SED 407 Reading Response: Daniels & Zemelman ‘Subjects Matter’ Chapter 12

This last chapter is a good summary of important things to keep in mind as a teacher dedicated to helping students develop literacy skills. I want to keep this entire list as a quick reference when I am teaching to remind me what is most important about helping my students develop the skills of good readers and thinkers (and it’s good to know this stuff is backed by research). But rather than relist all of D&Z’s important points, I’ll talk about one that really stands out for me – the idea that “a sense of personal purpose is key to reading success.” Personal purpose can be extrinsically or intrinsically motivated, but as D&Z point out, “it is the intrinsic motivations that lead to greater learning in high school subject areas.” When I read this I thought how important teachers are in sparking and maintaining intrinsic motivation in students. Intrinsic motivation can develop and thrive in engaging, relevant, and rich learning environments in which students feel like a valued part of a community of learners that supports their growth and exploration. When students are encouraged to question and debate, when reading is a social activity, students can take ownership of the learning experience and find motivation in the learning itself. (I drafted this paragraph before reading D&Z’s conclusion paragraphs, but this gets at what they are saying in the last paragraph – those final two paragraphs pack a good punch in terms of getting to the big ideas of this book.)

Also just a note on the skills of good readers. As D&Z point out, good readers visualize what they read and make deep connections with the text. They say, “In contrast, those who don’t read well experience none of these things, and simply do not recognize that they are possible.” Even though we have talked many times about how the strategies we as experienced readers use when we read do not come naturally and were at one point taught to us, when I read this it was still surprising to me – goes to such just how much I take my reading skills for granted. I am so grateful to be a good reader and I want my students to experience the benefits of good reading skills as well – so I am glad to have identified those internalized skills and been exposed to strategies for teaching them. As D&Z point out, “bad readers” think that “good readers” read effortlessly with natural born skill – I want to breaking down that wall and give all students access to the power of good reading.

SED 407 Reading Response: Daniels & Zemelman ‘Subjects Matter’ Chapter 11

 

When reading about the importance of creating supportive relationships as a strategy for helping struggling readers, I was reminded of our class discussion of “the gremlin” (after listening to the Radiolab piece on the “Obama Effect”). The gremlin is that voice inside us that speaks loudly when we are challenged, telling us that we aren’t good enough or smart enough. The gremlin believes that we will fail and its voice is so distracting that we actually end up failing, proving the gremlin right and making it stronger. But the gremlin is wrong – and once we learn to talk back to it, to quiet or silence it, we can free ourselves from its damaging effects. For students who struggle with reading, the voice of the gremlin is loud. It may be so loud and have gone unchallenged for so long that they have given up. As teachers, the first thing we can do to help struggling readers is to help them recognize that the gremlin actually exists. The gremlin may have had control for so long that the students can’t separate it from their own voice. Recognizing the gremlin as something that can be changed is the first step. Next, we can teach students to talk back to the gremlin. This involves two things. First, we must be a counter-voice to the gremlin, telling students that we believe in their ability to learn and succeed. We have to approach our students with a growth mindset and be understanding of where they are coming from. As D&Z say, students need to know that “they’re in a safe place where they won’t suffer further hurt if they don’t succeed on the first attempt.” Next, we must set students up to succeed by using strategies like those mentioned by D&Z in this chapter an others.

