Post Reading Strategy - Mind Map

Tovani Chapter 5 – “Why Am I Reading This?"

During Reading Strategy - Text Coding

Tovani Chapter 6 - "Holding Thinking To Remember and Reuse"

Text coding is a quick way for students to become conscious of and to record mental responses to their reading. (Daniels & Zemelman, "Subjects Matter")

Here is my personalized version of text codes, along with two sample pages from Tovani:

Pre-Reading Strategy - Anticipation Guide

Tovani Chapter 5 – “Why Am I Reading This?"

1) Pretend you are asking your students the following questions:

- Have you ever been assigned a reading, and before you even started, you were asking yourself “Why am I reading this?” or “Why do we have to read this?”

- Have you ever started reading something and wondered “Why am I reading this?” or “What does THIS have to do with any part of my real life?”

What do you think their answers would be?

2) When you assign your students a reading, do you have difficulty deciding what the instructional focus should be? In other words, what is their purpose for the reading?

3) When you begin a reading for yourself, do you know your purpose? Do you have an unconscious, unstated purpose?

4) What do you think happens when your students don’t have a purpose for their reading?

Tangerine - Part 1

Part 1 of Tangerine was WILD! Was this a dream come true? – the earth opened up and swallowed Paul’s classroom! This was the ULTIMATE snow day, snow week, and snow month rolled into one!

Now of course we are all dedicated and passionate learners, and we wouldn’t really hope that our school would fall into a hole, and we know it would be expensive, and we wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt, but….

Tangerine IS weirder than it looks, and smells, and sounds, and feels. I can smell the muck fires burning, I can see the thunderstorms building, I can hear the earth opening up, I can feel the sorrow of the Costellos when they lose their son. I can also feel the hope for a new start that Paul feels when he sees the opportunity to leave the strangeness of Lake Windsor Middle School, and his IEP, behind him for Tangerine Middle.

I made two moves when I was a kid. The first one was when I was in first grade, and the way I felt is still with me. Everyone was new, I was nerdy, I was picked on. I still remember one kid, named Bobby, who used to pick a fight with me every day as soon as we crossed the street on the way home. I still get that sick feeling in my stomach when I think about it, and that first move happened in 1964.

I think Paul has his Bobby, or I had my Erik. The person you hated to see, but you knew he wouldn’t go away. He would be there every day waiting to make himself feel better by making you feel worse. The crazy thing is I ended up having Bobby for a friend several years later, but what happened after that I don’t recall. I made another move to a new school in seventh grade and maybe he disappeared from my life then.

Paul Fisher is going to get a new start, on his own terms, at Tangerine Middle.

One Week Left

OK, now I feel like I'm not getting my money's worth. Two more snow days brings the total to four, and with the earlier days off - six exam days plus a holiday, I've missed over two full weeks of experience.

The unit I had planned on probability is well behind where I wanted to be at this point - we've only had 6 classes and I had hoped to be well into permutations and combinations.

I've done a few things as preparation for the permutation and combination material, and relating it to playing blackjack. I assigned a short reading describing the rules of blackjack, and a reflection that asks for the rules was also a part of the assignment. Also, last week we used about 45 total minutes of class time to watch an episode of the CBS show "NUMB3RS", in this case an episode based on a blackjack card counting ring. In the final week of class I hope to leverage that background and use a simple strategy and support it by calculating the probability of winning with it.

The grades on the first quiz were not encouraging, especially since most of this basic material is common sense. A total of 16 out of 34 students managed a 6 out of 9 or greater. On Friday, they corrected their quizzes, and a retest is required for those with less than 6. This provides an additional opportunity to demonstrate their learning. I've also set up 3 lunch hours that will act as problem solving sessions and the students must attend 2 out of 3 to be eligible for credit in this unit.

The resistance to doing anything over the winter break was fierce. Two short readings, and an associated written assignment for each, both intended to fill in some of the gaps regarding probabilities. One reading was about the chances of winning the lottery, and how those odds are calculated. The other reading was a good explanation of permutations and combinations. I hope they will take a shot at some slef-directed learning for these topics - there are only 3 classes left, and I'll have to use at least part of one for another quiz.

There were quite a few students out on Friday - not surprising, after two more snow days and a vacation coming up. Three students also skipped the afternoon class, and Larry notified their advisors.

66%

This was a tough week, even with 2 snow days. I had two observations from my supervising teacher from SJFC, Wednesday and Friday. Things went reasonably well, but the classroom management side of things went to heck in a handbasket. Or at least partway to heck.

Last week I had desks in rows, and the students were quiet as mice. My thinking was putting the desks back in groups wouldn't be a major problem. In retrospect, I should have gone more than one class with desks in rows to establish more of a pattern of good behavior. Friday was the worst, and I must have said "please no talking", "please no personal conservations", or variations thereof 100 times. For now, the desks go back in rows. They would be that way for Monday's quiz anyway, but I'll keep them that way at least through Wednesday. From Wong's First Days of School:

"Students must sit in such a way as to accomplish what you want them to accomplish"

The observation comments by my SJFC supervisor and by my SBE were honest and constructive, and include a number of tips to reduce the chance of similar management issues in future classes. I'll admit that Friday was probably the first class where I felt some level of frustration with the kids. One in particular was frustrated with the basic level of the material, even though she had missed 2 out of the 4 classes so far. I haven't received any homework or other submissions from this student, so tomorrow's quiz will be an indication whether she gets it like she thinks.

