Case Study of Readers

This case study will be taking the format of journal entries about students’ school work and school readings as though they were written by the readers I observed and interviewed.  Their personalities and reading habits will come out through the entries based on how they respond and how thorough their response is.  I’ve taken some liberties with subject matter of the response to reflect what students said and what they really liked and disliked about reading.  The students I interviewed were freshman t Central Crossing High School, a low-achieving urban school in the Southwestern City School District.

Journal One:

I don’t get this stupid story.  I don’t know why we have to write about.  It’s not like I’m ever going to use this again.  I mean, for reals, who reads plays in their free time?  Isn’t that what movies are for.  Movies are great.  Especially when they’re for a book you’re supposed to read for class, but you can just watch the movie instead.  But this play we’re reading, The Miracle Worker, who cares?  Why is the story of Helen Keller even part of this class? Isn’t she dead, so why do we have to read about her?  Or if we have to know this story, and it is a play, then why don’t we just watch the movie?

I hate reading out loud in class.  And I hate listening to other people read out loud in class.  When George stutters his way through a sentence, how am I supposed to understand anything?  I wish we’d just watch the movie for this story.  Or if Mrs. B is going to make us read it, she should just read it to us.  At least then we wouldn’t have to listen to everyone else mess up every other word when they read.

Journal Two:

This story is kind of interesting.  I don’t think I’d read it out of class though.  It’s too hard to understand.  Miss B explains it too us though when we read.  But she makes us read out loud.  I don’t like that.  But the story is okay when she tells us what is going on.

Journal Three:

I’ve been reading the Percy Jackson series lately, and it’s so good.  I still want to go see the movie, but it won’t be as good as the book.  Movies are never as good as the book.  They get the characters all wrong, and always mess up the story line and the way it’s supposed to go.  I like seeing how other people see the book, but sometimes I wish they’d never make books into movies because of how much they ruin it.  I hope some of my friends will go with me to see it so we can talk about it and talk about how the book was better.  I like seeing how they change the story to fit in a movie format and always wonder why they leave some stuff in, but cut huge chunks of the story out.

I don’t know what I’m going to read next after I finish this last book in the series.  Maybe Mrs. B will be able to give me some ideas.  She normally has pretty good ones, but sometimes she wants me to read these dry, boring, classic books.  I normally give up on those after a few hours trying and just falling asleep.  I need action, and adventure, and maybe a little bit of magic in my books.  I want to be a hero like those characters, not some kid with a whole bunch of problems like some of the books Mrs. B recommends.  When I go to the library sometimes the librarians there have some good suggestions.  I like their better a lot of times because they’re not wanting me to read a book for school, but wanting me to read a book that they think is good.  Maybe I’ll join one of the book clubs there this summer.

Journal Four:

I’ve been having a hard time in my science class with all the reading Mr. H has got us doing.  I feel like I’m highlighting everything.  How am I supposed to know what’s important.  I wish he’d give us an outline or guided notes or something.  Then at least I’d know what was going to be on the test.  The worksheets he gives us to do in class are nothing but busy work because he’s too lazy to actually teach us anything.  Just wants us to read from the book and find the answers in there.

Journal Five:

We’ve been reading Animal Farm in class and at first I thought it was real boring and weird.  I was like, why are all these animals talking? And how do the humans even understand them?  Something like this book could never happen.  But then Mrs. F started teaching us about the Russian Revolution and I was like, whoa!  They’re telling like the same story.  And then Mrs. B started telling us about illusions or something like that.  It means when a story talks about another story in the story.  Anyways, she told us about that and I was like so Animal Farm is an illusion to the Russian Revolution and Communism and stuff.

And then, after we read the book we got to do this really cool project.  We each were part of an animal group and got use propaganda and bribes and stuff to get the other animal groups to vote for us.  We made posters and came up with slogans and stuff and we got to work for two whole days convincing all the other groups that we were the best.  I was in the pig group and we brought in bacon to give to people if they promised to vote for us.  Everybody loves bacon, so I think we’ll do good.  We find out who wins tomorrow.  I love it when Mrs. B and Mrs. F let us do hands-on projects like this.  I understand and like it so much better when we don’t just have to sit in our desks and listen, or fall asleep, while they talk at us.

Journal Six:

All this analytical stuff we have to do when we read in class is ridiculous.  No one does that when they read.  I don’t.  I just read.  I like reading sci-fi and fantasy series because I get sucked in and it’s like I’m there with the characters.  I like that.  My sister reads a lot of romancey books, like Twilight, and she doesn’t analyze them.  I mean, not that you could with girly books like that, since they’re so dumb, but even if you could, who would do that? If I’m going to read, I just want to read.

Critique and Analysis of Curriculum Materials

Jan Krueger & Lori Urbas

Critique and Analysis of

Literature and Society: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction

By Pamela J Annas and Robert C Rosen

Published by Pearson Prentice Hall (2007)

Recommended for college prep courses in high school

Can be purchased from sellers through Amazon.com

Summary of Materials

For our critique and analysis we’ve chosen to use Literature and Society, though we were only able to acquire the student edition of the book, and did not have access to the teacher edition.  This textbook is organized in five themes: Growing Up and Growing Older, Women and Men, Money and Work, Peace and War, and Varieties of protest.  These five major social issues or themes have selections from a variety of different genres (stories, poems, plays, and creative nonfiction).  There is also an alternate table of contents that is organized by genre, in case a teacher chose to organize her class by genre rather than by theme.

Each theme begins with a short synopsis of what the chapter will be about and essential question to think about while readings selections form the themed chapter.  The content of the textbook is arranged so that each selection of text has a brief biography of the author followed by the text, whether it is a poem, short story, novel, play, graphic novel, or non-fiction piece.  After the text there is a list of study and discussion questions, suggestions for further writing, and critical resources.  There are also short chapters on writing and reading specific genres.

Literature and Society is geared towards juniors and seniors and high school, but this textbook could be used for high-level freshman or as an introductory text in a first year college composition class.  The textbook has been used in a contemporary literature class, and could also be used in a general humanities course, American literature class, or even as a base text for a writing class.

Reasons for Selecting Materials

We selected these materials specifically because they were used in our fall placement school, so we’re familiar with the content because we witnessed them being used in a classroom, and got to test out using them ourselves in the classroom.  We thought it was very interesting to find a textbook organized by theme rather than by genre.  It allows students to more easily make connections between differing types of texts.

In critiquing the content of the textbook Literature and Society we hope to examine the versatility of the book.  We suspect that a teacher would be able to use this same textbook for a variety of classes.  Because there are varying themes, genres, and reading and writing skills the teacher could adapt any section of the textbook to use the selections provided to support student learning.  We also hope to discover the benefits of limitations of this textbook.  Because we both highly value student choice in our teaching, we will be examining how this textbook allows for multiple intelligences and varied learning styles.  The many genres and themes of this book should allow for students with diverse interests to find a selection that they both enjoy and can relate to.

We expect that through our examination of this textbook we will also gain an understanding of why the textbook is ordered the way it is, and the relationship between each section and the selections in it.  This includes trying to make sense of why the authors chose certain selections for each themed chapter.

Critique and Analysis

Teacher’s Perspective

Because we were not able to acquire a teacher addition of Literature and Society we will only be able to make educated guesses and assumptions about what the logic behind the organization of the textbook is.