SED 407 Reading Response: Daniels & Zemelman ‘Subjects Matter’ Chapters 9 & 10

D&Z present two more excellent structures for learning in these chapters: content-area book clubs and inquiry units. I definitely see the benefits of both and plan to use them in my future classes – but before I get into the details, a note on time. As I was reading, I made a mental note that I wanted to avoid going down the “These strategies are great but there’s no time for them due to curriculum demands and high-stakes testing!” path. I am a pre-service teacher with little understanding yet of how I will experience time in my future classroom, but there is definitely a gremlin in the back of my head screaming about how I won’t be able to teach the way I want to teach, the way I believe is good teaching. It’s easy to get stuck on the idea – but what a terrible starting place. I believe that in order to meet my responsibilities as a teacher and provide meaningful learning experiences for my students, I must make time for strategies such as book clubs and inquiry units. As D&Z say, “the effect [of such strategies] on students’ approach to learning and reading is just too large and too important” to not be doing such projects. To return to my response to chapter 6, making time for meaningful experiences means to “do less better”, to prioritize the curriculum in order to go deeper into fewer topics. (It’s interesting that D&Z note that this is what the NGSS suggest … the NGSS seem a bit overwhelming in terms of how much they cover – but they do emphasize cross cutting concepts and scientific practices…) Again, the idea is to engage students in real learning, to help them connect to the content and build transferable literacy skills – while a strategy such as a book club may not be teaching to the test, I think the benefits should carry over into test results. And anyway, as D&Z note the Common Core and NGSS are “desperately pleading” for students to be doing this kind of work (although maybe the tests are still not testing for it). So, don’t worry about time, just teach well.

We have looked at the use of content-area book clubs or literature circles in MLED 330 this semester and I am definitely sold on the idea. In science, I can see using literature circles with challenging primary source texts, biographies of scientists or historical texts about important scientific discoveries, and content-relevant fiction (such as the two books I read in my MLED 330 literature circles: The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages and The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly). I did a quick Google search for “literature circles in science classes” and found that there are many teachers doing this and sharing resources and lesson plans. This teacher blends the structure of a literature circle with the process of keeping a scientific notebook. Some of the roles given to students in this strategy are similar to traditional literature circle roles, but others are tailored to scientific literacy, such as the Inquiry Organizer whose role is to provide prompts for each part of the notebook (such as the hypothesis, materials, procedure, etc). As this other science teacher using literature circles says, “As adults, we know that scientists read all the time. In fact, scientific journals are the major way that scientific knowledge is spread. It is important for students to learn to read and interpret scientific knowledge as well. Literature circles are one relatively simple way to help students learn to read challenging articles and advance their scientific knowledge and excitement about the topic.” I appreciate this quote because I don’t think people realize that reading – and talking to other scientists about what you’ve read – is a huge part of science. Even if all my students don’t become scientists (I’ve almost accepted the fact that not all of them will ;)), I want my students to be scientifically literate citizens, to be able to read about science in the news, to have discussions with their family and friends about scientific issues, and to make scientifically informed decisions in the voting booth.

A few points that D&Z make about literature circles stick out for me. Role sheets should be used as “brief initial training” – the idea is that students are practicing specific strategies used by good readers individually so that ultimately they will be able to apply all these strategies more naturally when they read. D&Z point out that if role sheets are overused they “can swiftly morph into stultifying and mechanical make-work”, counteracting one of the greatest benefits of book circles, the development of a love of reading. I also really appreciate the guidance D&Z give on assessment of literature circles (most of which can be applied to inquiry projects too). I especially like the four part essay they describe on page 253 that asks students to reflect on the process as well as demonstrate knowledge they gained from the book – compared to a traditional book report, this essay is so much more valuable. I also really like the observation sheet they suggest teachers use as they observe students at work in their literature circles – I see the value of assessing students through such observations, but it’s good to have something to structure and document those observations.

I am a little confused by the concept of “backmapping” which D&Z discuss early on in chapter 10. It’s interesting incomparison to UbD – it almost seems like the opposite. With UbD, you begin with your desired results and then plan specific activities that will get you there. With backmapping, using the example D&Z use in the book, a project is planned and then the teacher works backwards to assign the standards the project addresses. Of course, this is only the opposite of UbD if you totally equate learning objectives with standards. In planning her inquiry project and all the activities that would be a part of it, the teacher used in the example likely started with her objectives and planned activities to meet them. I understand that standards are not the same as objectives, but there should be a relationship between the two, correct? Wouldn’t it be good to have an idea of the standards you want to address in mind as you are planning lessons? (Though the standards certainly should not limit your objectives.) I guess I am just confused as to what benefit D&Z see in backmapping. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

