The most important aspect in making the content meaningful to students is showing them the importance of the content area. This chapter gives many examples of how students can organize their content to be able to synthesize it more. One example that I use frequently are outlines, which trigger memories from the unit. While observing, my mentor teacher requires the students to create outlines for homework. When the students don't do them, she informs them that is only for their benefit, because knowing how to properly create outlines is important. I really liked the REAP activity because it gives students the opportunity to make connections and question the reading as well as "establish purposes for further reading" (p 69) A concept that we have learned in many TCH courses is to allow students the opportunity to view events from multiple perspectives. Being able to do this gives students broader knowledge and teaches empathy. The graphic organizer multiple sources, multiple perspectives is a great way to do this.
(I forgot to add this up above) --> A paragraph I really like is when the author discusses 4 things we can do to prepare students for any test. I agree that these 4 things are crucial for students to succeed, but they also may be quite challenging because it takes time to "turn students into engaged and interested learners who see reading as a source of information and enjoyment. How can we begin at an early age to teach this to students?
The reading for this book club touched upon many different strategies and ways we can help our students understand content more. The most important part of this reading in my opinion was word study and strategies to allow students to better understand social studies terms. I have seen students struggling with this in the seventh grade class I observe. I think teachers often make the mistake of assuming their students know a specific term or word when they don't. Unfortunately a student will very rarely say they have no idea what a certain word means and they go through the whole unit clueless. There were a few strategies suggested that I really liked, the Words In Context Plus and the Alike but Different Charts were two strategies that I think are very useful and effective.
The Words In Context Chart is a great way to break down a word and apply its meaning to events and relate it to what the students know. I like how there's a box for the definition of the word as well as what the word "is and is not". There are also boxes where examples of the word are mentioned as well as parts of the words known and related words. By breaking down a word in this way we can really give students a real understanding from multiple perspectives of a word.
I also think the Alike But Different Chart is extremely important for creating a smooth flowing course. In Social Studies a common big idea is that the past influences the future. By doing the alike but different chart students can connect different events, people, and terms that can be learned at different times in the year together. At the bottom of the chart there's a box where the students can write down something that will help them remember the different terms. Doing this really makes the term familiar when they apply it to their lives.
Keeping on the topic of students relating words to their own lives, I liked the Word Illumination writing prompts on page 40. I think it's important for students to use a word in their own way and relate it to their own lives in different ways, therefore there is a deeper understanding.
Finally I believe outlining is an extremely important skill that Social Studies teachers should teach their students. In SOcial Studies it is important for a student to be able to determine what is and is not worth writing down. We can teach our students to learn how to pick out the most important points by teaching them how to outline. Teaching students how to outline, and organize what they read to better understand the content will help our students in many other content areas and is great preparation for any kind of standardized testing where they will need to be able to organize what is important and support why they think something is important.
I also want to respond to what Cailin asked. I think you're referring to what was on page 31. The four broad roles are Meaning Maker, Code Breaker, Text User, and Text Critic. I think that this can all be taught to any secondary school student, however when students first start to read in elementary school these roles should be introduced to them in some kind of way so that reading becomes easier for them in the higher grades. In Social Studies I don't think the task is too difficult to get them to play these roles because students are reading to uncover some kind of information from the text or some kind of article. As long as we use the charts that were suggested for deeper understanding in chapter 2 I think that students will learn to read with these roles in mind. Hopefully they will become more meta-cognitive with these roles, and as they read they will be able to think things through and be able to derive meaning and criticize and uncover information naturally.
“Meaning making” is the most important activity that students can do in and around the classroom. A personal understanding of Social Studies bread-and-butter topics (civics, history, economics) lies at the root who we are as citizens. Anything that we as teachers can do to facilitate that formation of persona will pay dividends for ours charges for years to come. The strategies and exercises that Chapter 3 elucidates are each tools that can make that lofty goal a reality.
The list of techniques that Allen lays out runs the gamut from the classic to the trendy. The bedrock practices that she lists resonated most strongly with me; the trendy alphabet soup options, on balance, I found wanting with one notable exception. The tried and true practices of outlining and timelines, I have found in my experience as a student, deliver results on a consistent basis. The work that students put in to an outline pays proportional dividends. Timelines also lie at the heart of history. Both of these strategies impel students to make value-based choices about facts and people: judgment and discretion are two of the hallmarks of both professional and budding historians.
A third technique, which Allen gives a flashy name to but is as old as History itself, is the multiple perspectives/multiple sources (MP/MS). Herodotus said,” I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.” This lies at the heart of MP/MS. No event can be understood fully without a chorus of voices competing with each with their own petty biases , prejudices, and myopia. The fledgling Social Studies student needs to develop a discriminating palate and embrace an ethos of MP/MS. This is sine qua non for historians and Social Studies students.