Scope

Our particular target text includes a variety of language arts within each thematic chapter. Each thematic chapter contains four different sections: fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction. Within these categories, the text contains specific genres to exemplify the major themes within each chapter.  For example, the section on “Growing up and Growing Older” contains several short stories that focus on adolescents or young adults coming into adulthood through various experiences.

In order to aid students in better understanding the text the author’s have included a section of study questions to check for student comprehension after reading a particular text. These sections will assist students in further developing their reading skills and thinking deeper about the text.  Furthermore, there are writing activities at the end of each section to guide students in making a connection between reading literature and writing about literature in either a reflective or analytical manner.

Comprehensiveness

Unfortunately we were unable to get a teacher’s edition of this text; therefore we cannot discuss the range of ideas for teaching literature. However, the student copy includes supplementary resources at the end of each section and a Literature and Society webpage that can lead students and teachers in the direction of further reading. Ending each thematic chapter the text includes suggestions for final unit papers.

Flexibility

The preface of the text states that “though designed specifically for an introductory literature course, the book can easily be used in a writing course, for its five thematic sections and many suggestions for writing generate a wide range of formal and informal writing assignments; and its process oriented chapter, ‘Literature and the Writing Process,’ is detailed and thorough, even including a section on how to write essay exams” (p. xxix).

Support for Teacher Learning

On the Literature and Society webpage teachers can access a glossary of literary terms and learn about major schools of literary criticism. Teachers could use these materials to determine what would be the best manner in which to teach a certain selection or themed chapter as a whole.  While the materials are address to the students, the teacher can learn from these materials as well and scaffold their instruction in a student-centered manner.

Curricular Design Principles

The sequencing of this textbook is ordered by the concept of building bigger and bigger relationships in the world.  For example, the chapter “Growing Up and Growing Older” helps students to understand their relationship with themselves, or their self-identity.  As the chapters move on the relationships build to include interpersonal relationships between women and men, and how they interact in social situations, such as the workplace.  The idea of relationships continues to build when a group of people in relation to each other, a society, develops a relationship with another society.  This can lead to either war or peace.  After this interaction between societies people often push for a better world, leading to forms of protest crying out for equality.

Student’s Perspective

Appeal

We believe that students will find this textbook and its selections appealing because it begins with an examination of self.  That is appealing to them because it is easier to relate to than a large, overarching and complex subject, such as society.  The remainder of the textbook exposes students “to a wide and exciting variety of literature in a way that will consistently engage their interest and that will help them understand that literature is about the very things … that matter in their own lives.”

Appropriateness

It is appropriate material for the students in an upperclassman English Language Arts classroom because it not only contain canonical works, but also has selections from pop culture, and relevant and interesting non-canonical works that encourage high levels of thinking.  This is an appropriate textbook for college preparatory courses because it covers the themes and genres that will be required of freshman in college and provides writing opportunities that prompt an engaging literary analysis.

Variety

There are a variety of texts, authors, themes and activities provided in Literature and Society due to the way that the textbook is organized.  There are five thematic chapters and within each chapter there are at least four genres of text, including fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction.  Each genre has any where from five to twenty different selections by different authors.  At the end of each selection there are opportunities for a study and discussion as well as a variety of writing prompts about the text.  This structure is sure to expose students to a wide variety of literature.

Student Choice

Because every chapter has a variety of different texts and genres of texts, and each selection has about five different writing prompts, there is an opportunity for student choice in both reading and writing.  Depending on how the teacher chooses to organize the course and how much freedom s/he chooses to give the students in their learning will determine how much student choice there actually is.    The range of writing prompts allows students to develop their own ideas and interpretations using a range of integrated writing assignments.

Logical Sequencing

The textbook is logically ordered through growing relationships between individual and societies.  The prompts for writing, however, don’t necessarily build on each other except for the final unit paper topics, which allow for the integration of multiple texts.

Conversational Topic and Design Principles

The discussion questions at the end of each selection of text provide opportunities for a compelling curricular conversation about culturally significant ideas and experiences.  They allow for students to reference their own lives in developing their understandings of the world around them.

Beginning

There are no beginning lesson in the student edition of the textbook; however the first chapter of the book introduces them to literature and writing process, which includes note-taking, exploratory writing, drafting, outlining, revising, editing, and other skills necessarily for introductory English classes.  Though this may not create any interest for the following units of study, it does provide students with essential tools for succeeding in the classroom.

Endings

At the end of each thematic chapter there are a selection of writing prompts that will give students the chance to integrate what they have learned throughout the chapter and discuss connections between multiple texts.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Overall, we think this Literature and Society is a well-organized textbook that offers the freedom for teachers to adapt it for a variety of classes.  Because it has both canonical and contemporary literature selections and is organized in a coherent, thematic fashion, we think both students and teachers would find this textbook to be a pleasure to use in the classroom.  We would suggest using it for upperclassmen in a high school setting to give them the tools they need to succeed in college level writing courses.  We cannot comment on how the materials for teachers could be improved upon because we did not have access to the teacher edition of the textbook.

Critique of Curriculum Materials Powerpoint

Teacher Inquiry Report

Context of the Project

School, Classroom Context, and Students’ Backgrounds

Central Crossing High School is part of the South Western City School District.  It opened in 2002, as the district continued to expand with an influx of immigrants.  At the freshman level, there are different levels of classes beginning with Sheltered classes specifically for ELL students, as well as Silver and Gold Dyad classes designating different ability groupings.  The school website states that the mission for their school “in partnership with the community, is to enable each learner to achieve excellence in a challenging, safe environment while promoting a sense of belonging and mutual respect for our diverse population.  Students will demonstrate proficiency in academic standards, including communication skills and technical knowledge, as the staff will work to advance life long learning for all students.”  This draws off of Dewey’s theories and makes sense due to the diverse population that they referenced.  The school averages around 1660 students in classes everyday, with 14% Black, 2.1% Asian, 5.5% Hispanic, 1.4% Multi-Racial, and 76.7% White.  They are diverse in other ways as well, with 35.5% being economically disadvantaged, 8.2% having limited English proficiency, 13.9% having disabilities (Central Crossing High School).

The classroom I am observing is a very different setup from the traditional classroom.  Dyad classes are arranged so that the teacher is actually instructing two classes at once, in a double classroom.  This means that there are two adjoining rooms that have an optional wall between them.  My mentor teacher and her team teacher, a social studies teacher, have opted to do nearly all their lessons jointly, meaning the wall is rarely, if ever, closed.  The arrangement of the desks is in rows, reflecting the teacher-centered orientation of the class.

The Silver Dyad inclusion class has an average reading level of about third grade, though it ranges from about first to eighth grade level readers.  I found through my survey that most of the students really do not like their English class, though in general they do see the use of taking English.  I have also found that they do not have much confidence in their reading, but do not know what they need to improve on (see Appendix A).   One of my mentor teacher’s goals is to, if not help the students enjoy reading, at least make it a task that is no longer so arduous.  One of the ways she works to accomplish this is by always doing all the reading for class out loud, this way students are not burdened with reading for homework that they would struggle to understand.  Something interesting that Heather has noticed is that her “stronger readers tend to not like writing, and [her] stronger writers really do not like to read” (Barnes).  One of the ways she encourages every one to read is through peer pressure.  When the class reads aloud students call on one another to read, and when called on, the student must read at least one sentence before calling on someone else.

