In my Civics and US History classes we talk a lot about individuals and what they did in the past. To take discussions beyond the mundane of who, what, where, when, etc. I often try to have discussions about what the person was thinking and why. I'm really big into making my students always have a WHY.
During these discussions I tried to point out that people do not just do things mindlessly (most of the time at least) and that there is a reason or motivation behind everything.
We then had a reading in which i connected this to thinking about what you are reading and we discussed as we went what made sense, what did not and tried to construct meaning through our discussion.
I think this worked pretty well mainly because it breaks up the rote learning of people in history and allows students to take an active role in creating history for themselves.
Bryce-----Also a good way to extend the perspective and thinking of the students as they look at historical people is to have them write a journal or diary from the person's perspective. They can also explain why they wrote the words as they did based on evidence of learning.
FROM DIMA...... I decided to inform my students about Tovani’s findings on reading comprehension. Similarly to Tovani, I discussed with them ways of identifying, and eventually resolving, confusion. Many students were not aware of the dynamics described in the book, and were especially fascinated with the idea that a human brain can read text while thinking about something completely insubstantial to the subject. I tried incorporating the “marking exercise” with the “double sided journal,” since I can’t allow my students to write in the novels, but I can easily have them record confusion / excitement. I split the journal in to 2 sides, and marked the left with a “?” and the right with an “!.” Accordingly, students recorded confusion (with p#) on the left, and excitement on the right. After a class wide reflective discussion, over 50% of the students admitted to easily identifying confusion and about a third of the class admitted to easily solving the confusion without wasting much time.
I did the underlining the sections that you understand and those that confuse you in different colors. I just did two different colored pencils. I did this in my honors class, which meant that I definitely did not have the behavioral problems I did when I tried the first activity in a mixed freshmen/sophomore class.
I explained to the students that they had expressed confusion on previous reading assignments so this one they got to use the two colors to indicate where they were confused. They all really enjoyed it, they jumped on the idea of having that tangible thing to do while reading. I definitely did not get the complaints I normally receive when assigning reading.
Some students complained that they would have no problems understanding all the text, these students were usually the first to ask me what some word meant. Instead of telling them, I told them to underline it and we would go over all of it.
At the end of the activity we went over each of the paragraphs, paying particular attention to the parts they were confused on.
The bell rang before we could really discuss the idea of having the conversation with yourself, and how to figure out if they were confused or not. But I am definitely going to continue this next class. I definitely feel I grab this group of students more with the idea of being more productive while reading because the are in a lot of honors class. And since it went so well in there, it kind of gave me the courage to try it in one of my other classes as well.
I am always going to do the two colored pencils when reading as well in this class. It really made the discussion afterwards go really smoothly. Instead of just asking "Does anyone have any thoughts?" I could ask really specific questions. "Who was confused in the first paragraph?" "Who wasn't confused?" "Can anyone explain what was going on in that paragraph?"
I think since it broke down the reading for me as well as the students I did not feel as overwhelmed trying to discuss all of it at once.
After giving out a pre-test to my geometry students, they began working feverishly. As I walked around I noticed many students plugging numbers into a generic form that wasn't quite right. I asked why they were plugging the numbers into the spots they chose and they could only reply with something along the lines of, "I don't know, it sort of looks like an example we did."
After giving out the answers so the students could see that they missed the majority of the problems, I asked them why they didn't ask for help. A student told me they didn't know they were doing it wrong since they did it the same way as the examples. I asked this student if he stopped to think if his answer seemed reasonable; he didn't.
This lead me into a nice discussion on monitoring our own thinking and always checking to see if our answers make sense. It is fine to be confused, but you have to recognize that you are confused. It appeared most students thought it was my job to do the thinking for them. I explained that this was not possible and even if it was would not be beneficial. Some students seemed to take what I was saying to heart and made them question my role as a teacher. As this year is winding down, I don't think I'll have time to train my current students to monitor their own thinking but it will be one of my main goals for the next year.
MEET this Thursday from 3-4 at the ROE library (bring your items to turn in) Read chps. 1 & 2 then post comments from 3/2-3/6 Read Chp. 3 and try one item from the "What Works" section (p.33-34) ----put comments from3/12-14 Chp.4 and try "What Works"---put comments from 3/19-22 Chp.5 and "What Works"...put comments from 3/28-30 Chp. 6 and "What Works"--put comments from 4/4-7 Chapters 7, 8, and 9----comments from 4/21-25
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Check out the video worth watching on Teacher tube with a teacher modeling a Think Aloud. Just go to http://www.teachertube.com/ and go to the second tab marked "Videos" and use the search function to type "Introduction to Think Aloud" and you'll find one!