SED 407 Reading Response: Daniels & Zemelman ‘Subjects Matter’ Chapters 5 & 8

Once again D&Z have lots of good stuff to offer…

The wealth of strategies in chapter 5 is great, but before getting into those, it’s important not to overlook the idea of the gradual release of responsibility that D&Z state is the key to teaching the strategies. The “I do it, you watch; we do it together; you do it with my help; you do it alone” model reminded me of the “Main Idea; Example (I do); Group Practice (we do); Independent Practice (you do)” model of direct instruction we learned in SED 406. This model is tangible to me in the sense of a single lesson plan, the gradual release of responsibility over a class period. However, it’s interesting to think of the gradual release of responsibility over a more significant amount of time and spanning multiple lessons. I see the value in thinking of gradual release of responsibility at this scale, but it’s less obvious to me how this plays out in the classroom. It obviously requires a teacher being very tuned in to where her students are with particular skills. I found this brief overview of gradual release by Douglas Fisher, Professor of Language and Literacy Education at San Diego State University. Fisher says, “Importantly, the gradual release of responsibility model is not linear. Students move back and forth between each of the components as they master skills, strategies, and standards.” I find this idea of students moving between the components of gradual release helpful in visualizing the model in the classroom.

I can see using all of the strategies in chapter 5, depending on content and learning objectives – it’s comforting to have so many to work with. I think ‘Think-Alouds’ are great for modeling the thinking processes of a skilled reader and the way of thinking within a discipline and I agree that this is something a teacher should be doing on a regular basis. But as D&Z point out, despite how simple a strategy this is, it takes a lot of planning to do it well (though they do offer the variation of thinking-aloud with text you have never read before which is great too). Thinking-aloud is not a natural process, as so much of what skilled readers do when they read is subconscious – I think this is a strategy that will take some practice. There is more to it than there seems, so I am glad to have D&Z’s tips for doing it effectively

Reading workshops is another seemingly simple strategy that involves a lot more than just giving students time to read on their own. Minilessons, student journaling, one-on-one conferences, recording observations of student understanding, student sharing … these are all important to making sure that students are getting the most out of independent reading time. I think it’s interesting that D&Z refer to reading workshops as not only an instructional strategy but also as a “classroom management structure” (225). When reading workshops are done well, students are engaged, self-motivated, getting individual attention and differentiated support – I can see how this leads to a well-managed classroom in which meaningful learning can occur. I think this gets at the concern of making time for reading workshops as well. If students are engaged in independent reading in the content area, I think they will be more engaged in the content in general – so while reading workshops may take time, they support and deepen other instruction.

Here's a teacher who knows how to think aloud!

SED 407 Reading Response: Daniels & Zemelman ‘Subjects Matter’ Chapters 6 & 7

  

The picture above is from the office of the facilities manager where I used to work. He was an awesome guy – hard working, committed, and caring – he went above and beyond to care for the beautiful property at which we worked. But it was a huge property and there were many aspects to its management and I imagine at times the job was overwhelming. The note pictured above was pinned to a board in the facilities manager’s office – he had written it himself as a reminder that if he attempted to do everything, he wouldn’t be doing anything very well. Do fewer things, but do those things better.