The Silver Dyad class is an overview of different literary genres.  They have studied mythology, novels, short stories, and plays.  The reading focuses mainly on basic comprehension skills that will be required on the Ohio Graduation Test, as well as some deeper thinking analyses of texts.  The writing the class focuses on is also based on the OGT requirements.  They focus heavily on the five-paragraph essay, though they also do writing to learn activities, as well as fill out worksheets to aid comprehension and understanding (see Appendix C).

Your Role as Teacher in this Classroom

For my multi-day teaching lesson I taught “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, and had the classes focus on the term heritage and what it means in general, and what it means to them.  The first two days of the lesson we read the story aloud, and the teaching was presented mainly through a transmission mode of learning, with me asking recitation style comprehension questions intermittently throughout the reading.  I think I did this because I needed to be sure students understood the general plot and idea of the story before we could move into a discussion about the story.  The third day I acted as a facilitator for discussion, pushing students to deepen their understanding of heritage.  I was still more of a focal point in the classroom than I would have liked because the students were unfamiliar with the discussion format and so needed more direct support and scaffolding from me.

I did not have as good of a working relationship with these students as I would have liked.  I had a hard time remembering their names, and that was a huge obstacle to work with when trying to facilitate a discussion with reluctant students.  I was not as effective as I could have been in communicating the material to the students and creating a sense of urgency for them to learn it.  I also did not feel as though I had much in the way of power or agency with these students.  I think in part this was because I was treated as strictly an observer, rather than a teacher, so when I got up in front of the classroom, the students were already predisposed to disregard half of what I said.

This is a very different context than the one I experienced at Westerville Central High School in the autumn.  During that placement I had already developed a strong rapport with the students by working with them nearly every day, and so they worked well with me in my lesson.  They participated well with the short lectures, and then were excited about the writing assignment I gave them because it allowed them a lot of freedom to express their own opinion.  I think one of the issues with my students this quarter was that I did not know them well enough to choose content for my lesson that they could relate to.

Learning Goals – Plan Relations

For my lesson I taught “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, and had the classes focus on the term heritage and what it means in general, and what it means to them (see Appendix F).  The goals for my lesson were for students to develop an opinion on a text and be able to support that opinion with examples from the text.  I also wanted student to explore multiple perspectives when working through their opinion.

I began my multi-day teaching with an introductory activity about what the students’ names are, what they mean, and if they would change them.  We had a brief discussion around this introductory activity, leading into the concept of family names.  I then wrote the word ‘heritage’ on the board and as my pre-test, as students to write down what they thought heritage meant, or any guesses that they had about the meaning of it.  We then went on to read the story aloud.  My mentor-teacher has set up the class so that students do all reading for class in class and out loud.

As we read the story, I would stop the students occasionally to ask them questions about what they would read, or to clarify different points.  This was mostly done in a recitation format.  The first day I had the students do most of the reading, but the second day I decided to change my plans a little and I read the last part of the story out loud.  The students seemed to have a better comprehension of the story when I read aloud, versus when they read aloud.  On the second day, after having read the story I had time left over.  I had originally planned to engage students in a discussion, but changed my plans due to their inexperience having class discussions.  I instead had the class respond to a Dear Abby article regarding family heirlooms that related to the story.  We then talked about what they written as their response to this letter.

On the third and final day of my multi-day teaching I heavily scaffolded students into a class discussion around heritage and the different ways of valuing it.  I had students fill out a discussion web that forced them to examine both sides of an argument.  I used this graphic organizer as a way for students to gather their ideas together in a group before we moved into the discussion.  I was not sure how they would do speaking on the fly, so I gave them something they could fill out and reference in the discussion.  We then came together and used the points they came up with to support the side of the argument they agreed with, while I challenged them with points from the opposing side.

One of the big challenges I faced was discussion etiquette.  The students had never really participated in a class discussion before, and so they did not know how to act in a discussion setting.  They were talking about unrelated subjects while their peers were making contributions to the discussion.  This presented a challenge for me because the reason the discussion had worth was because it gave students a chance to hear multiple perspectives about an argument, but because the students were not respecting each other and listening to each other’s comments, then the purpose of the discussion was undermined.  There were a lot of good ideas that I could have built on had I not had to devote as much attention to classroom management and just struggling to hear the students myself.

Your Teaching and Your Students’ Learning

Description of How Your Teaching Unfolded

I began my multi-day teaching with an introductory activity about what the students’ names are, what they mean or where they came from, and if they would change them (see Appendix G).  We had a brief discussion around this introductory activity, leading into the concept of family names.  Students seemed quite willing to share, though their responses remained rather superficial. The idea was for them to do this activity with no inclination of how it would relate to the story, but in hindsight perhaps it would have been better to give them some background on that section of the story, and then had them write.

After this introductory activity I wrote the word ‘heritage’ on the board and as my pre-test, as students to write down what they thought heritage meant, or any guesses that they had about the meaning of it.  This was difficult for the students, as some did not even have a clue what it was.  I tried to give examples, but it was hard to do so without them latching onto my definition as the correct one.  We then went on to read the story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker aloud.  My mentor-teacher had set up the class so that students did all reading for class in class and out loud.

As we read the story, I would stop the students occasionally to ask them questions about what they would read, or to clarify different points.  We engaged in some mini-discussion along the way.  These did not generally last long, but were useful in allowing students to explore the text.  I tried to focus my own speaking here on not guiding them towards a specific answer, but letting them develop their own meanings.  Most of the students did not seem used to this freedom, and were not sure how to respond.  The first day I had the students do most of the reading, but the second day I decided to change my plans a little and I read the last part of the story out loud.  The students seemed to have a better comprehension of the story when I read aloud, versus when they read aloud.

On the second day, after having read the story I had time left over.  I had originally planned to engage students in a discussion, but changed my plans due to their inexperience having class discussions.  I instead had the class respond to a Dear Abby article regarding family heirlooms that related to the story.  We then talked about what they written as their response to this letter (see Appendix G).  This discussion went really well, and the students got really into it, bringing in their own personal perspective.  They had a lot of great ideas, and I heard from students who do not speak up very often in class, giving me suggestions for how they would respond to this article.

On the third and final day of my multi-day teaching I heavily scaffolded students into a class discussion around heritage and the different ways of valuing it.  I had students fill out a discussion web that forced them to examine both sides of an argument.  I used this graphic organizer as a way for students to gather their ideas together in a group before we moved into the discussion.  I was not sure how they would do speaking on the fly, so I gave them something they could fill out and reference throughout the discussion.  The discussion web worked well, but there was some tension in the classroom at first when I had the student get into pairs, they did not want to work with only one other person, and then when the pairs formed groups of four, some pairs did not want to mix again.  The group mixing was an important aspect of the activity because it allowed the pairs to hear differing perspective and gain new insights into the text.  I tried to be firm with the groups about mixing into groups of four, but in some instances it was not worth the fight because they were doing the work, so I let them form bigger groups than I had originally planned.

We then came together for a whole class discussion and used the points they came up with to support the side of the argument they agreed with, while I challenged them with points from the opposing side.  This decision to challenge them on their points came as a result of the fact that there were only about 3 or 4 different points the class came up with and shared, so I threw those points back into the discussion, rephrasing them and asking students to refute them.  Often times, students had a good point to refute my argument on their discussion web (see Appendix G), and just had not shared it with the class.  This argumentative format allowed for more students to share what they had written and more viewpoints to be heard.  At the end of the discussion for my post-test, I again asked students what they thought heritage meant, and to tell me one new thing they would learned during the lesson (see Appendix F).

