Readicide Blog Post

I know that tests are a necessary evil (or are they?). I’m not even a teacher yet and I’m already sick of thinking about teaching to a test and preparing students for tests. I understand that they say good teachers don’t teach to a test, but work with me here. Maybe I’m thinking only in my ideological world where I just teach students life things everyday and they learn them. Why do they have to take a test, or why can’t the test try and account for real-life knowledge. How the government works? How to get a job in the real world? What makes good people, the rights and wrongs of morality? It seems like so much of what students learn in schools is superficial. Readicide furthered this fury in many ways but since ranting and raving about something with never accomplish anything, let me continue on to tell you what I gleaned from the text.

The “Texas Miracle” statistics were shocking. I couldn’t believe how different the results were for students who went through the Texas methodology of learning (study for the test) and then how poorly they did the next year when tested on the same kind of material.  I can’t believe in education that there would be people so deceitful and forget the whole mission of education – to better the student’s lives, just to make a couple extra bucks. I just don’t get how people get so caught up in statistics and bonuses and that sort of thing. I guess that is why we often refer to education (even those who love it and want to devote our lives to it) as a racket.

I found the section that talked about the word “farrier” rather insightful and helpful. Gallagher discusses the comparison of struggling readers with background on a subject, to advanced readers with little knowledge of a topic. The struggling readers who had knowledge on the subject of baseball, but didn’t quite read as well as the other students, actually comprehended the article more completely than the other group (38). This comparison really highlighted just how important it is to have background knowledge on a subject and what that does for a reader’s comprehension level. Though Gallagher was not the first person we’ve read who has suggested this, he was the one who got the information to stick.

I had completely forgotten about SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) until Readicide brought it up commending it as a validated test preparation tool. I miss SSR in the classroom; I really enjoyed it as a kid and was pleased to see the benefits of it were unquestionable. Also, I liked the idea of the AoW (Article of the Week) and having the whole English Department backing this idea (47-49). As Gallagher says, this will stop students from not knowing who al Qaeda is!

And finally, bring the library to the students!

The End

Differentiated Instruction Blog Post

For our last article of choice (social justice) I ended up picking an article that was actually a study and very formal. For our second “choice” article I wanted to go to the other end of the spectrum, and boy am I glad I did.

My differentiated instruction article was actually blog responses to an article written on differentiated instruction and I found it had some great insights from readers. First these two experts spoke about differentiated instruction in the classroom. Both of them suggested adding differentiation to the classroom even if it’s only 10 minutes a day or something like 15 minutes a week. But they both adamantly suggested getting after it and making the change in the classroom, and eventually teachers will become practiced in the idea of differentiation. A woman responded to this article saying that actually in doing this they were hurting the students along the way who wouldn’t reap the benefits of the differentiation. She argued that this made the point for ability grouping classrooms when advocates for differentiation tried to suggest gradual implementation. She believed students would be better off grouped together: special education, gifted, on par, etc.

A second responder to the blog posting argued that differentiated instruction is impossible to implement and do well. Though I can see a basis for their argument, that there isn’t enough time to do individual meetings with each student ensuring they are getting the proper type of instruction conducive to their learning style, I actually wonder what kind of experience this person has in the classroom. They suggested tracking students and their learning and dividing them into groups based on their learning, which is essentially ability groups as the woman has suggested above. This person’s blog name is “Labor Lawyer” so I’m not so sure I trust their judgment about teaching issues, but I found interesting and helpful to know the hesitations to differentiated instruction.

In theory, differentiated instruction is the cure all it seems like. I believe it needs to be implemented into all classrooms but the how and methodology is far more complicated than just saying okay let’s do it! Like one of the authors of the blog post said, “ accepting differentiation more as a collection of principles about response teaching than a collection of quick recipes for someone’s diversity cookbook is my first piece of advice, as practical as those recipes may be” (Wormell). Implementing this form of teaching, or responsive teaching, is difficult and time consuming. But, it could be well worth the price.

I Read It, but I Don't Get It Blog Post

In reading Tovani’s description of students who are struggling readers sometimes I thought to myself, that’s me! I loved this book! Tovani gives me so many tools for working with students who have issues reading (Fix-It Strategies, pgs 51-55) that I feel more prepared as a teacher. Not only does she connect with the reader by telling us stories of students in her class, their responses to reading but then in each chapter gives teaching points and a “what worked” section.

Tovani does a great job in the beginning of Chapter 3 with describing why the purpose of reading is so important. She explains just how to get the students to realize what reading with a purpose does to make their lives easier. On page 24 she lists reasons why students get distracted, which helps the teachers reading this book combat those by providing them purposes for reading. I also appreciated Tovani’s reading techniques she describes in Chapters 3 & 4 using the alternating pink and yellow highlighters. Then using the sticky notes for notations. This process all made great sense to me. The one idea I was hesitant about using was the coding. I would have to practice with it but seems it may be more work than simply making notations on the page.

Another section of Tovani’s book I found helpful was the information in Chapter 6 about connecting information between subjects and making connections with the text. Even in our class we’ve discussed the idea that maybe the texts students are reading are just too old. Maybe they can’t connect with some of the texts anymore. I think in a way that is true, but just like the subject of history; we can’t stop learning it because it is old. The need to have balance, as we’ve discussed before, will be upheld once students can more easily make connections to the text. I like the concept of background knowledge and always tying that into what the student is reading. She goes on to further break that down into personal experience versus personal knowledge. I think clarifying personal experience and personal knowledge will be beneficial to students when it comes their turn to display their background knowledge. And also to let them know that it’s okay to make connections to songs, movies, and past experiences. I can see how some students might think that is “wrong” or “cheating” in some way.

I could go on about other things I liked about this book, but this blog only has so much space J I found it to be a very helpful read with real-life suggestions for struggling readers, and it provides great tools for teachers.

Langer's "A Response Approach to Reading Literature" Blog Post

It occurs to me that the environment in which you read a text can affect how you feel about the writing. I believe that is what happened while I was reading this text, possibly. I was surrounded by a very foreign, sterile, and unappealing setting when I read this article (not by choice), and I think it influenced my feelings on the text. It felt very medical, and what I mean by that is dry, boring, and cold. Or maybe that was just how the text actually read? Admittedly, the text is a report on performed research so it’s not going to be touchy-feely but a little language love would have been nice.

Logistically, I found the piece hard to read because of the multiple line parenthetical text that was sandwiched in between the words of the sentences. It got in the way of my reading flow and was quite distracting. Now that I am done complaining, I did however like the concepts behind the article but really did not glean anything new that we hadn’t learned in our other texts thus far.

But, it was interesting to see how they gathered their information for the study. It made me think about different aspects of research that I normally wouldn’t have had to think of before. For instance, the author discusses that the manner in which a question is asked, “where they emanate from and how they are treated,” (3) can have an affect on the outcome of the information as well. Langer also did a good job of eloquently explaining the exploration of horizons by stating, “where uncertainty is a normal part of response and new-found understandings provoke still other possibilities” (3).

As a non-believer and non-lover of standardized tests I enjoyed the report’s focus on “literature tests [treating] literature as content,”  (4) as opposed to a subject where the answer can have some gray area. The reference to the Huck Finn test question put the nail in the coffin. Why can’t Huck Finn be both good and bad, why one or the other?

Transitioning into the “What does this mean for literature instruction?” section of the article was where the redundancy of other articles kicked in.  Besides informing the reader about the procedure of the studies it was simply…let all your students respond and don’t have a set agenda to your teaching methods. Don’t stick to your lesson plans if student’s questions and comments take you elsewhere…the sort of information that, luckily, our class has discussed already. And on and on.