I snapped a picture of this note because it spoke to me – “do less better” is an ideal I have been striving for my entire adult life, both personally and professionally. I thought of this picture as I was reading chapter 6 in D&Z – essentially “do less better” is what D&Z propose for textbook coverage and curriculum development. As they say, “teach a few things well and fully – and let some other stuff slide.” I love this idea – I think it is better teaching, leading to better learning, and it also relieves some of the pressure I imagine myself under when I become a teacher, pressure to cover a huge curriculum. But then I wonder, can I really get away with this? How much freedom will I have to let some stuff slide? I realize I keep asking essentially the same question and that it will depend on the climate of whatever school I end up at – but regardless of the expectations of the school I end up at, if I believe that “do less better” leads to better teaching and learning, then it is something I should fight for. Hopefully, if I am teaching well and my students are learning, this will be reflected in their assessment. As D&Z point out, textbook-based teaching isn’t leading to higher test scores – by superficially covering everything that might be on the test, students end up learning little. But, by doing less better – by helping students to uncover the reading (I love this idea of cover versus uncover), get at big ideas and “act upon them” – kids may actually do better on the tests even if they haven’t covered every little nugget of content. It’s encouraging that D&Z point out that tests are moving away from pure recall towards skills assessment, hopefully aligning better with “do less better” instruction.

Of course, doing less better requires prioritization. UbD, mentioned here by D&Z, offers a good filter for prioritization. I also like Isabel Beck’s three-tier vocabulary acquisition model – it’s a good lens to prevent getting hung up on those Tier 3 words that come across as so important in the textbook, but aren’t so crucial in terms of big ideas – the low utility terms. I think it’s especially easy for teachers and students to get hung up on these low utility words in science classes, so I am glad to have this model to help with that. I also appreciate that D&Z say “vocabulary work should be multimodal and multisensory.” Unfortunately, as a substitute teacher I see a lot of assignments where students are asked to simply copy definitions from the text, an activity they get nothing out of.  Sometimes they are asked to define new terms “in their own words”, but they are asked to do so when their only exposure to these terms has been reading the definition in the text – they haven’t played with, explored, or used the words, how can they be expected to define them in their own words, to have any ownership over them?

I appreciate the textbook activities D&Z offer in chapter 6 – I can see myself using all of them in moderation. I like how an activity like jigsawing creates an opportunity for students to “do” a subject, to act like real historians or scientists, making connections, sharing ideas, and building knowledge. 

I don’t have a ton to say about chapter 7 – there’s a lot of good stuff in this chapter …

know your students, respond to their interests – create a friendly classroom environment in which students feel safe to take risks – connect content to students’ lives – provide opportunities for students to work together and support each other and explicitly teach them skills for how to do so effectively – give students choices and responsibilities – foster self-esteem, character, and confidence – respect cultural differences – have high expectations – value communication with and between students – model the skills and behaviors of a passionate life-long learner

… all of which I think is very important despite my casual treatment of it here in this blog – but I don’t have much to add other than that I want to keep all this in mind when I teach. D&Z offer some good strategies about how to foster this kind of a classroom community which is refreshing because so often when I read about this stuff the message is simple “this is how it should be” without saying much about how to achieve it. I also like the perspective that D&Z offer that this classroom culture stuff is not just about making students feel good – it is important because it enables students to learn meaningfully and to develop a positive attitude towards learning. It shapes students’ roles as readers and learners, creators of knowledge – it gives personal value to learning beyond grades and pleasing a teacher.

SED 407 Reading Response: Strong ‘Designing Assignments and Rubrics’

I really love the simple yet powerful principles Strong offers for designing writing assignments – his list will be a good thing to keep handy, to check myself against lazy teaching. The CRAFT model is especially appealing – such a simple system for making assignments engaging and effective. Reading through the examples of CRAFT assignments, I was almost tempted to do a couple… how interesting would it be to pretend to be Hitler, writing a letter to Anne Frank in response to her diary? If I wasn’t so tired right now, maybe I’d give it a go. Certainly, this would be a more engaging assignment than to ask students to write this essay: “Diversity and discrimination are two major and related themes in this book. Where do these themes appear, and how do they work together to propel the plot of the book?” (Which I found here, along with several other painfully boring essay assignments.) The thought of writing that essay makes me want to cry… although, there was a time when I was writing essays like that all the time and could have whipped one up in a jiffy.

