Hello again my lovely lady friends!
Please have your RR for this week posted by Tuesday April 12th at midnight. We are reading Chapter 3 (pgs. 63-90) this week. Our next meeting will be on Thursday April 14th.
The jobs for this week are as follows:
DD-Alex T.
Notetaker-Danielle
Connector-Jennifer
Summarizer-Lutvija
Tech-Alyx
Thanks so much and I will see all of you soon :)
Chapter three was really interesting to read because it highlighted the “instructional strategies and activities that have had the greatest impact on students’ extending and transferring history to their lives, their inquiry, and their views of the world” (64). It really caught my eye when I read “extending and transferring history” because it’s a topic that I’m always curious about and also something that I strive to do when I make lesson plans for microteaching/ demos.
ReplyDeleteThe most significant parts of this chapter were the examples for the outlines/story maps, mapping/webbing, and the acronyms. It was intriguing to see the various ways that I could help hone students skills in note-taking and also help students focus on what to write down, the big ideas, etc. The acronyms were my favorite because I think it’s so much easier to remember and I’m quite biased towards it because it’s how I learn effectively. R.E.A.P. is amazing activity for students to use because it helps students make a sequence of steps to follow in order to note important information and analyzing and questioning. In addition, SPAWN is another amazing example of a content writing strategy that gives students the ability to move beyond the “literal-level thinking” to the bigger picture. The example that was shown in the book was really creative and I’m surprised how creative and content based it is. I really thought that outlining and note-taking were straight forward activities but this really took it up a notch.
I felt that the chapter was really informative because it helped me realize how much I could tweak around certain activities to make it much more fun to do, or how creative I can get with strategies in order to help students get engaged with what they are reading/ writing about. By using these activities, students would be able to extend and transfer their content knowledge effectively with regular practices of inquiry, evaluation, decision-making, and action. Not only is it effective, but it’s also creatively done so that these strategies do not become “old school” like the KWL chart. These strategies are much more engaging, and even I feel self-motivated to do some of them.
Much emphasis was put on multiple perspectives in this chapter. I think that looking at historical events from more than one point of view is the most interesting part of history, and I think it allows for a variety of ways for us as teachers to engage our students. Our social studies methods class has put some emphasis on having students look at history from multiple perspectives. Some of my own classes here at Pace have required me to argue a position opposite than my own. I cannot recall having to do something like this during my secondary school education, but I think it would have been greatly beneficial. You fully understand something once you can look at it from a variety of points of view.
ReplyDeleteOne strategy I loved, and I would have loved doing as a student, was SPAWN. I thought this was such a clever and fun way of not only having students demonstrate their reading comprehension and get them to think critically, but it is engaging. It requires creativity as well as an understanding of the content. It’s clever, and I wish I could have had an activity like this growing up.
A couple of the strategies mentioned here I have seen at work during my field experience. One such strategy was RAFT, or Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. I have noticed through looking at some students’ notes that a few have written RAFT at the top f their pages. I do not know if this is something the teacher has to tell them to do or if he mentioned it once and some students have taken to using this strategy themselves. The students that do use it, I have noticed, are usually the ones who are more successful in grasping the content.
One strategy highlighted in this chapter that I didn’t like very much was REAP. While I was reading through it, it just struck me as something that would be difficult to get students to do. If you did manage to get students to read this way, I don’t think students would keep it up. I personally didn’t think this was an engaging strategy. It may help students internalize and determine what is important in a text, but as a student I would have absolutely hated doing this in a classroom.
I thought this chapter wrapped up a little too quickly. What I mean by that is it seemed to suddenly add on at the end the transfer of knowledge to testing. I would have thought that this could have been its own chapter, rather than something that felt stuck onto the end of this one. The author mentions that she would never sacrifice activities that would make history come alive for her students. She goes on to mention four things teachers should do to prepare their students for the test. I agree with all of her reasons; I just felt they could have been put somewhere else in this book.
There is one thing about this book that is starting to make my head spin…so many acronyms!