I think overall that this was an effective discussion as a beginning discussion with this group of students.  I think students got some good ideas from it, and learned at least that there are differing viewpoints, if not how to argue them quite yet.  When talking to students after my teaching they felt that they would learned something more about heritage, what it means, and the differing ways of appreciating it (see Appendix D).  They also said I did good job of making them feel like their opinion was beneficial to the class, and they felt safe sharing it.  One of the students mentioned that she was frustrated with the amount of talking happening in the room during the discussion.  Another student admitted that the story was boring, and that he slept through part of it, but enjoyed the discussion format (Students).

Analysis of the Video

I chose to use the whole class discussion section of my lesson for the video analysis session because it is a good sampling of how the all the mini discussions had a tendency to go.  There was great potential for students to explore their envisionment of the text, but due to the excessive amount of chattering I tried to push through the discussion because it seemed like a waste of time.  This was because the good ideas that were being voiced by the students were not being heard by their peers in the class, as so I tried to keep everyone as on task as possible, and as a result ended up short-changing the discussion (see Appendix H).

My teaching focused strongly on the assumption that multiple perspectives are useful.  I was trying to get students to consider how they might argue the other side of an argument.  This lesson, with more time, could easily have moved into a lesson on writing an argumentative paper, as students were learning to consider how someone might find fault with their argument.   I also tried to focus on putting questions at the center of the literary experience, but I found when I went back through my transcriptions, because I had given the students a question to begin with and had them focusing more on multiple perspectives, and how they could answer that question, they did not focus nearly as much on voicing their own questions about the text.  These are good examples of how I attempting to guide the discussion through a demonstration of Langer’s principles of envisionment (Langer 56-60)

The video analysis session with my peers was helpful in validating my own observations about my teaching.  Some helpful suggestions were provided, such as for the whole class discussion I may have found it more beneficial to put the students back in rows before discussing, rather than letting them stay in their groups.  This would have made it so there would no longer be any students who had their backs to me.  This problem of students not respecting each other or me with their talking could also have been mediated by outlining some guidelines before beginning the discussion.  This was something my peers pointed out to me that I had not even considered, but probably should have because I knew that the students were new to class discussions, and so would not already know what some guidelines should be.  Another improvement that I could make in regards to the talking that was suggested by my peers was to strive not to talk over students.  I am not sure how the discussion would have gone had I not talked over the students because the majority of them when talking were not discussing the assignment, rather their personal lives outside of school.  I suspect just standing at the front and waiting for the students to stop talking and pay attention would not have worked.  I think if I ad tried this strategy they would have been fine just continuing to talk amongst themselves.

One observation that both my peers and I made about my discussion was that I moved through it too quickly. There were instances where I could have asked students to elaborate on a point that they made, rather than moving onto the next group and asking for their opinion.  I am not sure how this would have played out because I had to do a lot of prompting to get the responses I did.  I am not sure students would have understood what I meant had I asked them to tell me more about their point.  I did a good job of taking in what my students were saying and responding accordingly to their points, as well as doing a good job staying on track with my lesson despite the distractions that my class was creating.

Analysis of Student Responses to Your Pre- and Post-Assessment

In order to make sense of and see patterns in my data, I conducted a series of analyses that began with looking at the differences in the responses in the pre- and post-tests that I gave (see Appendix B).  This test was just the one question asking students to tell me what they thought heritage meant.  For the pre-test I got a huge range of responses: some students already had a really good grasp of some of the meanings of heritage, and others simply had no idea, probably had never heard the word before I asked that question, and took a wild guess.

For the post-test I asked students to add or change one thing form their original definition of heritage, to show me what they had learned during the lessons.  I ended up having to disregard the responses form the first period class because I asked them to make the changes on their paper that I had handed back to them, and I only got back about 4 responses from the class of 30 students.  For the second period class I got many more responses back because I instead asked them to flip over the sheet they would already been working on and to write me a new definition for what they thought heritage meant, including any changes they thought they had from their previous definition.  I found that asking students to find a paper I had passed back early that class was one step to many for most of the students, and that they responded much better when I asked them to simply write on the piece of paper they already had in their hands.

Another method I used to analyze and make sense of my data was to examine the responses that students wrote down in their discussion webs.  I was specifically interested in seeing if students had nay points written in their discussion webs that had not been presented and discussed as a class.  I found that about half the students had additional responses that had not been shared with the class at large.  While this was disappointing in the sense that some students did not participate as much as they could have in the discussion by contributing some more viewpoints, it was also heartening in the sense that some students clearly were able to respond to the question without the support of the class.  The had ideas that differed from what the class talked about, and thus made some connections to the text on their own without my specific prompting.

A General Description of Findings

This report has been significant in helping me to identify where I am still struggling in my teaching and communication with students.  I have been able to focus, through my findings, on what areas need improvement because I have seen where students met or missed the mark on my expectations.  The purpose of my study becomes clearer and more significant when read in the light of other work (Langer; McCann et al.; Beach et al.)  I worked to facilitate an authentic discussion during out whole class discussion of the text.  Unfortunately the discussion fell a little short due to both the students lack of experience discussing, and my lack of experience facilitating a discussion by asking students to elaborate on the points that they were making.  I moved to quickly through the discussion and ended up cutting off what could have been an excellent authentic conversation about heritage.

My lesson centered around the concept of heritage: what it is, how to define it, and how to appreciate it.  I attempted to measure this in my pre- and post-tests when I asked students what heritage meant to them, and what they thought it was.  After my lesson students were better able to narrow down or augment their definition of heritage.  For example, Matt took ideas from the Dear Abby article and expanded his original definition to include the idea of inheritance.  Another student, Jessica, had originally described heritage by listing some of her family’s traditions, but then for the post-test narrowed her focus down to include the idea of inheritance (see Appendix G).

When I interviewed a sampling of the students about how they felt about my lesson, one of them said she felt like she learned more about what heritage means, and that there are “all different kinds of ways of valuing [it]” (Students).  I had hoped that they would get this out of the lesson.  I also hoped that would learn about valuing differing perspectives, as Langer mentions in his principles of envisionment, but in the interview the students did not explicitly mention that, though they did demonstrate it when filling out their discussion webs.  They did fairly well coming up with ideas for both sides of the question (see Appendix G).

Most of the students who completed both the pre- and post-test made some clarification or specification in their definition; however, there were many students, especially in the first period class, who did not complete the post-test.  I do not know if this was because they did not feel like completing the work, or if they did not know what to write down to expand or modify their definition.  Every group turned in a discussion and about three quarters of the class did not have anymore written down than what we had discussed in class, about a fourth of the class had a discussion with additional points that had not been brought up in class.  This shows that at least some were really giving thought to the multiple perspectives about appreciating heritage that are out there.

Reflection and Analysis

I think the most challenging thing about the two classes during my multi-day teach was the motivation.  It was hard to convince the students to do the work because they just were not interested and did not want to be at school.  I did not know them that well so I could not really cater to their interests, the best I can do is take what they gave me during a discussion, and run with it.

