Week 3

In preparing to discuss Ruddell's chapters one and two, I remember a moment I had in week 2 where I realized I was going over material that I asked them to read in advance.  The book had been clear that this was a weak strategy for trusting that students had read the material.  If I was going over it, why did they need to read it?  So, this week I concentrated on activities that supported their readings. For me I felt like the class was a much more engaging than it had been the week before.  

One activity had students looking at cartoons to discuss schema.  The students analyzed the cartoons for what information their students might need to understand the cartoon.  The students were amazing in their work, coming up with clean and clear concepts that their own students would have to know.  

Another activity was to focus on perception and stance.  I emailed them a reading and asked them to take notes based on the reading and gave them a "lens" to look through.  I don't want to give too much away here, so let's just say that when they were presenting out, there was great confusion about why someone was choosing specific attributes.  Later they learned that they were all reading from a different lens.  It helped us understand why we can all be reading the same thing, but get different meaning from it.

We discussed upcoming work:  lesson plans, fact pyramids, and next weeks readings.  Big readings ahead.

Week 2

It was interesting for me to try frontloading our reading assignment for Chapter 4 (Buehl).  I sent in key vocabulary and questions for the students to answer.  I found that this group of students liked the questions the best, but there were a few who felt the vocabulary helped them the most.  Like all good teachers, it is probably best to use a mix when working with your class.  

We discussed a number of strategies, particularly metacognition, and I am learning from my students as much as I learned from the text.  These students are already very good at so many reading tasks.  What I am really enjoying are the blog posts.  If you want to see what students are capable of...give them a blog!  

Check out these posts:

http://mrswhitandwhimsy.blogspot.com/2015/11/horses-cows-and-students-oh-my.html

http://terrillstorytales.blogspot.com/2015/11/teaching-terrill-my-first-lesson-plan.html

http://terrillstorytales.blogspot.com/2015/11/toto-by-terrill-day-in-kansas.html

There are many more good ones, these blogs are just a sample of what's going on in Educ. 338.

Stay tuned for more information to follow.