Book Pitch : An Abundance of Katherines

Lexile Level : 890

Pages : 272

Grade Level : 6-8

Content Area : Math 
Awards : 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book, received recognition as one of American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults.

The book that I'd really like for you guys to chose for our book club is An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. Some of you may recognize the brilliant author, John Green, as he is also the author of the wildly popular novels Paper Towns and The Fault In Our Stars. In this other novel of his, a math-child-prodigy named Colin Singleton has a thing for girls named Katherine. The problem is, Katherines don't seem to have a thing for Colin. He's been dumped by 19 girls all sharing the name 'Katherine', spelled exactly the same way. Crazy, right? He thinks so too! So Colin decides to form "the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability," which is a theorem that will be able to predict the future of all of his relationships, transform him into a true genius, and finally win himself a girl! Love, friendship, and (apparently) a dead Astro-Hungarian archduke all add up to create this heart-warming story about reinventing oneself. This novel also incorporates several mathematical concepts and embodies the answer to the question: "when is math ever going to be relevant in real-life?" As a math-lover, this novel just seems really intriguing to me, and I would really love to read it within a book club. 

I think middle school students would also really enjoy this humorous novel, but to really test that, I actually asked some middle school students that I know for their opinons. I gave them a brief synopsis as well as read the first page to them.. and then they gave me their *honest* opinions about the book:




So please consider choosing my novel, An Abundance of Katherines by John Green... I promise you won't regret your choice! ;)

Emily 

Subjects Matter Chapter 9 Response

Chapter nine was dedicated to outlining how to hold the perfect Book Club. Book clubs can be a more entertaining way to get your students reading content-relevant texts of their choice. They’re also pretty cool in that they incorporate both collaborative learning and individual reading.

I’ve been in quite a few book clubs thought my school career, all of which took place in my language arts classes. I distinctly remember enjoying the book clubs that we had in my AP English class in my senior year. Because of the AP test, our goal for the class was to have as many classic novels and their main ideas, motifs, themes, etc. in our repertoires to be able to write about on the test. I recall our first clubs (there were only two clubs due to the small class) forming from our choice between reading either Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte or Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin. I’ll be honest here: neither of those was particularly appealing to me. But most of my friends chose Pride and Prejudice so I joined in. Each week, we’d have to read a few chapters or so and use sticky notes to mark imagery, foreshadowing, or other literary elements. Then, we’d hang out and discuss with our group members about what we read. I distinctly recall how my group, of all girls, would discuss the cute moments between Elizabeth and Darcy, and also our frustrations with Lydia’s immaturity. We’d also spend a long time trying to decipher some of the odd, old rhetoric.  

Darcy and Elizabeth are #goals for sure 

My only beef with book clubs is that I don’t understand how they could work in a non-language arts classroom. They could probably work in a social studies classroom, but I just don’t see how I’d be able to fit a book club in or make a book club relevant to my math or science classrooms. I'm hoping that our upcoming book clubs using content-area texts will help me figure that out. 

314

Emily 

Textbook Activity : Emily and Cierra

For our textbook activity, Cierra and I decided to make a flipped-classroom video for review over a specific unit and concept (Unit 5-5 : Adding Fractions).

Subjects Matter Chapter 8 Response

This chapter focused on the importance and practicality of classroom reading workshops and minilessons within any of our content areas. What grabbed my attention the most out of this chapter was reading about how web tools can be used for sharing, publishing, and responding to class readings (p.232). I found this topic to be very ironic; after I read about how to use technology to allow students to respond to class readings, I then turned around and performed this discipline of responding to what I read in this chapter on a class-made web blog. Talk about inception…

INCEPTION

Just like this section mentions, technology can be such a valuable tool in your lesson plans for minilessons and workshops. There are multiple cool websites available for students to use to facilitate discussions, make presentations (paperless!), as well as store their reading assignments in case the teacher doesn’t wish to print out articles all the time. I’ve actually seen a lot of these websites in practice at the middle school I’ve been observing in this semester. At Hilsman Middle School, each student has a personal laptop—from the One-to-One program—and their teachers take full advantage of them. Students use Edmodo to complete assignments and communicate with their teachers, as well as use Google Classroom for day-to-day and homework and class activities. With Google Classroom, they have the ability to collaborate with their peers on documents and projects, and the possibilities are endless when it comes to the different medias that can be used within the program. What’s great about these different technology platforms are that they’re much more interesting than writing a paper about what you read. With technology, students can make their responses and discussions really unique and incorporate all sorts of media to demonstrate what they learned and if they enjoyed it.