Getting the class to read and have on topic discussions was also difficult due to classroom management problems.  There were a lot of kids sleeping or with their heads down, and there were lots of side conversations going on.    My mentor teacher suggested that I start off class by warning the students that if they get too chatty, I may move them, or if they are sleeping that I may have them stand for the rest of the class.  It sounds like an excellent idea, but I do not know if I could follow through on those threats because I had never seen my mentor teacher follow through on any.  It is also hard to do much classroom management because I only know the names of a few students in the class.  I decided to use popsicle sticks with names on them for the second day of teaching to get students to participate, and that helped a little bit on that front.  My peers during the video analysis section suggested that when I have a discussion after doing group work to have the students arrange themselves back in their rows.  This way they would not have their backs to me and would be in the set-up they were used to for whole class time.

Another thing that I noticed while teaching was my level of comfort between first and second period.  I did not experience this last quarter during my multi-day teach because my mentor teacher last quarter only taught one of each class, so there was no opportunity to double up.  I found that after having done the lesson during first period, I was able to make some minor adjustments to what I was doing second period, and because I had already taught the lesson once, I was much more confident in my teaching during second period.  I asked slightly different questions, and asked the students to write down slightly different things between the two periods.

The students did seem to have a better grasp of the definition of heritage, what it meant to them, and the different ways of appreciating it after the lesson.  One of the student’s I interviewed after the lesson said she felt like she knew more about heritage now than she did before the lesson began (Students).  I also think the students learned about arguing an idea from both sides.  This was not something that I explicitly taught, but the further we moved into the discussion and the more I asked students to refute a point that I had made with appoint of their own, the more comfortable they got with the practice, and the quicker they were to argue with me and provide counter examples.

My mentor teacher thought I did fairly well with the lesson I had prepared, but that I need to know more about the students so that I can choose an adequate text for the class as a whole.  “Everyday Use” was a little long for the inclusion class, and I realized this after the first day of reading, but could not change my plans to incorporate a different text at that point due to school copy policies.  She also thought that I seemed a little uncomfortable during the lesson: I did not walk around much, and was hesitant to really get on students about not paying attention.  She also thought that I was really professional, prepared, and flexible when dealing with changing schedules due to the snow days (see Appendix I).

My cohort colleague noticed the same thing I did about my class being excessively chatty.  She thought I did well dealing with the noise level, and being firm about staying on track with my lesson and my expectations.  She noted that I could be explicit about instructions regarding group work than I was.  Mainly the issue revolved around the amount of extraneous chatter in the room (see Appendix K).

My university supervisor thought that my lesson went well overall.  She noted that I did well in providing a space for every student to have a voice and make connections to their own lives, but that I should think of strategies to actively engage students.  She thought I did good job picking an appropriate text for the students and grade level, as well as providing opportunities for students with multiple intelligences to excel, which is especially evidenced by some of the student work (see Appendix G).  I was also reflective in my teaching, and willing to make necessary changes between lessons (see Appendix J).

Implications of the Study

Given the opportunity to re-teach this lesson I would first have to better consider my students.  One of the main problems I found with my lesson was that the students had no interest in the story, and so discussion became difficult because students either did not pay attention during the reading of the story or could find almost no connections to their personal lives in the story.  If I were to teach a lesson again using this story and focusing on heritage, I would want to precede the unit with some knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement, and use that as a basis for discussing some of what happens in the story.

However, if I were to again teach a lesson focusing on multiple viewpoints, I would change the story I used all together.  One of the things my mentor teacher mentions in her evaluation was that “Everyday Use” was a little bit long for the inclusion class to be reading in that short amount of time (see Appendix I).  I need to work on remembering that not all students are at the expected reading level, and that event he reading level within the class varies.  Therefore, I need to work on overcoming the assumption that students should all be able to read and understand a text I am presenting, and find ways to better support them in their learning.  I would probably use a text such as “All of Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury instead.  It has the same opportunities for students to examine multiple viewpoints and debate various aspects of the story, but it is also short and at a lower reading level, which would probably cater more to the students in the class.  It also is a story about students, and presented in such a way that students would be able to better relate to it.

The students did seem to learn about heritage from my teaching, as is evidenced by their pre- and post-tests.  They also came up with many good points from both Dee’s and Maggie’s points of view regarding heritage and appreciating them, and thus were learning how to see an argument from multiple points of view.  One of the things that I found difficult about this lesson was what to do about absentee students.  Because we were reading the story aloud in class, and students are not required to reading at home, I did not know how to involve a student in discussion who had not read the story, or how to include them in the class beyond summarizing the story, or having them read silently while the rest of the class worked.

I found doing teacher inquiry in my classroom for this field experience to be a beneficial learning experience because I was able to carefully analyze where my teaching fell short, and where I succeeded in helping students to learn.  I was able to support and supplement my examination of my own teaching by analyzing it through the frameworks and lenses provided by Langer, McCann et al., and Beach et al.  This helped me not only to see where I need improvement, but ways in which I can focus and guide my improvement to better help and support students in their learning.

References

“Central Crossing High School.” Southwestern City Schools. 22 Sep 2008. Southwestern

City Schools, Web. 25 Feb 2010. <http://www.swcs.k12.oh.us/Schools/High

%20schools/central_crossing__high_school.htm>.

Barnes, Heather. Personal interview.  14 Jan. 2010.

Beach, Richard et. al., Teaching Literature to Adolescents. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates Inc., 2006.

Langer, Judith A., Envisioning Literature. Columbus University: Teachers College Press,

1995.

McCann, Thomas M., et. al., Talking in Class: Using Discussion to Enhance Teaching and

Learning. National Council of Teachers of English, 2006.

Students, MDT focal class.  Personal interview.  18 Feb. 2010.

Appendices

Appendix A: Student Survey

Appendix B: Pre- and Post-Test

Appendix C: Interview Questions for Mentor Teacher

Appendix D: Interview Questions for Case Study Students

Appendix E: Materials and Handouts

Appendix F: Lesson Plans for Multi-Day Teaching

Appendix G: Student Work Samples

Appendix H: Analytic Memo

Appendix I: Written Response from Mentor-Teacher

Appendix J: Written Response form University Supervisor

Appendix K: Written Response from Cohort Colleague

Feedback Assignment

Question 1: The learning target is to define mood and tone, so asking, “What is mood?” should produce a definition.

Feedback 1: Yes. Are you “supposed” to feel a certain way?  Is everyone supposed to feel the same way, or can there be differences?

Explanation 1: Good definition.  I just directed to student to think about multiple perspectives of readers.

Question 2: The learning target is to define mood and tone, so asking, “What is tone?” should produce a definition.

Feedback 2: Are the author’s feelings what make the tone?  Can an author convey a tone that s/he doesn’t feel using a variety of words?

Explanation 2: I encourage the student to consider writing with a certain feeling about something they actually feel differently about.

Question 3: The learning target is to identify the mood and tone of a poem, but asking for just one word from the poem to demonstrate the mood is limiting.

Feedback 3: Does the word that’s used the most necessarily have to be the only word that contributes to the tone? Think about the words around “cold” that affect its meaning.

Explanation 3: I directed the student to think beyond frequency of words and look further into what other words could contribute meaning.  I focused them on looking into what words could affect the meaning of the word they’d chosen to represent the mood.

Question 4: The learning target is to identify the mood and tone of a poem so asking students what the tone of the poem is should produce the desired response.

Feedback 4: Look where the speaker mentions loving the privacy.  Do you think the author is upset about being in the snow and alone?  Be careful to identify tone based on what the text says, and not accidentally switch and identify mood.

