Final Synthesis Blog

At the start of the semester, which was my very first semester in the Middle Grades Program, I was sort of confused and annoyed about having to take a literature class for my major. After all, my emphases are in mathematics and science…so why would a literature class be at all relevant to those subjects?

But I was greatly mistaken. Taking a course about Content Area Literacy is necessary for all content-area teacher candidates, not just those pursuing a language arts emphasis. I had always believed that math and science were very different, unrelated spheres than language arts or even social studies. So, for example, a student who excels in their math and science classes might be less advanced in their language arts courses, and vice versa. But this concept is a complete myth. Through this course, I learned that a student’s reading abilities affect their success in every content area, not just in their language arts class. Therefore, every teacher should be strengthening their students reading skills as well as teaching them strategies to make into better readers. Because after all, there’s some form of reading in every content area.

My primary emphasis is mathematics, so I tend to always refer to my future classroom as a math classroom. That being said, I’ve come to realize that reading is absolutely going to be a part of my math classroom; therefore, I’ve got to be prepared to address how to approach the math readings and make sense of them. The two main math texts that I have identified as the most challenging are textbooks and word problems.

Although I may not use it often, I will very likely have a math textbook set for my class, which presents challenges to every reader in the classroom, not just the struggling readers. As the National Council of Teachersof Mathematics explains in their article, Anticipation Guides: Reading forMathematics Understanding, math textbooks contain tons of precise symbols and unfamiliar vocabulary, longer and more complex sentence structure, and yet very little redundancy to help with interpretation. Also, math textbooks are often written at a level at least more than one grade level above the targeted students. So of course students are going to struggle to read math textbooks! As a teacher, I’ve got to prepare them to read this textbook language. Some strategies I could introduce to my students would be coding the text, annotating the text, multicolumn notes. In each of these, the students will be forced to more carefully read the texts and or/produce a guide for their comprehension. I also believe that thinking aloud a page out of the textbook myself would greatly benefit my students. When you model a strategy, the students have something to emulate.

But for struggling readers, the math text that is even more of a burden is word problems. Word problems expect students to make sense of a scenario made up of words, and then translate it into numbers and equations…but if students are struggling to read the words, how on earth could they possibly make sense of the math? Or, if they understand the math but not the context within the reading, then they have missed the point of the word problem. There are many reasons why students struggle to read and comprehend math word problems, but a lot of the reasons for difficulty are correlated with the types of struggling readers who are approaching the text. A student with Attention Deficit Disorder might be struggling to keep their attention on the long, wordy problem. A student who has anxiety about math may get very stressed and overwhelmed with the length and wordiness as well. A student who believes that he/she can speed read through the text may overlook the little details necessary for solving the problem correctly. And a student whose first language was not English may not recognize certain words, phrases, or situations due to the language barrier and/or cultural differences. For example, I found this really impactful video about an ELL Immersion student in a math class, shown from the perspective of this student:

As seen in this short video, an ELL student may comprehend the mathematics, but the word problem’s language (and even his teacher’s language) is barring him from success. In situations like these, I think the partner reading strategy could be so beneficial for my students. ELL students, or even other struggling reading students should be paired up to help one another, instead of having to struggle through on their own or with occasional help.

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Emily

P.S, Thanks for an awesome semester, Mr. Robinson! 

Subjects Matter Chapter 11 Response

While I was reading this chapter, I recalled an experience I had with helping struggling middle school readers. During my senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to participate in a Work-Based-Learning (WBL) program where I could get job training somewhere that interested me. I knew very early on that I wanted to become a teacher, so I used this WBL opportunity to volunteer half of my day working at my middle school along side an amazing English teacher. Mrs. Staudenmire’s class was no ordinary English class; it was actually a “connections” course called Language Arts Coaching in which students who were significantly falling behind in their Language Arts courses had to attend. They were a mix of “trouble-makers” and students with a wide range of learning disabilities, but regardless, they were precisely the struggling readers that this chapter identifies. 

Struggling readers be like ^

Each day, I’d come in and just walk around the room helping these kids individually with an online program that was aimed to improve their reading skills. Each kid had a different struggle, but all of them benefitted from the teacher’s and my genuine support and encouragement each day. I also saw that the students really benefited from myself modeling thoughtful reading and reading strategies. 

Me, modeling thoughtful reading & strategies

I remember one student, Chelsea, having difficulties with the reading passages with a time limit, followed by questions. She could never remember all of the information to answer the 10 questions and got so frustrated with herself every single day. On a side note, Chelsea also had chronic complex partial seizures (look this up!). I had to tell her: “Chelsea, there’s no way I’d remember all of that either! I absolutely take notes as I read.” Ever since I gave her my advice and modeled my note-taking process for her, she starting scoring better on her work and had so much more confidence in her abilities.