The CRAFT assignments seem like more fun for students to do (and would certainly be more fun for a teacher to read and grade) – I wonder though how most students would react to such assignments. Ideally, we imagine our students saying, “Oooo, this looks like a fun writing assignment that engages my interests, has personal relevance, invites critical thinking, and allows me to use my recently acquired knowledge in creative ways! Let me at it!” But for students who have lived through years of “Darth Vader” schooling, who can whip up a well-structured regurgitation of information in a jiffy as I once could, a CRAFT assignment is asking a lot of them. I imagine lots of groaning and eye rolling and confusion. This is not to say that we should give in to this resistance and resort to lazy essay assignments – in fact, it gives us all the more reason not to give in. Such assignments might make students uncomfortable, but that is the point – the challenge of writing in new and creative ways creates that cognitive dissonance that drives student learning. But I think it would be naïve to think that you could give an assignment like this to students who had never been asked to write in this way and expect them to take to it without some guidance and preparation. However, I think once they got the hang of it and saw how fun it can be, all those writing lasers would light up, fighting back the darkness. (Sorry guys, I’m really tired and I like that metaphor and wanted to sneak it in somehow.)

I had this idea for a CRAFT assignment where students take on the role of a mother cell, writing a letter for their daughter cells' baby scrap book about the day they were born ... "Next, during metaphase, all of my chromosomes lined up along my equater, coming together in one final embrace." ... OK, time for bed!

SED 407 Reading Response: Daniels & Zemelman ‘Subjects Matter’ Chapters 3 & 4

Sorry guys, I think this one is especially rambly..

Reading these chapters, I was trying to reflect on my experiences with textbooks in middle and high school. It’s been a long time, so I don’t quite remember, but I’m sure that textbooks were used pretty traditionally in most of my classes – I was certainly very familiar and comfortable with textbooks by the time I graduated high school. I do remember being exposed to and assigned other types of texts though. I especially remember one science teacher requiring us to read a science biography – I read the autobiography of the physicist Richard Feynman and I loved it. I was already confident that I wanted to pursue a career in science at that point, but reading this book stoked that flame in me. While this one reading assignment wasn’t a totally transformative experience in and of itself, I think it serves as an example of one of the many ways this teacher (one of my all-time favorite teachers) was able to broaden my view of science as a discipline. In addition to the biography assignment, he also required us to read and think about current scientific discoveries – we read about science in the news and he challenged us to tackle primary source research papers. It wasn’t just about what was in the textbook (though we did read the textbook too) – science also involved the stories of people and discoveries, science had a history and a life beyond the textbook that was daily evolving, science was something that I could be a part of. This teacher taught in a way, presented science in a way, that got me fired up in the way that D&Z talk about back in Chapter 1 as the wish all teachers have for their students – he helped me develop the passion of a life-long learner.

I feel like I’m getting a little off topic here… I am writing about this teacher because he was a teacher who used the textbook strategically and sparingly. He had respect for the textbook as a valuable reference, but he didn’t let the textbook dictate the curriculum or be the only voice of authority. And I had several teachers like this one, across disciplines. I wonder now if I was just lucky to have had a lot of great teachers or if my experience might be reflective of the fact that I was in school before (or at the very beginning of) the standards movement in education. (I graduated high school in 1997, it’s not entirely clear to me when the standards movement began, but I don’t think it was in full swing when I was in school). I can understand how these days schools and teachers, under the pressure of meeting standards and being sold the idea that a particular textbook is a sure shot for success, fall into the trap of letting textbooks dictate curriculum. Not that I approve of this situation, but I can understand why it happens – the pressure is great and the textbooks seem like an easy ticket. So I am glad that D&Z are getting this conversation going, presenting an alternative, reminding us of what should be common sense – that textbooks have value, but they are not enough on their own – that teachers need to be critical of the textbooks they have at their disposal, to use them sparingly and strategically, to supplement them with other kinds of texts – this is in the best interests of our students, this is good teaching. I want to be the kind of teacher that approaches the textbook in the way the D&Z propose, I want to assign biographies or even fiction in my science classes, to give my students opportunities to encounter all kinds of texts – but how much freedom will I have to do that? This will depend on what school I end up at. Going beyond the textbook takes extra time and money – but that is a challenge I can handle. But as D&Z point out, some schools dictate not only what textbook is to be used, but also how it will be used. I would not want to teach at such a school, but I also feel that such schools need reform and how will reform ever happen if teachers who care about reform always chose to teach elsewhere? This question comes up a lot for me and once again, I’ll just leave it hanging there…

