Strong Chapter 6

After reading chapter six of Strong’s book, I can’t help but think about one of the opening quotes by “Darth Vader.” He says, “using writing to discipline students is a wonderful approach… coupling punishment with fear, we can virtually guarantee non-writers later on.” Of course he is writing in a sarcastic tone when he refers to it as a wonderful approach, but I really wanted to elaborate on this quote because it brought back some vivid memories of my own schooling.

I think teachers simply, and without worry, correlate punishment with writing. When do you ever see teachers “punish” a student by making them sit and solve math problems, or read a science textbook? It just doesn’t happen. It must have something to do with the mechanical movement involved when a pen is introduced to paper. Whatever it may be, it makes teachers believe writing can be used as a form of punishment. However, coupling writing and punishment makes it that much harder for teachers to implement writing in their classrooms, especially English teachers. If the students are constantly forced to write as punishment, they are never going to enjoy it.

I can’t help but remember being punished with writing in my middle school gym class. I was constantly forced to sit at a desk, in a corner, and write on a piece of paper “I will not chew gum in physical education class.” I had to write the entire period, front and back, on multiple pieces of paper (yet they constantly stressed the fact that students should be active 60 minutes a day- and here I was, writing for 60 minutes, when in all reality I could have used the exercise at this point in my life). Anyway, can you guess what happened when I handed those papers in? No, they were not graded or kept on file; they were ripped up right in front of my face and thrown in the trash. So, as a student, how am I supposed to form a relationship with writing when it is constantly being used as a form of punishment? I’m honestly surprised that I enjoy writing today, because these memories are so vivid. Luckily, I have not become one of these “non-writers” Darth Vader speaks about, but this is what he was getting at! If we continue to couple writing with punishment and fear, we can guarantee non-writers later on. Students are simply not going to want to write if it is viewed negatively and used as a form of punishment.

Before I wrap up this blog post, I wanted to incorporate a CRAFT I could implement in my own classroom. In case you didn’t know, I am a huge fan of cells, and so this is my CRAFT on cells! Feel free to critique.

Imagine we inject you into a eukaryotic or prokaryotic cell (the choice is yours!) We want you to slip on your water shoes and goggles, and swim around the cell. Explain to your peers the various organelles you see, the functions that are taking place, and observe the relative location of these organelles in relation to each other. After making your observations, create a map (similar to that of a city) depicting what you saw. Include streets and landmarks. Label each street with a name (for example the exterior of the cell can be called Cell Circle, or the street near the Golgi Apparatus, Golgi Boulevard). Be creative! It doesn’t just have to include the organelles. Draw in some houses, or some of your favorite restaurants. But, the position of organelles should be fairly accurate with respect to one another. Finally, remember to add some color! We want your friends to be interested in the interior of a cell as well!

Context: Development of a cell city/Map

Role: Observer/Architect/Developer

Audience: Your peers that you want to educate about the cell

Format: Map

Topic: Cell organization

D&Z Chapters 3 and 4

After reading chapters 3 and 4 of Daniels and Zemelman, I can’t help but think to myself, “finally, teachers and other educators are starting to realize how complex textbooks are, and how frustrating it can be to rely on the text for information.” The authors describe textbooks as difficult, superficial, and sometimes inaccurate. I agree with this point. Personally, I have never enjoyed reading from textbooks. I often find that while my mind wanders… my eyes wander down the page. Once I snap back into reality, I have to reread the entire page because my mind did not process the text. So…to my fellow, future educators, I suggest putting less emphasis on textbooks. When our students go to college, the professors that are uneducated in this area will surely give them enough to read.

There were a couple of points that I wanted to comment on. First, was the idea of textbooks, and how many of them are often considered inaccurate. I found it astounding that one of the leading textbook publishers had 86,026 errors across its series of books. But, what I found even more interesting was this idea of how “smart teachers can make textbook errors useful (57).” I loved the story of Don Grossnickle. He took a textbook error and made it into a useful lesson about how the Bubonic Plague wasn’t actually spread by the bacteria of rats and fleas. According to Science News, it was actually caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever. As a biology major, this is something that I can implement in my own classroom. Science is always changing and there are constantly new breakthroughs. (And in a way, this lesson serves as a science and a history lesson!) So, I suppose when publishers make one of their many, many mistakes, us teachers can use these mistakes to our advantage. It definitely makes me question how much of the information I’ve read is actually accurate!

A second point I wanted to touch upon was the idea that textbooks are superficial. From reading the chapter, I realized that I have been a victim of textbook superficiality as a student. As a science teacher, I played the role they asked in chapter three. I thought I knew the answer to this question, seeing I am a biology major and these concepts have been drilled into our heads ever since middle school. But, I was wrong. I thought that the nutrients from the soil contributed to the tree’s mass. Based on my answer, I have learned that my education was textbook dependent. I’m sure I will learn about this in my plant class next semester, but I did not know that the mass came from the air. You know what they say… you learn something new every day!

One thing we can do to ensure our students don’t become victims of textbook dependency is to put less emphasis on textbooks. According to Daniels and Zemelman, “…textbooks continue to be overused, and should be supplemented generously or replaced with other reading materials where possible (53).” If we as teachers select material based on the needs/levels of our students, they will learn more. I think this is good advice, something we should be aware of as we continue on our journey to becoming teachers.