Chelsea, along with the rest of that splendid class, really showed me how struggling readers could be helped and encouraged. They’re one of the main reasons why I chose to teach! 

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Emily 

Subject Matters Chapter 10 Response

I actually really found this chapter to be very interesting and relevant to every content area, but especially in math and science. Inquiry is something that we talk a lot about in our science courses. When you think about it, science as a subject or field of study wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for inquiry. Scientists of the past, present, and future ask questions about the things occurring around them, do research on these topics, and then reach conclusions and share them with others. So, in our science courses, shouldn’t we be teaching our students in the same sort of manner? As mentioned in the chapter, as well as in our ESCI 4440 course, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) really places a heavy emphasis on student inquiry and investigation. By asking their own questions, doing meaningful research, and immersing themselves in new knowledge, our students are essentially scientists! So what better way to learn, understand, and appreciate science than by inquiry investigation?

But inquiry is also relevant in other content areas, like my primary content area mathematics. I really love the ideas discussed on page 262-263 about students having a curiosity about their parent’s incomes and expenses, and then performing budgeting plans using multiple sources such as the newspaper, IRS forms, and real bills. After calculating their expenses, students will come away with a better understanding about income and about how expensive today’s luxuries are! 

I think application activities like these are so much more impactful and memorable to students, especially when the students are the ones leading the inquiry and conversations. I really look to incorporate as many of these inquiry activities as possible when I am an educator someday.

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Emily 

Lit Circle Podcast: An Abundance of Katherines

Strategy Lesson (Multicolumn Notes) Reflection

Overall, I think that my Strategy Lesson presentation went really well! I think my PowerPoint was informative, yet not super long and boring. I know what it’s like to have to sit and watch a super boring PowerPoint, so I tried to throw in a few pop culture references and gifs here and there to keep everyone's attention.

Even Kylo Ren liked my presentation!

The most challenging part about my Strategy Lesson was trying to explain the many different variations of the strategy. The text defines multicolumn notes as being a 2-column system (one for summarizing, then one for reflecting), yet it also said that most teachers use 3 columns. On top of that, teachers have so many different ways to label and organize their multicolumn notes. But I think I ended up covering many of the variations pretty well, and made sure to mention ideas for each content area.

Me, when I realized I forgot to do the last column lol

Also, I think I demonstrated the multicolumn notes strategy pretty well. After spending hours trying to find a grade-level appropriate text for the strategy, I settled on a passage about the Water Cycle. I felt really confident that the multicolumn notes would be an effective during-reading strategy for this text, and it seemed to work out really well in class. If there’s anything I could improve on from my demonstration/modeling, I would have asked my classmates to show their notes from the reading under the document camera (like I did) so that we could have seen how everyone fills them out differently. Also, I made the mistake of skipping the “Reflections/Questions” Column during my modeling, so I had to improvise and do the questions and reflections at the end of the presentation instead. Next time, I would do them as I read like I was supposed to!



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Emily 

Synthesis 2

From the past few chapter of Subjects Matter, the topics that have stood out the most to me are student choice and building a classroom community. While things like textbooks, teaching/learning strategies, and content are all important things to we teachers, sometimes we neglect to think about the things that are important to our students. If everything single thing within our classroom is decided (dare I say dictated) by me, my students are likely going to have little interest and motivation to learn. By not allowing students to make any choices or work collaboratively with their peers, I’m silencing their pursuits of knowledge. As a teacher, my goal should be to give my students as many opportunities as I can to let them to express their choices, creativity, personality, and feelings. This can be as simple as letting students chose what book to read in their book clubs to allowing students to sit wherever they please during class.

Kathleen Ralf, teacher of Humanities & English at Frankfurt International School and also the Global Online Academy, details how to allow more student choice in the classroom in her Edutopia article, “5 Tips for Giving Students Choice That Leads to Student Voice.” Ralf believes students want to show us who they are and what they care about, we’ve just got to give them the freedom and support to do so. Ralf outlines 5 tips to help teachers promote this learning environment: scaffolding various types of projects throughout the semester; making the rubric and the requirements for the project explicit, yet open; give encouragement and support along the way; adjust, bend, and let it flow; and lastly, share their work with the world. I couldn’t agree more with her perspectives, and I truly think that if teachers could give away just little amounts of their control, their students would thrive in the newfound power and responsibility.

Lastly, I also found a super interesting video from Edutopia that discusses the effects of the classroom design and environment on student’s success and interest. The school in this video decided to encourage students to work collaboratively by making classrooms more open and comfortable. I absolutely love this concept. And it's clear that students love it too. 

            


361 (wow, sorry about that...)

Emily