                    


So shout out to Mr. Robinson for practicing what this book preaches by having us blog our responses to our course readings!  

324

Emily 

Think Aloud Reflection

Me, doing my Think Aloud. 

Yesterday, I presented my Think Aloud to the class…and I believe that my presentation went fairly well! I was really nervous about presenting, but once I got up there and got going, I became much more comfortable. I chose to do a math worksheet, since math is my primary emphasis. After looking through several worksheets found from the GPS’s recommended resources, I settled on a 7^th grade proportion problem about building shelves of a bookcase. The worksheet involved a good amount of reading and interpreting, which I thought would be perfect for a Think Aloud.

Me, when I first saw this worksheet.

The only problem with my worksheet was its organization. It gave dimensions for objects, but didn’t clearly specify what was the length, width, or height. To solve this, I tried to explain to the class that we’d have to draw the objects in 3-D and attempt to makes sense of the dimensions by logic. The 9 inches matched, so they must both the length (from the wall); 1 inch must the height of the plank of wood, etc. Then, on the backside of the worksheet, it was a mess. The actual problem, which was a table, was located at the bottom of the page. But above it was poorly organized different pieces that fell into the table (i.e. lines on a graph, descriptions, and equations). To address this confusing organization, I made sure to tell the class “wow, ok this backside it a little confusing. Let’s make sense of it.”

Overall, I think I did pretty well. I received a lot of encouraging feedback! My favorite comment was that someone liked how I personified things (i.e. I call each line on the graph “him”). If there’s one thing I could improve on, it would be that this sort of worksheet was almost too long for a Think Aloud. Especially in a real classroom setting, I couldn’t think aloud this whole worksheet; the students would get bored and impatient!

323

Emily 

Subjects Matter Chapter 7 Response

I really enjoyed reading this chapter because we got a break from talking about textbooks, and instead learned about the importance of building community within our classrooms. Regardless of the grade level, course, subject, textbooks, etc., your student’s ability to succeed in, belong in, and find value in your class is arguably the most important duty we have as teachers. How can we expect our students to care about our class when they feel as though their teachers do not care about their interests and needs? How can we make our subjects more interesting and understandable if we never allow our students to collaborate and get creative with their peers?

There are so many little ways that teachers can build a better sense of community within their classrooms. For starters, I think it’s essential for teachers to make a point to get to know their student’s personal needs and interests from Day 1. A simple survey could ask the students about what they’re nervous about in the class, what they’re excited about, and also what their personal interests are. Teachers can use these answers throughout the semester to guide their lessons and activities. For example, I had a math teacher once who would use student’s names and something about them (i.e sport they played) to form word problems! We always loved that. 

Another simple way to build community is to value each students questions and answers. We’ve all had those teachers who tell you “That’s a dumb question,” or, “No, you’re wrong”. How will that ever help your students feel valued and encouraged to keep learning? Lastly, I think its super important that teachers allow students to have many opportunities to work with their peers. Sometimes concepts are better understood when explained by a classmate. And sometimes students just need to talk instead of sit in their desks and listen to you lecture all day!

315

Emily

Subjects Matter Chapter 6 Response

A part of this chapter that really caught my attention was hearing about Jeff James’s teaching style found in the section entitled Substituting for the Textbook (198-9). James has a very unconventional approach to his science curriculum: he teaches almost entirely without a textbook. He believes that textbooks are boring, unreliable, and irrelevant material to both his course and to his student’s life. Instead, James makes his own text in the form of a PowerPoint or print out, which contains only the essential, relevant information that his students need. In addition to this, James ties in several trade books, scientific magazines, and even scientific novels (i.e. Big Bang: A Short History of the Universe) to both engage and inform his students. The textbook is used on rare occasions in his classroom as a reference book or to steal some diagrams or pictures from.

James also made a very profound statement that really moved me; he says: “As the science expert in the room, I’ve got to ask, what are the ideas that are fundamental to science, things kids have got to understand so they can continue their study of science in the future, and be able to consider a career in the field” (199). I love that. To a class full of middle schoolers, you are actually the resident science expert. You’re like Bill Nye the Science Guy!

                

So instead of allowing some textbook—which may even be over our own heads—to be the expert in the room, we science teachers should take advantage of our role as "experts" and use our knowledge to more appropriately communicate our material. We know our subjects, and we should know how to teach it well. Our students will benefit greatly from our expertise and passion for our subject, and perhaps it will inspire them to pursue a career in science someday.

309

Emily