After reading this chapter, I have learned more about the type of teacher I will be in the future. I, for one, will put less emphasis on textbooks. After all, I have observed in classrooms focused heavily on supplemented materials (the students never actually opened the textbook and read from it). I found this to be an effective way of teaching, especially in the sciences. The students understood the material because they weren’t reading a bunch of scientific text, and they enjoyed learning in this manner. Science textbooks tend to be very difficult and dense. So, I hope to implement this strategy in the future. Until then, I will continue my textbook dependent studies to get to that point.

Understanding By Design

I know a lot of my peers mentioned the video we watched in 406 of Grant Wiggins’ explanation of “Understanding By Design.” So, I suppose we’ve had a brief introduction before this week’s reading assignment. But, as I began reading, I couldn’t help but remember his reference to soccer and how he spoke about refereeing a soccer game that lacked strategic thinking. He described the scenario as a lot of aimless running around. It wasn’t until the team was asked to self-assess that it made a difference in the way they played. They were asked, “What is working on the field? What is not working? What do we need to work on?”  By doing this, they were creating/embedding long-term goals into short-term plans. This is what we need to do as future teachers and advocates of UBD.

I believe that Understanding By Design is a hard concept for a lot of us to grasp. As far as I’m concerned, I was hardly ever taught in such a fashion. I proceeded from K-12 in the traditional (contentàactivityàtest) fashion. Mind you, there was always a huge emphasis on NECAP testing. So, when I read in Module A that, “in many schools teachers are expected to engage in test prep as a means of raising test scores (4),” it really hit home. I remember sitting in the cafeteria of my high school each morning during NECAP week being fed breakfast (this was in an attempt to increase test scores…it was really insane now that I think back on it). I find it so sad that schools are forcing teachers to teach to a test. Like the author noted, it’s not just about covering the content, but uncovering it. This is why I support the idea of Understanding by Design. I am for what it aims to do, which is focus on helping students come to an understanding of important ideas and transfer their learning to new situations.

I can’t really say I disagree with the idea of Understanding By Design, as I feel the pros heavily outweigh any cons. I especially liked and wanted to touch upon their discussion of Judy Willis’ validation of the principles and practices of UBD (in module A). I wanted to touch upon this because as a future science teacher, a lot of the content will be taught more effectively through hands-on experiences. Oddly enough, one of the points of validation for UBD was that, “Experiential learning that stimulates multiple senses in students, such as hands-on science activities, is not only the most engaging but also the most likely to be stored as long term memories (6).” I can really relate to this point! As a science major, I have taken numerous science classes (all of which were considerably difficult). I found that I learned most when I “did” something with the content. This is what I hope to do with my future students.

One of my most vivid science memories dates back to my freshman year of high school. We were in the lab creating our own DNA double helix on one of those big post-it notes. I remember matching the base pairs, color coding, and transcribing my DNA molecule into RNA. I absolutely loved this hands-on activity, and it was there that my foundation of complementary base pairing began. So, when it was re-introduced to it later in my life, I had a previous experience with the material. With that, I was able to further my understanding by doing more with the material. As a future science teacher, I think this is going to be very important, and although this particular lesson wasn’t based on backward design, I know it would work with one.

This is what it would look like, with a legend and a color coded sequence!

Daniels and Zemelman Ch 1&2

After reading chapters 1 and 2 in Daniels and Zemelman, I couldn’t help but go back to the McDonald's incident. My first thought was: Wow! Those two students must have had to muster up a lot of courage to walk into a fast food chain’s restaurant and know enough information about the subject to persuade the customers not to eat there. It was obvious that they felt very passionately about this topic after diving deeper into their research (as would anyone who cared the least bit about their health). I was especially surprised when Antonio walked up to the woman and pulled out his copy of Fast Food Nation. The author wrote, “she leans down to read the page, heavily highlighted in yellow, with cryptic annotations in the margins (Daniels and Zemelman 2).” Antonio must have enjoyed the book and learned a lot from reading it because he took the time to analyze and annotate (he even remembered what page the statistics were on so he could show the woman). Granted, it took them about a month to read about the fast food industry and how it affects all aspects of our lives. However, it proved to be worthwhile and it seemed as though the students were able to learn a lot by researching and diving into outside sources (other than their 600 page biology text). The best part was that they were able to go out into the community and spread knowledge about the dangers and prevalence of food-borne illnesses, all while having fun doing it. That IS science! This is what we need to do as future educators. We have to come up with ways in which students can give back to their communities with the knowledge they have gained in school and in their research. This is exactly what these students did!

I really liked the assumption that the fast-food project was based on. It was the assumption that “teenagers should not be ‘getting ready’ to be lifelong learners, but should be fully engaged right now (3).” I think this speaks volumes. I have heard so many mission statements that want to prepare students to be lifelong learners and productive members of society. Yet, the students are not exploring these options. The fast-food project gave these students the chance to learn in an environment outside of the classroom, with an abundance of outside sources. These students proved that they have soared far beyond the “getting ready to be lifelong learners” stage. These students are lifelong learners.