The alphabet soup offerings (REAP, RAFT, SPAWN, NASA, SCUBA, RADAR, FUBAR, etc.) that Allen offers were, in principle, valuable but in application of limited value to me. Mnemonic devices CAN at times be valuable but, I find, more often just add a layer of confusion. Everyone knows what a timeline is. Hardly anyone can say what each of the “A”s in my short list mean.
Within Chapter 2 of Reading History there were a couple of points I thought really stuck out to me and connected to each other. The main point that grabbed me, I noticed was on pg. 30 with the list of bullet points with the next line stating, “Can a process this complex really be taught?” I have to admit after reading the list of bullet points I wondered the same thing, can all of this be taught? It did seem like a lot of information or skills to cover, plus we had to make sure our students covered the content they needed to be ready for whatever was going to come next. I guess certain points can be grouped together like knowledge on text support, knowledge of supplemental resources and how to read them, but not everything gels with each other so easily. I then began to notice as you continued reading the strategies that were provided covered a multitude of those points listed and made the process easier as a teacher. For instance, the strategy demo Rob and I presented to the class about the textbook scavenger hunt will definitely help the students cover the three points aforementioned. Or the skim and scan technique from the last chapter will greatly help students be able to determine what parts of the text are significant and what parts are not. The question I have started to wonder is how a high school teacher who has the ever pressing regents in July teach all of these techniques and all of the content that needs to be covered for the high stakes test, but then I remembered what we had talked about in class and during our last book club. These strategies should not be something that is newly introduced to the students; these strategies that are mentioned in this book should be started when the students are beginning school and kept up throughout their years. Middle school teachers should be droning this in their students heads to make sure they know these helpful tools, so when they get into the older grades they have all of this down as second nature and can really focus on their studies, not how by doing this strategy it may help me get this part of the text. Of course, strategies will always be updated and new ones will always be coming out, but if students are able to have these imbedded in their knowledge early it will allow teachers who come later in their educational lives to scaffold off of this preexisting knowledge.
Content is the reason why we are teaching these students. It is important that our students understand what they are learning, which is why we have all these different ways of teaching them and helping them. Graphic organizers and outlines are things I have seen a lot in my mentor school. My mentor teacher uses outlines after every homework assignment and he also has them practice outlining for Document Based Questions (DBQ). This skill is something very important to learn and it is something that they can continue to use for the rest of their learning career. It is an organizational tool that is very beneficial. I am also a big fan of always relating things back to a students own life, therefore agreeing with Jessica’s idea of the word illumination being helpful in this topic. Using word strategies is also a great way to help students because you often see the students struggling with what words mean. I know I got asked a lot of questions in my classroom on what words meant. A lot of these strategies are helpful with learning and retaining the definitions of words.
Interesting set of posts. I really like what Jessica had to say about how SS teachers assume a lot of things about their students' knowledge and capacity to handle difficult texts. She talks about an essential for SS literacy, it seems - prioritizing information - and Rob reinforces this skill of judgment as essential to the task of historians, both professional and novices. While I think outlines and timelines are valuable, I think the larger point of this book is that these strategies need to be valued and, indeed, assessed. Otherwise, how do you know if they outline if they are really practicing the capacity for judgment which is what you're trying to do. While Dennis and Rob rightly point out that there are an awful lot of strategies (and way too many acronymns) one thing that I think is implicit is that you would never do all these strategies. You would pick and choose based on your personal priorities and I believe what you feel your students need. The point of a book like this is not to suggest you must do it all but to build your repertoire for how you respond to what students need. It's intended as a resource book in that sense. I look forward to reading the summary of the meeting. Who was the notetaker - I'll check my notes.
Darn! I lost my comment! I'll try again. I liked what Jessica was saying about not assuming the kids know how to strategically read difficult texts in SS. She seems to identify something critical to SS literacy - the ability to prioritize information, determine importance - and Rob seems to agree with his note about judgment being an essential quality of historians of all skill levels. I think outlines and timelines are valuable as are any of these strategies but, for me, what's the essence of this book is that whatever you choose you really do model, support, reinforce, and assess. Otherwise, how do you know outlining will really help kids to determine importance. So often I see outlining used and abused - it's not deliberately used to teach anything. I agree with Dennis and Rob that there are a ton of strategies here (and way too many acronymns) but I think the larger point is not that you would teach all these strategies but that you would determine something to focus on based on your preference and, most importantly, the needs of the students (what work and support they need). Having exposure to these strategies is intended to build your repertoire to respond to the various needs you will confront in a typical secondary classroom.
DUE APRIL 20TH AT MIDNIGHT!!