From the beginning of the semester in our TCH 430 course we were faced with defining ‘social studies’, and when we did so, we emphasized the need for historical thinking, ability to judge and analyze documents, text and other information, as well as an understanding of multiple perspectives. Professor Kava discusses the necessity for multiple perspectives in understanding history repeatedly in class. It is discussed at length in this chapter and just made Professor Kava’s ideas more evident. The importance of multiple perspectives is essential for true student understanding and a successful classroom experience. Providing students with various examples of historical sources in the classroom will promote analytical thinking as well as expand their historical understanding and content knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThere was a plethora of new strategies presented in this chapter. There were some that I liked that included a lot of interesting and engaging reading strategies; while there were also some that did not seem to fit my style. There was also a lot of incorporation of sources like readings, maps, stories, graphic organizers (note- taking), and more. I really did enjoy reading through the different strategy possibilities in this chapter, it seemed to really focus on how teachers can scaffold their students into better learning. I really did end up enjoying this chapter, even though it was a lot of reading, but it also provided so many great examples for the classroom.
Thank you guys for letting me know that my post wasn't showing up! Posting it now!...
ReplyDeleteFinally, a chapter with a heading that drew me in -- Making learning Meaningful! This is the core of what a prospective teacher needs to know, its definitely something I have always questioned and wondered about! There are so many great ideas in this textbook -- ideas that I have both seen and have never seen in use. One that I have never known of was called R.E.A.P. R-ead on your own. E -ncode the text by putting the gist of what you read in your own words. A- annotate the text by writing down the main ideas. P- onder what you read by thinking and talking with others in order to make personal connections. I think this is a great strategy to help students read HISTORY -- in a historical way rather than just reading to do a do now or find answers. With this strategy I believe teachers can help students become historical thinkers and create a deeper understanding of the material for the students. I will definitely be using this strategy in the future.
Another great thing about this chapter is that it didn't just talk about strategies but rather it showed it with diagrams and examples. I really appreciated this notion, because I always like to see things in action, or an example in case I want to make some adjustments for myself.
There is this diagram -- a fill in chart for students with the headings sources, factual information, reading between the lines, and questions! I think this is great thing to use, especially when studying wars and controversial events in history. The reading in between the lines is what caught my eye, simply because its something the history students need to develop when studying history -- they need to question everything and anything.
Another strategy I saw being used was R.A.F.T. I recently used this strategy for a Industrial Revolution project I created for our methods class. The project came out great! I gave students a role, they needed to identify their audience, they had a format they had to follow, and they knew that the time pertained to the 1800's for the debate that they would have in class. As a history student myself I know I would be very interested in doing this debate in class!
I hope that the future chapters are just like this -- because now I feel that this book is something to hold on to and use for many different things.
Danielle's Post:
ReplyDeleteThrougout reading this chapter my attention was particularly drawn to the examples of outlines, story maps, mapping, and webbing. I noticed this because in or TCH 430 class as well as in our TCH 412 class, we have been discussing the importance of incorporating different technologies and techniques. Specifically in our 430 class we learned about multiple websites that will enable us as teachers to extend and transfer history into their lives, inquiry and views of the world as the chapter says.
Acronyms were another important part of this chapter. We learned of Acronyms such as, REAP, SPAWN. Acronyms in and of themselves are great for memorization and helping kids to recognize and recall certain strategies. As a teacher they are very specific I would like them but should I use them I would break it down so that students simply use it as a guide rather than looking at it as an overwhelming guideline. Furthermore my favorite part of the chapter the emphasis on multiple perspectives and as Emily pointed out, I too feel it is the most important part of history. As historians it is important that we know that there are two sides to every story (perhaps more), and I feel that multiple perspectives it the key to making history exciting. Debates, court cases with role playing are all activities that enable to students to view an event in history while analyzing from different angles. This chapter was informative and effective because it reminded me that the more strategies and techniques is equipped to use the more prepared they are to cater to the needs of their students.
Sorry this is so late.. I just got back my computer from Jermaine.
ReplyDeleteLast time in our group discussion we talked about a few things...
One interesting topic that came up is when is using too many strategies become too much? we felt that it would become too much of a routine if we constantly used spawn, reap, raft and so forth. we addressed the issue that there are students who prefer to take notes rather than do exercise like the ones mentioned in chapter 3. we felt that we were going to need a balanced so that our students do not fall into a routine that they wont be able to remove themselves from in order to do other things in the classroom such as notes.
We believe that this chapter offered a lot more strategies that we are more willing to use. they also provided great examples on how to apply the strategies in the book. we believe that this chapter is the best chapter so far.
Summary!
Sorry again for the lateness.