I want to say a little about my personal relationship to textbooks. I guess this just goes to show how much of a nerd I am, but I kind of love a good textbook (“good” being the operative word here). Not that I often sit around reading them in my free time (though that has happened), but I enjoy reading textbooks. I have always been a keeper of textbooks, rarely selling them back at the end of a semester. I love having them to turn to when I need information. In college textbooks were central to most courses I took (there were even a couple courses that I pretty much taught myself from the textbook), and I realize that this has left me with a strong imprint of this model of a course being structured around a textbook. But while this is a model that I am familiar and comfortable with, I don’t want it to be how I approach teaching my own classroom. These chapters by D&Z are a good reminder that while textbooks can be a valuable resource, they should be used as a reference, not as a framework for curriculum or a book that students are expected to read from cover to cover. I think it’s important that we teach kids strategies for reading textbooks so that they are comfortable with them whenever they encounter them in their future. I also think it’s important for kids to respect textbooks for what they are (provided said textbooks are worthy of respect), while at the same time being critical of textbooks and understanding that there are many sources of information beyond textbooks.

These chapters bring up a lot of implications in terms of how I want to teach, which I will inelegantly summarize here:

• incorporate multiple types of text into my curriculum
• teach students the value of multiple sources and viewpoints – I love this quote from D&Z, “…it is unacceptable for schools in a democracy to teach young people that only one view is sufficient … We might think that students just need to learn the basics first and save the controversies for later – but too often, later never arrives.” I would add that it is also important that we expose students to the controversies so that we can teach them strategies for dealing with them.
• be a fact checker – keep up with developments in the content I teach so that I can bring it to my students attention if their textbook is incorrect or outdated
• keep a well-rounded classroom library – I am so excited about this and had actually already started an Amazon wishlist for books I would want in it
• strive for balance – in genres and types of texts used (fiction, nonfiction, classic, contemporary, primary, secondary, etc), in text level and length, in student/teacher choice of text, in “windows and mirrors”
• remember that readers do grow by reading “easy” material – students should have plenty of opportunities to read without struggle – but we should also challenge students to read at a higher level, while providing scaffolding for that challenge

D&Z note that a recent study shows that students preferred schoolbooks in paper over digital form. I was glad to read this, as a paper-preferrer myself. This got me thinking beyond preference to the implications of digital text on the learning experience. I am in no ways a luddite – I think technology can enrich the leaning experience in many ways – but I think we should be critical of the digital revolution. This article in Scientific American presents some interesting research on how reading on paper versus screen affects our brains and suggests there might be some cognitive advantages to good, old-fashioned book reading.

In addressing how teaching strictly to the textbook can lead to a focus on content-coverage in which the important big ideas of a discipline are lost, D&Z say, “It’s hard to make yourself put that textbook down and “teach less,” giving up so much time for one book, covering just one big idea.” D&Z propose that to do this, to teach more by “teaching less,” teachers should identify a few key concepts and link all teaching to these across the year (for example, a key concept in a history class could be “what it means to be an American”). This reminded me of the UbD concept of essential questions, ongoing inquiries leading to big ideas that “connect the dots of seemingly disconnected or disorderly content.” This idea of prioritizing the big ideas over the superficial coverage of every little thing in the textbook resonates with me – this is the kind of teacher I want to be – but again I wonder, how much freedom will I have to do this? 

A picture from David Macaulay's 'The Way We Work' - a book that I definitely want to include in my classroom library. Macaulay's books could almost be considered textbooks in that they present a lot of information - but they do so in such an engaging and beautiful way.