ReplyDeleteThe most important aspect in making the content meaningful to students is showing them the importance of the content area. This chapter gives many examples of how students can organize their content to be able to synthesize it more. One example that I use frequently are outlines, which trigger memories from the unit. While observing, my mentor teacher requires the students to create outlines for homework. When the students don't do them, she informs them that is only for their benefit, because knowing how to properly create outlines is important. I really liked the REAP activity because it gives students the opportunity to make connections and question the reading as well as "establish purposes for further reading" (p 69) A concept that we have learned in many TCH courses is to allow students the opportunity to view events from multiple perspectives. Being able to do this gives students broader knowledge and teaches empathy. The graphic organizer multiple sources, multiple perspectives is a great way to do this.
ReplyDelete(I forgot to add this up above) --> A paragraph I really like is when the author discusses 4 things we can do to prepare students for any test. I agree that these 4 things are crucial for students to succeed, but they also may be quite challenging because it takes time to "turn students into engaged and interested learners who see reading as a source of information and enjoyment. How can we begin at an early age to teach this to students?
ReplyDeleteThe reading for this book club touched upon many different strategies and ways we can help our students understand content more. The most important part of this reading in my opinion was word study and strategies to allow students to better understand social studies terms. I have seen students struggling with this in the seventh grade class I observe. I think teachers often make the mistake of assuming their students know a specific term or word when they don't. Unfortunately a student will very rarely say they have no idea what a certain word means and they go through the whole unit clueless. There were a few strategies suggested that I really liked, the Words In Context Plus and the Alike but Different Charts were two strategies that I think are very useful and effective.
ReplyDeleteThe Words In Context Chart is a great way to break down a word and apply its meaning to events and relate it to what the students know. I like how there's a box for the definition of the word as well as what the word "is and is not". There are also boxes where examples of the word are mentioned as well as parts of the words known and related words. By breaking down a word in this way we can really give students a real understanding from multiple perspectives of a word.
I also think the Alike But Different Chart is extremely important for creating a smooth flowing course. In Social Studies a common big idea is that the past influences the future. By doing the alike but different chart students can connect different events, people, and terms that can be learned at different times in the year together. At the bottom of the chart there's a box where the students can write down something that will help them remember the different terms. Doing this really makes the term familiar when they apply it to their lives.
Keeping on the topic of students relating words to their own lives, I liked the Word Illumination writing prompts on page 40. I think it's important for students to use a word in their own way and relate it to their own lives in different ways, therefore there is a deeper understanding.
Finally I believe outlining is an extremely important skill that Social Studies teachers should teach their students. In SOcial Studies it is important for a student to be able to determine what is and is not worth writing down. We can teach our students to learn how to pick out the most important points by teaching them how to outline. Teaching students how to outline, and organize what they read to better understand the content will help our students in many other content areas and is great preparation for any kind of standardized testing where they will need to be able to organize what is important and support why they think something is important.
I also want to respond to what Cailin asked. I think you're referring to what was on page 31. The four broad roles are Meaning Maker, Code Breaker, Text User, and Text Critic. I think that this can all be taught to any secondary school student, however when students first start to read in elementary school these roles should be introduced to them in some kind of way so that reading becomes easier for them in the higher grades. In Social Studies I don't think the task is too difficult to get them to play these roles because students are reading to uncover some kind of information from the text or some kind of article. As long as we use the charts that were suggested for deeper understanding in chapter 2 I think that students will learn to read with these roles in mind. Hopefully they will become more meta-cognitive with these roles, and as they read they will be able to think things through and be able to derive meaning and criticize and uncover information naturally.
ReplyDelete“Meaning making” is the most important activity that students can do in and around the classroom. A personal understanding of Social Studies bread-and-butter topics (civics, history, economics) lies at the root who we are as citizens. Anything that we as teachers can do to facilitate that formation of persona will pay dividends for ours charges for years to come. The strategies and exercises that Chapter 3 elucidates are each tools that can make that lofty goal a reality.
ReplyDeleteThe list of techniques that Allen lays out runs the gamut from the classic to the trendy. The bedrock practices that she lists resonated most strongly with me; the trendy alphabet soup options, on balance, I found wanting with one notable exception. The tried and true practices of outlining and timelines, I have found in my experience as a student, deliver results on a consistent basis. The work that students put in to an outline pays proportional dividends. Timelines also lie at the heart of history. Both of these strategies impel students to make value-based choices about facts and people: judgment and discretion are two of the hallmarks of both professional and budding historians.
A third technique, which Allen gives a flashy name to but is as old as History itself, is the multiple perspectives/multiple sources (MP/MS). Herodotus said,” I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.” This lies at the heart of MP/MS. No event can be understood fully without a chorus of voices competing with each with their own petty biases , prejudices, and myopia. The fledgling Social Studies student needs to develop a discriminating palate and embrace an ethos of MP/MS. This is sine qua non for historians and Social Studies students.