In my Civics and US History classes we talk a lot about individuals and what they did in the past. To take discussions beyond the mundane of who, what, where, when, etc. I often try to have discussions about what the person was thinking and why. I'm really big into making my students always have a WHY.
ReplyDeleteDuring these discussions I tried to point out that people do not just do things mindlessly (most of the time at least) and that there is a reason or motivation behind everything.
We then had a reading in which i connected this to thinking about what you are reading and we discussed as we went what made sense, what did not and tried to construct meaning through our discussion.
I think this worked pretty well mainly because it breaks up the rote learning of people in history and allows students to take an active role in creating history for themselves.
Bryce-----Also a good way to extend the perspective and thinking of the students as they look at historical people is to have them write a journal or diary from the person's perspective. They can also explain why they wrote the words as they did based on evidence of learning.
ReplyDeleteFROM DIMA......
ReplyDeleteI decided to inform my students about Tovani’s findings on reading comprehension. Similarly to Tovani, I discussed with them ways of identifying, and eventually resolving, confusion. Many students were not aware of the dynamics described in the book, and were especially fascinated with the idea that a human brain can read text while thinking about something completely insubstantial to the subject. I tried incorporating the “marking exercise” with the “double sided journal,” since I can’t allow my students to write in the novels, but I can easily have them record confusion / excitement. I split the journal in to 2 sides, and marked the left with a “?” and the right with an “!.” Accordingly, students recorded confusion (with p#) on the left, and excitement on the right. After a class wide reflective discussion, over 50% of the students admitted to easily identifying confusion and about a third of the class admitted to easily solving the confusion without wasting much time.
I did the underlining the sections that you understand and those that confuse you in different colors. I just did two different colored pencils. I did this in my honors class, which meant that I definitely did not have the behavioral problems I did when I tried the first activity in a mixed freshmen/sophomore class.
ReplyDeleteI explained to the students that they had expressed confusion on previous reading assignments so this one they got to use the two colors to indicate where they were confused. They all really enjoyed it, they jumped on the idea of having that tangible thing to do while reading. I definitely did not get the complaints I normally receive when assigning reading.
Some students complained that they would have no problems understanding all the text, these students were usually the first to ask me what some word meant. Instead of telling them, I told them to underline it and we would go over all of it.
At the end of the activity we went over each of the paragraphs, paying particular attention to the parts they were confused on.
The bell rang before we could really discuss the idea of having the conversation with yourself, and how to figure out if they were confused or not. But I am definitely going to continue this next class. I definitely feel I grab this group of students more with the idea of being more productive while reading because the are in a lot of honors class. And since it went so well in there, it kind of gave me the courage to try it in one of my other classes as well.
I am always going to do the two colored pencils when reading as well in this class. It really made the discussion afterwards go really smoothly. Instead of just asking "Does anyone have any thoughts?" I could ask really specific questions. "Who was confused in the first paragraph?" "Who wasn't confused?" "Can anyone explain what was going on in that paragraph?"
I think since it broke down the reading for me as well as the students I did not feel as overwhelmed trying to discuss all of it at once.
After giving out a pre-test to my geometry students, they began working feverishly. As I walked around I noticed many students plugging numbers into a generic form that wasn't quite right. I asked why they were plugging the numbers into the spots they chose and they could only reply with something along the lines of, "I don't know, it sort of looks like an example we did."
ReplyDeleteAfter giving out the answers so the students could see that they missed the majority of the problems, I asked them why they didn't ask for help. A student told me they didn't know they were doing it wrong since they did it the same way as the examples. I asked this student if he stopped to think if his answer seemed reasonable; he didn't.
This lead me into a nice discussion on monitoring our own thinking and always checking to see if our answers make sense. It is fine to be confused, but you have to recognize that you are confused. It appeared most students thought it was my job to do the thinking for them. I explained that this was not possible and even if it was would not be beneficial. Some students seemed to take what I was saying to heart and made them question my role as a teacher. As this year is winding down, I don't think I'll have time to train my current students to monitor their own thinking but it will be one of my main goals for the next year.