes, word families, etc. Students have personal books that they are reading checked out from the classroom library. These books are not picked based off of instructional levels or age appropriate material. Instead, children are allowed to pick any book off the shelf to read. Although this can make it difficult for students to help grow on their reading skills, it does allow students to enjoy reading.

Although I do not see much BCP in my students reading period, this will change as the year progresses. Once BASS testing is finished, students will be grouped in Book Club groups (with age-appropriate material) and also guided reading groups (instructional level material).

Communication in my classroom is pretty open. Although students are required to raise their hand before speaking, discussion flows fairly well through the classroom. Students are grouped together often to think their ideas out with partners (especially in math and science).  

Math Reading Reflections Questions

The Book Club Plus model is one that seems quite contrasting to what I see during Reading. On a typical day, the students are assigned an assessment/assignment and they are left to do it for their own day. The students sometimes (when assigned) get to talk to each other and discuss different questions related to the book, but most the time the work is individualized. That being said however, the class is divided by two books. The lessons usually differ based on what books are being read, but sometimes the two overlap. The differing book groups never engaged with each other and there is a strong separation between the classes. The students rarely write in their reading class, because they have a separate hour for writing, so that normally the reading and writing do not correspond to each other. Right now, the students are reading Animal Farm and My Louisiana Sky while writing poetry in writing class. I wish they were more aligned with each other, but I guess different classes, different standards, different teachers, different emphasis.

Both the reading and writing teachers use different standards to assess their students. The reading teacher uses the results of the NWEA/MAP test to gauge which content needs to be covered and which students are in each group. Contrarily, the writing teacher uses here own set of standards (I'm not 100% sure where hers come from) that don't always line up with the reading standards. Its sort of unfortunate because I don't think the students are aware of how interconnected the two subjects are...I wish they were able to incorporate them more.

I like how the Book Club Plus method encourages the teacher to use all kinds of materials to assess the students growth. It is impossible to gauge how much a student has learned through one activity. I plan on using multiple forms of assessment in both reading and math to get a good, thorough idea of where my students are coming from and where I want them to go.

Lets do this =)

Pre-Visit
Upon embarking on this project, my group and I asked our students (K, 3^rd grade, 6^th

grade) where they spend their time, where their parents shop, etc. We did this in hopes to find places that our students regularly surround themselves with. My group has chosen to visit a local restaurant, a hair salon, a farmers market, and a produce store.

I expect to see a diverse group of people in Hyde Park. I am expecting to see students, faculty and family from the University of Chicago, as its location is in the heart of Hyde Park. I also expect to see the culture from my school, shoesmith, present in Hyde Park. Shoesmith is a neighborhood school, so much of the student population live in the greater Hyde Park area. The culture at my school is mostly African-American, with a very small percentage Caucasian/Latino/etc.

I think that my views, being very limited as a Chicagoan and especially as Hyde Park resident, may be close to the same as an “outsider's” views may be. South side Chicago can be seen as a very dangerous, and scary place from an outsiders point of view. For Hyde Park, I know this is far from true. The area surrounding our school is beautiful, and seems to be a very friendly area. From what I have observed from my limited time being in the area, is that the community is very family friendly and open.

I think that depending on which location we visit, we will see a variety of literacies, including differences in oral language, and written and spoken language. For example, at Leonas, a restaurant, I expect to find formal communication, along with some sort of music in the background. I also expect to see mathematical aspects such as prices in a menu. This will most likely be the same for the Produce store, as formal communication is shared between the customer, the store, and the workers. I have never visited a farmers market before, but I expect to see very informal communication in language, oral and written literacy.


Post-Visit

This community experience has helped me learn much about the community in which my students have been raised. As noted earlier, I had the belief that our neighborhood was a very friendly, open, and diverse place and it was just that! The community that we walked through was friendlier than most places I had ever visited. The people on the streets all seemed to be happy, enjoying the company of those surrounding themselves. Even workers at stores waved happily from the inside as we peered inside the store from the streets.

This experience will help me in my teaching in many ways. Not only am I now more aware of the environment that my students are surrounded by on a daily basis, I am aware of the type of literacy's that the students are surrounded by. This will aide me in creating real world situations for the students to learn in, instead of questions and situations that they are not able to relate to. Students are not coming to our classrooms with a blank slate, they bring with them their own experiences, and understandings of the world around us. This experience allowed me to see a bit of what my students may bring to the classroom. Literacy is everywhere in this community, and is embedded into every part of life. Whether it be written or oral, literacy is a part of life for everyone and is diverse in its attributes. Children are seeing both formal and informal literacy in their surrounding community.

Week 2 online module task 2

Pre-tour


1) We are visiting a local barbershop that a teacher recommended we go see because it has been part of the community for “forever.” She mentioned that Obama gets his hair done there. Also, we will be visiting a YMCA in order to get a better idea of what the students are doing once school gets out.
2) I expect that the barbershop will be filled with mostly Black men. They will be talking loudly. Also, I hope there is one of those spin things that looks like a candy cane outside. As far as the YMCA, I hope the students have a place to get their work done and play with their friends. I’d also expect some sports to be played
3) I think an outsider would probably expect to see the same things I do but go into it with a completely different attitude. I used to work at the YMCA in Lansing and have certain expectations as far as what I expect the workers to be doing and helping the students with as far as their school work and such. For the barbershop, I think that is an experience that as an outsider we can only imagine from movies and pop culture. People have specific ideas and as “outsiders” its probably similar to what I have as someone from a different Chicago community
4) I anticipate that there will be a different oral literacy occurring in both settings. Because both the YMCA and the barber shop are more informal locations, I expect that the language will be much more cultural than standard. I’m almost positive that people in both settings will communicate differently than they would in a more formal school environment.

Post Tour

During the tour of the YMCA I overcame some of the biases (Working Alongside Families Powerpoint) and preconceived ideas I had before about parents and families. I have heard for so long that families in inner-city schools are often disengaged but being in a setting where students are set up to learn like the Y made it clear that the parents are in tune to what is safe and best for their children. By sending their children to the Y they are eliminating the chance for trouble to occur and allowing their children an opportunity to get started on their work. I think it's especially clear that these parents want their children to succeed because they place the students in an environment that is created for growth and established in order to help. By doing this, the students are set up for success and can get help on assignments and homework while there parents are at school. The after school program may be particularly helpful if the parents work late or are not completely confident with their own skills in terms of math and literacy. Placing them in a program with people who help them may provide the necessary enrichment that a child could be missing at home.

Being in the Y showed me how being literate involves all sort of characteristics. Students speak to each other differently in a setting outside of school but are at the Y in order to play and learn together. The parents clearly put their children there because it is a safe place to grow and learn and the school promotes the after school program for this same reason. When community establishments exist in a way that can only increase a student's productivity they are beneficial to all parties (students, parents and teachers) involved.