The alphabet soup offerings (REAP, RAFT, SPAWN, NASA, SCUBA, RADAR, FUBAR, etc.) that Allen offers were, in principle, valuable but in application of limited value to me. Mnemonic devices CAN at times be valuable but, I find, more often just add a layer of confusion. Everyone knows what a timeline is. Hardly anyone can say what each of the “A”s in my short list mean.
Within Chapter 2 of Reading History there were a couple of points I thought really stuck out to me and connected to each other. The main point that grabbed me, I noticed was on pg. 30 with the list of bullet points with the next line stating, “Can a process this complex really be taught?” I have to admit after reading the list of bullet points I wondered the same thing, can all of this be taught? It did seem like a lot of information or skills to cover, plus we had to make sure our students covered the content they needed to be ready for whatever was going to come next. I guess certain points can be grouped together like knowledge on text support, knowledge of supplemental resources and how to read them, but not everything gels with each other so easily. I then began to notice as you continued reading the strategies that were provided covered a multitude of those points listed and made the process easier as a teacher. For instance, the strategy demo Rob and I presented to the class about the textbook scavenger hunt will definitely help the students cover the three points aforementioned. Or the skim and scan technique from the last chapter will greatly help students be able to determine what parts of the text are significant and what parts are not. The question I have started to wonder is how a high school teacher who has the ever pressing regents in July teach all of these techniques and all of the content that needs to be covered for the high stakes test, but then I remembered what we had talked about in class and during our last book club. These strategies should not be something that is newly introduced to the students; these strategies that are mentioned in this book should be started when the students are beginning school and kept up throughout their years. Middle school teachers should be droning this in their students heads to make sure they know these helpful tools, so when they get into the older grades they have all of this down as second nature and can really focus on their studies, not how by doing this strategy it may help me get this part of the text. Of course, strategies will always be updated and new ones will always be coming out, but if students are able to have these imbedded in their knowledge early it will allow teachers who come later in their educational lives to scaffold off of this preexisting knowledge.
ReplyDeleteContent is the reason why we are teaching these students. It is important that our students understand what they are learning, which is why we have all these different ways of teaching them and helping them. Graphic organizers and outlines are things I have seen a lot in my mentor school. My mentor teacher uses outlines after every homework assignment and he also has them practice outlining for Document Based Questions (DBQ). This skill is something very important to learn and it is something that they can continue to use for the rest of their learning career. It is an organizational tool that is very beneficial. I am also a big fan of always relating things back to a students own life, therefore agreeing with Jessica’s idea of the word illumination being helpful in this topic. Using word strategies is also a great way to help students because you often see the students struggling with what words mean. I know I got asked a lot of questions in my classroom on what words meant. A lot of these strategies are helpful with learning and retaining the definitions of words.
ReplyDeleteInteresting set of posts. I really like what Jessica had to say about how SS teachers assume a lot of things about their students' knowledge and capacity to handle difficult texts. She talks about an essential for SS literacy, it seems - prioritizing information - and Rob reinforces this skill of judgment as essential to the task of historians, both professional and novices. While I think outlines and timelines are valuable, I think the larger point of this book is that these strategies need to be valued and, indeed, assessed. Otherwise, how do you know if they outline if they are really practicing the capacity for judgment which is what you're trying to do. While Dennis and Rob rightly point out that there are an awful lot of strategies (and way too many acronymns) one thing that I think is implicit is that you would never do all these strategies. You would pick and choose based on your personal priorities and I believe what you feel your students need. The point of a book like this is not to suggest you must do it all but to build your repertoire for how you respond to what students need. It's intended as a resource book in that sense. I look forward to reading the summary of the meeting. Who was the notetaker - I'll check my notes.
ReplyDeleteDarn! I lost my comment! I'll try again. I liked what Jessica was saying about not assuming the kids know how to strategically read difficult texts in SS. She seems to identify something critical to SS literacy - the ability to prioritize information, determine importance - and Rob seems to agree with his note about judgment being an essential quality of historians of all skill levels. I think outlines and timelines are valuable as are any of these strategies but, for me, what's the essence of this book is that whatever you choose you really do model, support, reinforce, and assess. Otherwise, how do you know outlining will really help kids to determine importance. So often I see outlining used and abused - it's not deliberately used to teach anything. I agree with Dennis and Rob that there are a ton of strategies here (and way too many acronymns) but I think the larger point is not that you would teach all these strategies but that you would determine something to focus on based on your preference and, most importantly, the needs of the students (what work and support they need). Having exposure to these strategies is intended to build your repertoire to respond to the various needs you will confront in a typical secondary classroom.
ReplyDeleteWho is the notetaker? Looking forward to reading the summary.
ReplyDelete