MET Tagging

In the last video I tagged, the entire class hour was teacher centered. This was particularly frustrating because the teacher seemed unconcerned with the high number of disengaged students in the class. She spent a lot of time either going through a powerpoint or lecturing. Many of her students were completely tuned out and didn't seem to care about what they were learning. It was incredible to watch her continue to "teach" 20, 30, 40 minutes without asking questions to prompt the kids or get them more engaged. She seemed content with simply talking at them, and since there were no real behavior problems, the students remained complacent.

It was pretty clear that the teacher seemed more focused on finishing her planned lesson than having students engaged or actively participating in what they were learning. One thing I continued to find frustrating, was that the students all had their class textbooks sitting in the upper left hand corner of their desks. It was obvious that they had been instructed to keep the book there. All I kept wondering, was why the teacher cared more about the proper placement of textbooks on a desk than students learning in her class. Overall, I was unimpressed with the lesson's topic, execution and engagement. I would like to believe that after an hour long lecture, her students absorbed something. Otherwise, it was a complete waste of their time.

GENERAL RESOURCES BLOG

Hi everyone!

As Morgan suggested in class last week, here is a blog post so that we can share various resources with each other.  Hopefully, by the end of the semester we'll have a nice long list of entries in response to this post with lots of great resources that we can use.  Below are my first contributions:

Common Core Creation Tool
Click on the link above to create customizable rubrics that incorporate the common core.

Education Portal
Click on the link above for great (and short) introductory videos on a variety of subject matter including biographical videos on authors, literary movements, grammar, and writing.  Just type what you're looking for in the search bar at the top right of the page.

Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything
Click on the link above for a multitude of resources.  Kathy Schrock is an educational technologist that has complied a ton of helpful information and links on everything education, not just technology. 

Lit2go
The link above contains out of copyright works by a variety of authors, along with images and pretty decent audio-books that you can play for your students in class.  

Ch. 6 of Smagorinsky: Refining the Unit Focus

After reading Chapter 6 of Smagorinsky, I gathered a couple of assignment ideas that I could use for my upcoming unit on Lazarillo de Tormes. The first idea is student-generated discussions. Smagorinsky discusses dividing students up into small groups, with each group being responsible for leading a discussion of two chapters of a novel. Each group spends a class period discussing its chapter(s). In order for students to lead a fruitful discussion, they have to learn how to ask open-ended questions that elicit thought-provoking responses. I like this idea for a couple of reasons. First, it lends itself well to the structure of the novel that I will be teaching. A picaresque novel is divided into different sections with each section telling a story of an encounter between the protagonist and a new master who represents a particular type of person in Spanish society at the time. Therefore, there is a different critique of a figure in society within each section. If each of the groups got one of the seven sections on which to lead a discussion, then they would be responsible for developing an in-depth understanding of that section in order to come up with the type of questions that lead to a meaningful discussion. As Smagorinsky points out, I would have to teach my students how to come up with this type of question because this is not how lessons are normally structured in school. However, I think that this type of assignment would encourage higher-order thinking in both the group that makes the questions and the rest of the class that has to discuss them. In addition, this type of activity would force my students to speak about literature and ideas in Spanish, which requires different vocabulary and a more formal way of speaking. These students do not have much practice with speaking Spanish in this setting because they are used to only speaking it at home and with their friends.

In addition to suggesting student-generated discussions, Smagorinsky also mentions the value of requiring students to do a multimedia project as a culminating assignment for a unit. Lazarillo de Tormes is written in difficult language, and I know many of my students will struggle as they attempt to interpret what is happening throughout the novella. However, the events and themes of the novella are very entertaining and relatable, so I think that a multimedia project such as writing and performing a script would help the content of the novella to come alive to my students. Smagorinsky points out that sometimes the most unmotivated and least successful students spend a lot of time and put a lot of effort into a project like this one, especially when the end result is a performance. Again, the structure of this novella lends itself nicely to a culminating multimedia project. There are seven sections that are largely independent of one another and correspond to the protagonist’s interaction with a particular master. Each section is action-packed, so students would be able to easily act out the events. This assignment would help students to visualize what happens in the section, which would enhance their comprehension. In addition, each scene is open to interpretation, so students would be able to get creative with how they represent the scene. Both of these assignment ideas that Smagorinsky discusses in Chapter 6 ask students to think critically and interact deeply with the text, which is why I think that they are effective ideas to implement while teaching a novel.