Explanation 4: The student has mixed in some of his/her own opinions about the poem into the explanation of the tone.  So I remind the student of the difference between mood and tone.

Question 5: The learning target is to analyze how mood and tone affect an author’s word choices, but because the question is worded based on mood, which is subjective, and gives the teacher’s interpretation of the mood, the student is limited in his response.

Feedback 5: What are some example of words you could change to change the tone?

Explanation 5: The student has a good grasp of the analysis of mood and tone, so suggested a next step that could take them even deeper if they were to write an extended essay or something.

Questions for Carol Jago

1. How do you keep a sense of what was difficult for you to understand the first time through?  How do introduce difficult texts to students for the first time?
2. You seem to advocate giving students lots of opportunities to share in your classroom.  How do you develop a cohesive and safe enough community for students to feel willing to share their own work?
3. I really like the idea of identifying senses in a text.  Do you ever have students do this for their own work?  Do they continue to use this strategy outside of being specifically assigned it?
4. When you talk about choosing whether or not to reveal the context or author’s intent in writing something, how do you decide when it is beneficial to tell students these facts?  How do you decide when in the sequence of the lesson to reveal them if you’re going to?

Analytical Memo for Video Analysis Session

Part I: The Big Picture

High School High is part of the South Western City School District.  It opened in 2002, as the district continued to expand with an influx of immigrants.  The district is the sixth largest district in the state, covering a huge diversity of students.  My focal class is an inclusion level class of freshman English.  The students are middle to lower socio-economic class, from a variety of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.  The students in my class don’t all speak English at home, and in general, would rather not have to go to school at all.   They most don’t enjoy reading, but most do see that it will have some value in their future.

For my lesson I taught “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, and had the classes focus on the term heritage and what it means in general, and what it means to them.  My lessons hit a bit of road bump due to the snow days, because I taught my first day, then had a 3 day break, then my second day, then had a 4 day break, then finally taught my last day.  I began my multi-day teaching with an introductory activity about what the students’ names are, what they mean, and if they would change them.  We had a brief discussion around this introductory activity, leading into the concept of family names.  I then wrote the word ‘heritage’ on the board and as my pre-test, as students to write down what they thought heritage meant, or any guesses that they had about the meaning of it.  We then went on to read the story aloud.  The class has been set up by my mentor-teacher so that all reading for class is done in class and out loud by students.

As we read the story, I would stop them students occasionally to ask them questions about what they’d read, or to clarify different points.  The first day I had the students do most of the reading, but the second day I decided to change my plans a little and I read the last part of the story out loud.  The students seemed to have a better comprehension of the story when I read aloud, versus when they read aloud.  On the second day, after having read the story I had time left over.  I had originally planned to engage students in a discussion, but changed my plans due to their inexperience having class discussions.  I instead had the class respond to a Dear Abby article regarding family heirlooms that related to the story.  We then talked about what they written as their response to this letter.  On the third and final day of my multi-day teaching I heavily scaffolded students into a class discussion around heritage and the different ways of valuing it.  I had students fill out a discussion web that forced them to examine both sides of an argument.  We then came together and used the points they came up with to support the side of the argument they agreed with, while I challenged them with points from the opposing side.

Part II: Two Different Analyses of A Significant Event in the Classroom Discussion

First Analysis: Developing an Envisionment Classroom

I chose to use this section of my lesson because it is a good sampling of how the all the mini discussions had a tendency to go.  There was great potential for students to explore their envisionment of the text, but due to the excessive amount of chattering I tried to push through the discussion because it seemed like a waste of time.  This was because the good ideas that were being voiced by the students weren’t being heard by their peers in the class, as so I tried to keep everyone as on task as possible, and as a result ended up short-changing the discussion.

Langer outlines four points that are essential in an envisionment-based classroom.  My teaching focused strongly on the assumption that multiple perspectives are useful.  There are several examples of this through the transcript, where I am focusing the students on developing counter arguments for what they believe.  Take, for example, the following exchange beginning at line 136:

T:  If I’m arguing as Dee, and I say “Well Dee refused the quilts the first time so she shouldn’t get them this time.”  What would you say to argue with me? (19)

S₅:  I wouldn’t, because I agree with you.

T:  But if you had to.  If you had to argue that point.

S₄:  Wait.  What point? (20) Like…

T:  Okay, so I’m saying that for example “Dee refused to have the quilts the first time, because she said they’re old-fashioned, but now she wants them.  So I don’t think she appreciates her heritage.”  How would you argue with me? (21)

S₄:  She wanted to hang it up to show her Grandma’s quilting skills.

T:  Okay, so did you guys see how we just did that? (22) I argued a point, and as a response, we found a point for the other side.  Because she wanted to protect the quilts.  She wanted to hang them.

During this exchange I am just beginning to get students to think about how someone else might view the same situation from a different point of view than them.  I was trying to get them to consider how they might argue the other side.  This lesson, with more time, could easily have moved into a lesson on writing an argumentative paper, as students were learning to consider how someone may find fault with their argument.

The other three principles that Langer presents as essential for an envisionment-based classroom weren’t as prevalent in my lessons, and some not at all in this section of the transcript.  I tried to focus on putting questions at the center of the literary experience, but I found when I went back through my transcriptions, because I had given the students a question to begin with and had them focusing more on multiple perspectives, and how they could answer that question, they didn’t focus nearly as much on voicing their own questions about the text.  There was an instance at line 189 where a student posed a question to the class, but because the class was talking they didn’t hear her question, and so even though I reposed it for her after the class quieted a bit, it seemed as though the question came from me, and we fell back into the IRE discussion pattern.

During this same portion of the discussion the student who asked the question is working to develop and expand her understanding.  There are other moments such as the student in line 105 pointing out that Dee wore the orange dress.  Here, if I had asked her to explain this reasoning, rather than doing it myself, I could have pushed her expand on her understanding and have let her help the other students in the class to expand on theirs as well.  Also, by letting her explain, I could have treated her as a life-long envisionment builder by allowing her to take more ownership of her idea by putting it at the center of the class discussion, and letting her build on and explain it.

Through out the discussion I neglect to give students the opportunity to expand on their ideas, I simply take them, and move on, asking for another student response.  This is especially evident at the beginning of the transcription.  For example, beginning at line 53 I zoom through 2 sets of responses that I could have asked students to elaborate on:

T:  Okay, let’s move to this group here.  What did you guys pick?  What is your side? (6)

S₅:  *inaudible*

T:  Alright, what is your reason for no? (7)

S₅:  Because she can get whatever she wants.  And…yeah…

T:  Okay, so you think because she’s selfish maybe? (8)

S₅: Mmhmm.

MT: Shh… Guys!

T:  Okay, let’s go to the group in the back.  What did you guys pick as your side? (9)

S₆:  No.

T:  You picked no.  Why did you pick no?  Give me a reason. (10)

S₆:  Because she had the same name as her grandma, but she changed it.

T: Guys! Okay, so she changed her name? (11)

S₆:  And it was the same name as her grandma.

T:  Okay, so… Not only did she change her name, but it was her heritage name.  It was a family name.  Okay, group up front here.  What did you guys have?  What was your side? (12)

I think the reason that I initially did this was because I knew my students hadn’t ever really gotten the opportunity to voice there opinions to the class, so I wanted to make sure that every group got a chance to speak and have something to contribute.  I think this could have gone better had I given them an opportunity to elaborate on their point, or explain why they’d chosen it before moving on to the next group.

