Reflections of a Techie

Reading in science..tips I've learned the hard way

Busy this week setting up my science students to write their own nonfiction pages.  Reading in science class is tough.  But I'm pulling out all the stops that I know of to make it work.

Today was our first day.  I started students off by reviewing some well known nonfiction books styles...did a bunch of DK Books and other similar picture nonfiction books.  We discussed the things they saw that were common to all the pages I showed.  Pretty easily they identified that the there were different sizes of fonts and that the topic was the largest type font on a page.  Next they easily knew that there colorful pictures/diagrams/photos/maps on the pages with captions and factual information.  We processed how the fonts and styles differed.  Lastly we talked about how they might go about writing a small summary about the topic.

Next week talked about reading their books.  I used the ole KWL chart

to help them identify what they already knew and I had them write 5 questions they thought they could answer with the book they had picked.  Once this was finished, I gave them their task for the rest of the hour.  On Post-Its, they had to collect more important WOW facts.  You know, facts that make a person stop their reading and go "WOW"!!!

So they read for 20 minutes.

Monday we'll see how they begin to design their nonfiction page to represent what they learned while reading this nonfiction tradebook.  I think it's going to work.  But I'm not sure.

Note-taking and skimming

It seems that my school is about to take on another new program.  It's that time of year so we need to do something more than we did last year...right?

So the focus is on literacy and notetaking.  I have no problem with this whole idea EXCEPT that the people in charge of deciding haven't talked to teachers.  Big surprise!!!!  For example....Cornell Notetaking.  Who is against something like that?  Not me, in fact I think it's a wonderfully efficient way to get at the heart of the content and what the teacher wants you to know.  You can skim through your notes and effectively study for tests.

The problem lies in that my students don't take notes yet.  As 6th graders, they are prepared to do lots beyond copying down what I write on my SmartBoard.  Even teaching them that if I write it on the board they should write it in their spiral journals is a task unto itself.

If anyone had asked me, I think the place if this is what we want to do...would be to teach students how to take notes from their textbooks.  They need to know how to use the text features of the book to organize their notes and then to summarize what they've read there.  Right now if I asked my students to do this...they'd pretty much copy down everything in the book or at  ever bolded word/sentence they see.  They aren't cognitively at the place where they read it well enough to take notes.

I sugggested we read and work through Rick Wormeli's book on Summarizing as our first step.  Once we had those strategies down for summarizing (and not paraphrasing Rick!!!), then we could branch out into notetaking strategies.  Maybe this is what the 6th grade could focus on and master....then the 7th grade could layer on notetaking from the textbook using the summarization strategies we mastered in 6th grade and followed by the 8th graders really pulling it all together with Cornell Notetaking.

But then...no one asked me.

Mathematical Fiction Homepage

This young man is trying to create a database of fiction that relates to math. It will be terrific. Hope it lasts.

On the eve of Lynn Erickson

Tomorrow I'm off to spend two days thinking about curriculum and pairing it with instruction. Boy, this is near and dear to my heart. Ever since I read the UbD book for the first time six years ago, all this just made sense. I've talked and talked about this until I'm blue in the face.

It first started to fall into place when I constructed WebQuests. Fortunately I was working with a colleague who I totally admire and we were in an online class with Grant Wiggins and Bernie Dodge. Learning to construct WebQuests was so difficult and it took us 16 weeks...no wonder because the facets of understanding are elusive and the web was fairly young.

Fast forward six years and now in 2003, I came across the first Lynn Erickson book at the National Board national conference. Content Area Curriculum immediately made sense to me. It was what I had done to get through my National Board process and how I went about coaching candidates...didn't quite know that it was at that point. But the book helped put words onto the process. And it refined my thinking.

A year later other colleagues brought another Erickson book to my attention. Stirring the Head, Heart and Soul. Here was for me. The first time all the stars started to align in one book. It wasn't that I didn't understand all of it. But she was able to able to explain UbD and alignment and Big Ideas and on and on and on in such a way that teachers could understand it. Up to this point, most of the people I had tried to talk to just had gotten that "dear in the headlight" look and became overwhelmed.

Sometimes I wear out waiting. It's a real shortcoming I work on. I know it's not my strength. So here was a book that explained what I couldn't.

And now for the next 2 days, the author is coming to explain her work. We are having 4 representatives from each of our buildings come and listen. Hurray. I couldn't be happier. And my colleagues who convinced the upper managment that it was the best move to bring her to the district rather than pay to send all these people to conferences---hurray for their persuasive brillance.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow. You can bet that I'm going to not only hang onto the message, but the way in which the message is delivered. It should be as informative as the message itself for me. I have much to learn.

What a day

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

e.e. cummings