Smagorinsky Chapter 6: Refining the Unit Focus

I found the reading assignment for this chapter (p. 140-146) a bit frustrating.  Smagorinsky suggests creating goals for a unit in which the teacher has assigned an overarching concept.  He then defines in-process texts and activities & culminating texts and activities as two types of assessments.  Next, he provides examples of two different in-process goals: response logs and student-centered discussion. 

Neither of these in-process assessments are new information to me and Smagorinsky does acknowledge that these types of assessments have been around for quite some time.  What I was hoping to gain from this reading, however, was more specific information on how to determine what goals I should establish for a unit and how to reach the assigned goals once I have chosen them.  Unfortunately, he does not break down the process of thought for how to choose goals for a unit.  He doesn't even really explain what different types of goals a teacher could employ.  Instead, he reviews the three types of overarching concepts from a previous chapter (theme, stance, and strategy) and launches into the two different types of assessments he suggests for his example unit on negotiating themes.  In the creation of my unit plan, I am left with the thought that I should employ one of these in-process goals, but I am not really sure why or what other choices I have in the matter.

Furthermore,  Smagorinsky's descriptions of the in-process assessments lacks sufficient explanation.  For example, the reading log contains directions for the teacher to provide to students, but does not clarify these directions.  The directions indicate that students are required to give a personal response to the passage as well as a personal evaluation of the passage.  What is the difference?  What criteria should students to use in their evaluation of the passage?  How do I clarify this to my students when they inevitably ask me this question?  Surely, they will ask, but Smagorinsky has not provided an answer.  Also, before starting students on a response log, teaching a mini-lesson on open-ended questions versus closed questions is crucial, but Smagorinsky offers no guidance on crafting such a lesson in this chapter.  In his explanation of the second in-process goal, student-generated discussions, there is again a lack of elaboration on how to guide students into generating their own questions for discussion, how to teach them to ask open-ended questions, and what teaching responsibilities to assign oneself.  He mentions that some of this information is addressed in chapter 9, but I'm left to wonder why these explanations would not be provided at the introduction of these concepts.

I also have issue with the terminology Smagorinsky uses because I find it a bit confusing.  Isn't the "goal" of these activities to help students develop confidence in analyzing literature and develop a tool for learning different way of thinking about literature?   If so, then why are "in process texts and activities" referred to as a goal when in reality they are a means to achieve that goal, a strategy, an activity, a method.

MET project; Smagorinsky Chapter 6

The MET video I was responsible for tagging this week was much different than any of the other MET videos I have tagged thus far. Specifically, the teaching style I observed was very distinct, but not one that I am unfamiliar with or have never experienced as a student. The teacher in the video seemed more focused on harshly disciplining the students for minor disruptions and the like rather than actually teaching the day’s material. Although I understand that each classroom must function in its own nature based on the makeup of the class, I could not help but think that this disciplinary style of teaching only would make the students want to act out more. The teacher was less interested in hearing what the students had to say as she was in making sure they were saying it at the “appropriate volume level,” and at one point she took a female student outside to give her a pretty hard time about having to sign out of class early for a personal, family reason! I know that discipline is important in any classroom, but I did not agree with some of the ways in which this specific teacher went about it.

