Blog #4

When reading Chapter 1 some things popped out to me. One thing that I thought was important was how in Ms. Johnson’s class she gave the students different ways to learn about the Titanic. If I had a teacher that explained things like she did, I believe I would have been able to understand them better. She taught her students in a variety of different languages and I thought that was awesome! You can teach your students by using different languages in every subject. As I kept reading it talked about a categorization system and said that this may be frustrating for students because an explicit definition may not be found in the body of text. This is exactly how I feel sometimes and I hate feeling frustrated because then I just want to stop reading all together. I loved reading this line from the text: reading comprehension does not simply happen through lots of reading; it is developed through activities designed to teach students about what good readers do. I am a hands on type of person so this definitely fits me. I hate reading anyways and this just proved that reading doesn’t always help comprehension. Another line I like from the text was that one of the most transportable teaching strategies is think-pair-share. I completely agree with this statement and I enjoy when we do this strategy in the classroom because it gives me an insight of what other peers are thinking about. As I read a statement in the text that said that reciprocal teaching was found to positively impact standardized testing on reading comprehension, I just wondered how long it took them to realize this and if they are trying to get teachers to really push reciprocal teaching? At the end of the chapter I loved this statement: it is not a program, a set of books, or a box of materials that creates a high-achieving school. It is always teachers who matter, and what they do that matters most. And a teacher’s ability to teach reflectively ensures continued professional growth. In chapter 8, I like how Mr. Hayden uses the information his students write to get to know what they understand about the topics and what the students may not understand completely. I like writing prompt known as RAFT. I think that would be a wonderful idea to use to incorporate writing. Also, incorporating math with writing to learn, I thought it was neat how Mr. Hayden uses Name That Math! for when his students come into the classroom everyday.

I really enjoyed the student think center this week. A lot of things she talked about I haven’t really thought about before. I think it would be a wonderful idea to have tables that you could write on and tear off like especially for like writing classes and math classes! I enjoyed how the atmosphere was so relaxing and comfortable. I just wonder what the exact reason for them designing the room like that was for?

Blog #3

I like how during the design thinking process you have to work in groups so that way it gives you a variety of different ideas, rather than just being a whole group. I believe that this is a great tool for enhancing learning because it gives the students a way of learning that they have never experienced before. This process would be great for English because it provides the students with different ways of writing. This could also be a great way to integrate a debate with different groups and whichever group won their prototype could be presented to experts. I think this would have been very interesting and fun to do when I was in school instead of always doing bookwork. I would have really enjoyed coming to that class. A question that I have would be: How would you find experts to present this prototype to?

It is crazy that teachers don’t model strategies for reading expository text. Also that comprehension instruction was seldom observed in grades 1-3 at a high performing school. I can’t believe that teachers didn’t explain how to read a science textbook and be able to learn the material. I found it interesting that when students were tested, the students that read magazines and experienced expository text, had higher averages than those students who didn’t read expository text. I wonder how long it took to do this research and find this kind of information to be true? As I was reading the text I came across this line that I felt was very important; the need to not only understand information but also evaluate it is a necessity in today’s world. This is very important to know because just because you understand something doesn’t mean that you really know what it’s talking about.