The strong presence of the fourth principle, students and teachers assume that multiple perspectives are useful, and the slightly lesser presence of the second principle, questions are at the center of the literary experience, suggests that I am comfortable pushing my students to expand their thinking, and that I see the value, and expect my students to as well, in questioning assumptions about a text or its interpretation.

Because there was only a slight presence of the first principle, students are treated as life-long envisionment builders, and third principle, students are expected to develop and expand their understandings, I can begin to infer that I am not yet comfortable turning over the classroom to the students for discussion.  I think that because I am concerned that they’re struggling to comprehend the text, that I’m not letting them build their envisionment and take the time to explore their understandings, much less vocalize and build on them in front of the class.  I think my lack of pushing students to elaborate and not allowing them to expand on their ideas led to a rather superficial discussion, despite the potential it had to be authentic.

Second Analysis: Questioning

During the video segment I chose to share a total of 29 questions were asked that related to the discussion or clarification of the points being made.  Only 4 of the 29 questions asked were from students.  Three of those were clarification questions and the other I had to repeat for the class due to excessive talking.  I think the lack of questions posed by students stemmed a lot due to me not prompting them to pose questions directed at their classmates.  Most, if not all, of these students have never participated in a class discussion of this sort, and while I provided scaffolding for them to use for ideas throughout the discussion, I didn’t model or instruct students on how to ask questions of their classmates.  I didn’t even give them the sense that they were allowed or should challenge their classmates.

Of the 29 questions that were asked all but 3 received a response.  I think I got such a good student response because I had students write down responses to the questions before we began the discussion.  Allowing students, especially those who are inexperienced at discussing, the time to think about their responses ahead of time was immensely beneficial.

All but 2 of the questions asked were authentic, and I used uptake on about 75% of the responses, and nearly half had some elaboration that followed the uptake of the response.  I think there was a high percentage of authentic questions because the way I structured the discussion, I wasn’t looking for any specific answers, rather I was looking for students to provide me with examples to back up their opinion.  Because I first asked students what side they agreed with, I was able to use a lot of uptake when I asked them to give me a reason why they chose that side.  For example:

T:  Okay, let’s move to this group here.  What did you guys pick?  What is your side? (6)

S₅:  *inaudible*

T:  Alright, what is your reason for no? (7)

S₅:  Because she can get whatever she wants.  And…yeah…

T:  Okay, so you think because she’s selfish maybe? (8)

S₅: Mmhmm.

I took the response the student gave me, and then based on that response asked him for his reasoning.  Then I summarizes what I thought I was hearing, and asked him if I was correctly interpreting his response.  This little bit of elaboration could have gone further had I allowed the student, or prompted the student, to expand his thinking and tell me more about why he chose that reasoning to back up his opinion.  Because I quickly moved on to the next group I tended to thwart expanded responses from students.

I think overall that this was an effective discussion as a beginning discussion with this group of students.  I think students got some good ideas from it, and learned at least that there are differing viewpoints, if not how to argue them quite yet.  I think I need more practice at facilitating a discussion, and this particular group of students needs more practice at participating in a discussion.  I need to work more on not moving on so quickly, and taking the time to prompt my students to explain their thinking more.  I need to work on strategies to get more students involved in the discussion, and how to push the ones that are involved to extend their thinking even more by encouraging them to ask their own questions and respond directly to their classmates, and not just to me.

Question Analysis

MDT Discussion Transcript

Revised Reading Conceptualization Paper

Growing up, I was just as likely to be found curled up with a favorite book as I was to be found outside playing with my friends.  I have always adored reading, as it provides an opportunity for me to escape my life and into a world of fantasy and magic, or to a place where people can change the world.  The genres of fantasy and science fiction are my first and deepest loves when it comes to reading.  To me reading is a way to enter a world where you can imagine yourself as the hero in a story, where you have special powers and abilities that allow you to fight evil and make the world a better place.  When the Harry Potter series swept the world, one of the biggest draws for me as a reader was that I could imagine myself in that world.  I waited and waited for my Hogwarts letter, and even when it didn’t come, I still had my imagination to take me places.  It engaged me in the story, and allowed me to create my own stories in the process.

While this model is easy to apply to fantasy, where the world has a magic system in place, it can also be applied to just about any genre.  The idea behind reading holds true: the reader can put herself into the story in order to experience something she either never has before or never would have the chance to experience.  It is an exercise in changing perspectives in order to have new and different experiences.  There are exercises that teachers can use to scaffold students into perspective changing.  I used a debate format this quarter during my multi-day teaching where I had students come up with ideas on how the same situation would make two different characters feel.  I think for many students, fantasy, or whatever their genre of choice is, playing with perspectives is the gateway that teachers should follow to get their students interested in reading.  Students can learn to empathize with a character whose experiences are different from their own.  This empathy for characters makes reading more enjoyable and once they recognize that reading is not always a bad thing, then they will have more motivation to work through a text.

Getting students to put themselves into a story begins first with the selection of the text.  Even young students recognize that there seems to be a difference in what they want to read and what their teachers want them to read.  This dichotomy of pleasure reading and school reading is what I feel is the most important obstacle to overcome when we want students to engage with a text.  If teachers can find texts that will appeal to their students, then they’ve taken a huge step in helping their students to come to enjoy reading and perhaps not find it such an arduous task.  I worry that finding these texts that appeal to young adult readers will be difficult for me to do as an adult, but also that when I do find them, that teaching them will be met with resistance by the administration and parents.

Because the presence of the canon in the classroom is something that I suspect will important to the administration the challenge will then becomes how to make the canon more appealing to students.  I think the key here remains the same as it does for other texts: make the text relatable and relevant to students.  Shakespeare is an important part of the canon, but most students shut down and tune out when they discover they’ll be reading a Shakespeare play out loud.  It’s not an exciting way to read a text, especially a play, and makes it difficult to get into the text and relate to it.  There are so many other options out there to teach something like Shakespeare.

I’ve observed a teacher who uses the Manga Shakespeare version to teach Romeo and Juliet.  It contains word for word the text from the play, but puts it in a more visual, and often more familiar, format for students.  The use of dramatic inquiry is also a strategy that can be employed to help students understand themes in a text.  Experiencing this technique with MacBeth, I could also see using dramatic inquiry in the situations where you didn’t want to have students read the whole text, for whatever reason.  The instruction can be focused down to certain moments in the play, with the intent being to bring out themes by accessing students prior knowledge and curiosity.

Shakespeare is part of the canon that even if I were given choice I don’t plan on removing.  I love it too much, and see the value in it partly because so many others texts that students are exposed to allude or reference Shakespeare.  As a teacher, I want my students to develop the same passion that I have for reading, and as a first step in this direction, I want to show them that I have that passion.  I think it’s important for students to know that their teachers read for fun too, and in a lot of cases, what their teachers are reading for fun, and what their teachers read for fun as kids.  I plan on having some book shelves devoted to pleasure reading books, so that my students can check out books from there.  Part of my plan for these shelves is to allow students to suggest of request certain books to be made available there.  These shelves will also play a role in the classroom because I plan on trying to set aside time for sustained silent reading.  I found that the biggest reason I wouldn’t read in high school or college was because I couldn’t set aside the time for it, so by providing my students with that time in class, I will be removing that obstacle at least to some extent.