As for this week’s readings, I really enjoyed reading Smagorinsky’s Chapter 6 on Refining the Unit Focus. I think this is primarily due to the fact that so much of what we are learning in this class about teaching is new to me, so I sincerely appreciate all of the knowledge I can gain from all of our reading materials. I found Smagorinsky’s reminder that for any course the teacher should have a limited set of overarching concepts to be useful in preparing to compose my first lesson because, at this point in the course, I definitely need to limit my own confusion of the subject matter and to stay focused on the goals I want my students to work toward over the course of a unit. Smaorinsky’s distinction between “in-process texts and activities” and “culminating texts ad activities” was also helpful in thinking about how my first lesson draft should differ from the first draft of my culminating assessment, and also how I can incorporate in-process texts into my lessons. I believe this will contribute to my students’ ability to produce satisfying culminating texts and activities. Finally, I would really like to use Smagorinsky’s suggestion and discussion of student-generated discussions in one of the lessons I draft for this course. I see classroom discussion as one of the most vital aspects of learning, and a related kind of assignment would be to teach students how to generate heir own questions for whole-class discussions of literature.

Whitney Kouvaris 

Draper et. al, Reflection on Literacy in the Content Areas

According to Draper and Siebert, “when literacy advocates have pushed for content area teachers to use reading strategies in their classes, many teachers claim they lack the time and expertise to teach reading and writing, and that such teaching should be left to the language arts teachers.” The first two chapters from Draper and Siebert were enlightening. I am the 8^th grade reading and language arts teacher, at my school, students are reading 3-5 years below grade level. My biggest frustration has been the instruction in content area courses. The content area textbooks are grade level texts, written in academic language far above the comprehension level of my students. Additionally, content area teachers are provided little data on their students reading levels. Furthermore, content area teachers receive very little training in reading strategies that would help our students comprehend the grade level text. My students reading far below grade level, struggle the most in their content area classes because they cannot comprehend the text, making it harder for them to grasp concepts. Additionally, this makes content level FCAT exams impossible for non-proficient students.

I have always advocated for the use of reading strategies in content level courses. In previous years at my school I have shared reading data with the content level teachers, explaining the correlation between reading proficiency and success in content level courses. I have even shared a few strategies that I thought would be helpful. However, after reading Draper and Siebert chapter 1 and 2 it is clear that my students need for me to do much more than just share a few reading strategies. Literacy teachers and content area teachers need to collaborate. Each discipline needs to value the strength of the other. The teachers need to create aims together and have a shared focus.  Also, content area teachers need training in how to infuse these strategies, rather than to just be given a list with no modeling or training in how to use them. Literacy teachers and content areas have the same goal, educating our students, and doing our best to produce productive successful members of society, in order to do so we must come together to figure out the best way to do so. This is essential in a school that has a large population of struggling readers. 

MET Project: Significance of One Occurrence

The second MET project video that I tagged was a seventh grade Language Arts class, and during the class, the teacher discussed the importance of reading about the author of a book before reading the book itself. In this case, students were reading about and discussing the life of Lois Lowry before they read The Giver. After observing the students’ interest in talking about and relating to her life, I saw that providing this background information to students could be a valuable investment tool before diving into reading a novel with them.

For example, the class read about how Lois Lowry grew up in a military family and was constantly moving around. The teacher took the opportunity to have students make text-to-self connections with this information. Students who were from military families shared their experiences of moving frequently and discussed how it had helped shape who they are. Students were actively engaged in this discussion, and because of the connections they made, they seemed to enjoy reading about Lois Lowry’s life and how it influenced her writing. I have learned that it is very important to start readings, especially long ones, with a hook that grabs students’ attention and makes them want to know more. Getting students to relate to an author is an effective way for them to realize that they are not just reading words on a page, but rather a story that is personally influenced by someone’s experiences.
In my Spanish for Spanish Speakers class, we are about to start reading the novella Lazarillo de Tormes. While the author is anonymous, the novel takes place during Spain’s Golden Age when there was a rigid class structure that determined people’s identities. I hope to introduce this background information and have students discuss how this may influence the life of the novel’s protagonist, who is from the lower class and has limited options for survival. In this way, students will become more familiar with the protagonist and the world in which he lives, which will hopefully interest them more in reading the book.