The last class of the week had a few highlights, in that a student who on Wednesday was almost asking for 1:1 tutoring during class time made a leap of understanding. This particular student made a point of saying "I'm getting this". I won't go into a sappy "this makes it all worthwhile", but it did help cap off the week on a better note.

Losing the 2 snow days have forced me to change the plan for the literacy strategy review targeting the probability reading. I've decided I am going to put together a packet illustrating a thinkaloud, with bubbles embedded on the page as examples of "what good readers do". Also, some additional material about this particular strategy, and a reflection assignment.

More About Morals

Following up on the teacher theft issue, I sent a message to Dan, the SWW principal, asking if there was any feedback from other teachers but he had none so far. I did get some great ideas and feedback from my current literacy teacher Dr. Jacobs, and from Dan. The feedback was directed at putting together some lessons for assessing where the students are in their moral development. I decided I need to do a little more research and thinking about this before I get into a class discussion. There are details about the moral development theories of Kohlberg and Gilligan that I'll need to get straight in order to present the best learning experience to the students.

A Balanced Diet

My reading diet has reasonable balance, but usually tends toward progressive politics, driven by the ever expanding disasters in the Middle East and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

However, back home in the world of math and science, I have my own example similar to the exiting storyline that was developed for the book E=MC2, as described in D&Z chapter 4.

One of my favorite books, which I have read at least 3 times since it was published in 1986, is by Richard Rhodes and is titled The Making of The Atomic Bomb. It is non-fiction, supported by hundreds of notes and references, but describes the exciting story of the history of modern physics. As you might expect, the excerpt from D&Z describing Lise Meitner's breakthrough thinking regarding atomic fission is also described in Rhodes' book, although more extensively but with similar passion.

The reading prompted me to pull out this book off the shelf and quote MY favorite part, which begins the book.

In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. A trace of rain had fallen during the night; Tuesday, September 12, 1933, dawned cool, humid, and dull. Drizzling rain would begin again in early afternoon. When Szilard told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think. In any case another destination intervened. The stoplight changed to green. Szilard stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street, time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woe, the shape of things to come.

And the book then leaves you hanging by shifting to Szilard's background and what brought him to that morning's walk. We don't find out for several hundred pages that what Szilard saw in his mind's eye as he crossed the street was the notion of an atomic chain reaction. It was this leap that led directly to the development of nuclear fission and atomic weaponry.

This text has nearly 800 pages of exciting but accurate descriptions of many scenes related to mathematics and physics, and would be a great source of excerpts for secondary level classes.

SNOW DAY!!!

I KNEW there was a reason I wanted to be a teacher!!!!!

An Interesting Week 3

I'll add more later about the actual teaching experiences from this past week, but first I need to vent about something else that is more important . There was a theft from a teacher's purse on Wednesday - someone went into an unlocked auxiliary classroom and took $75 intended for child care. The amount and the intended use for the money is inconsequential, the violation was in the act itself.

The theft was announced in Thursday's staff meeting, and the reaction of Dan and the staff was interesting. It was clear that things like this are a rare event at SWW, and there was universal disappointment that a SWW student would commit such an act. Dan suggested that all of the extended class teachers bring this incident up on Friday and get student reaction. And that is where the real story begins.

This incident was brought up in Friday's class, and my personal reaction to the students' response was nothing short of shock. Here's why:

• Let's call the victim Mrs. N. Some of the initial comments were "since it was Mrs. N, she didn't deserve it, but if it was Mrs. C, well then that would be different, I wouldn't care at all." The difference here is that an unpopular teacher deserved it.
• What if it was a larger amount of money, say $750 instead of $75? Students indicated then it would have been a bigger deal, and they would have considered it more of a crime.
• When polled about whether they would report any information about this crime if they had it, the nearly unanimous (maybe unanimous, hard to tell) was that they WOULD NOT! Let me repeat - ALL or almost all students stated they would NOT REPORT ANY INFORMATION ABOUT A THEFT IN THEIR SCHOOL!

A short discussion followed, centered around "snitching", the famously urban characterization of providing information about a crime or criminal behavior. Most students apparently truly believe that being a snitch is a bad thing, and whatever moral code they are following or have been taught apparently ignores any moral absolutes in their behavior for this case.

Factors like peer pressure were not accounted for in this fully open poll, as students were asked to raise their hand if they would provide information about this incident if they had any. Perhaps a private, anonymous vote would have different results - I hope so. I briefly mentioned to the class that what we just saw was a perfect example fo moral relativism - changing your morals based on the particular circumstances. We then went on to other class business for the day. I have been thinking abaout this since that class, and it needs to be revisited.