The environment that students are expected to read in also contributes to their feelings about reading.  For me, in kindergarten and first grade there was the giant carpet where the teacher read to the class, and then in later grades as I began to learn to read there were comfy, poufy chairs that I could read in placed around the classroom.  And then when I reached middle and high school, suddenly reading was serious business, and you had to sit in your uncomfortable, too-small desk and analyze a text that you had no interest in.  When I have my own classroom, I want to have a special space a dedicated reading space to help communicate to students that reading doesn’t have to be an uncomfortable experience that they want to avoid like the plague.   Whether or not my students’ experiences are similar to my own or not, I think a great deal of good can come from having a comfortable classroom environment.

Overall, I think reading is very important to the future of our students.  It is an important skill for them to have in the “real world.”  This skill doesn’t just mean reading books or magazines, but also reading street signs, directions, text messages, movies, emotions, and much more.  A person who is a skilled reader can take stock of a situation and make informed decisions about what choices to make.  They can use their skill with reading to read the world around them and shape their lives in accordance with what they discover.

Being literate gives students opportunities to read texts to continue on their path of learning as they progress into adulthood.  It provides them with an escape from their daily lives.  It gives them things to think about that they never would have considered before.  They can learn new things, and also learn what other’s actions have led to in the past.  They can internalize ideas, make connections to their lives, and reshape their thinking.  It gives them a way to build their vocabulary and provides them with topics and ideas to speak about.  Reading, in its various forms, is so embedded in our culture that to even consider a life without it seems ridiculous.

Students who are unfortunately labeled as remedial or struggling readers often just need to try a different approach to reading.  If a student doesn’t understand the written word, then maybe teach with a graphic novel in order to combine visual aids.  It the writing on the whole is a problem, then maybe they’ll benefit from seeing a theatrical version of the text.  Maybe they can’t understand a text unless they’re part of it, so use dramatic inquiry or one of the variations of it to help the student become a part of the text.  There are so many different types of students, and so many ways of reading, it is a matter of continued experimentation until the teacher finds the method that matches with the student.  And all these different ways of readings aren’t only beneficial to the remedial or struggling readers, they can help readers of all kinds and levels.  I want all of my students to see all the possibilities that are contained within the concept of reading.

Reflection on CCHS Teaching: Day One

Reflection on Teaching: Day One

I completed my first day of my multi-day teach today, and while it went all right, it certainly could have gone better.  I think the most challenging thing about these two classes is the motivation.  It is hard to convince them to do the work because they just aren’t interested and don’t want to be at school.  I don’t them that well yet, so I can’t really cater to their interests, the best I can do is take what they give me in the classroom, and run with it.  I tried to that with our story and mini discussions throughout the lesson today, but because they’ve never had a discussion before, it’s hard to take all of that into account at once.

Getting the class to read and have on topic discussions was also difficult due to classroom management problems.  There were a lot of kids sleeping or with their heads down, and there were lots of side conversations going on.    Heather suggested that tomorrow I start off class by warning the students that if they get too chatty, I may move them, or if they’re sleeping that I may have them stand for the rest of the class.  It sounds like an excellent idea, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to follow through on the threats because I’ve never seen Heather follow through on any.  It is also hard to do much classroom management because I only know the names of a few students in the class.  The seating chart I have for the class isn’t necessarily accurate, because the students move around, and I haven’t had many chances to interact with the students and learn their names.

I’ve also decided to switch gears as much as I can.  Central Crossing has a policy that any copies must be in at least 2 days in advance, so deciding to provide additional or different materials to students based on formative assessment can’t happen on a day to day basis, but I will be making some small changes.  I’ve put all the students names on strips of poster board, and when I’m asking clarifying questions about the reading, I’ll be drawing their names from a cup.  Realizing the students won’t particularly like this strategy, I’m also going to write a few “stock responses” up on the board that I found on Yvonne Hutchinson’s website.  They require students to say something, but also provide them with examples of what to say if they are confused, don’t want to participate, or weren’t paying attention.  I worry that students will take advantage of these responses and feel as though they now don’t have to pay attention, but I also hope that it will help more of them to feel comfortable speaking up in class.

Another thing I would change if I got the chance to go back and redo this lesson is I would have chosen a different story.  I think I would have used “All of Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury, rather than “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker.  While I originally thought this story would be universal enough to allow every student to make ties to their own heritage and history (which it still might, we’ll have to see how discussion on the third day goes), I’m now thinking that it may be too long for the narrowness of the theme we’re talking about.  Granted the first half of the story is not as interesting as the second half.  I think they would have been more interested to read “All of Summer in a Day” because it’s only a few pages, and has a very open ending that they could debate and talk about.

Another thing that I noticed while teaching was my level of comfort between first and second period.  I didn’t experience this last quarter during my multi-day teach because my mentor teacher last quarter only taught one of each class, so there was no opportunity to double up.  I found that after having done the lesson during first period, I was able to make some minor adjustments to what I was doing second period, and because I’d already taught the lesson once, I was much more confident in my teaching during second period.  I asked slightly different questions, and asked the students to write down slightly different things between the two periods.

Describing the Classroom Context Through Ethnographic Eyes

Central Crossing High School is part of the South Western City School District.  It opened in 2002, as the district continued to expand with an influx of immigrants.  There are different levels of classes beginning with Sheltered classes specifically for ELL students, as well as Silver and Gold Dyad classes designating different ability groupings.  My focal class is Heather Barnes first and second period Silver Dyad of Freshman English.  During my observations the class was learning the finer details about writing a five-paragraph essay.  The topic of their essay, “what would life be like if you were blind, deaf, and mute,” was chosen to lead into their reading of The Miracle Worker by William Gibson, a play centering around the life of Helen Keller.

The classroom I’m observing is very different from any I’d observed before.  Dyad classes are arranged so that the teacher is actually instructing two classes at once, in a double classroom.  This means that there are two adjoining rooms that have an optional wall between them.  Heather Barnes and Melissa Fischer (the social studies team-teacher) have opted to do nearly all their lessons jointly, meaning the wall is rarely, if ever, closed.  The arrangement of the desks is in rows, reflecting the teacher-centered orientation of the class.  Though, while talking to Heather, she revealed that the arrangement of rows wasn’t her favorite, but having the double classroom made it a necessity if all the desks were to fit.

Each lesson begins with either Heather or Melissa going over “housekeeping” matters.  They review paperwork and permission slips that need to be signed, extra curricular activities that are happening at the school, and other similar topics.  After that the class will review what they went over in the past session.  In the case of the class session that I observed Heather began the class by asking students questions about the brainstorming they’d done the previous day.

It is interesting to note that though Heather and Melissa teach in a Dyad classroom, the desks remain facing the front of each individual room, rather than the back of each room, and thus the center of the joined room.  During instruction the teacher will remain in this center area, though most often the students backs will remain towards her.  Sometimes the students will twist around in their seats, but most often will remain facing away, giving the appearance of being unengaged in the lesson.

When the lesson writing five-paragraph essays continues today Heather begins by asking students what step they think comes next in the writing process, now that they’ve done some brainstorming.  One student responses “Start the paragraphs?”  Heather agrees, and begins to put up her mini-posters describing the different steps in the writing process.  She put up the brainstorming steps they used the day before, and moves onto describe the writing of the intro, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

The use of the mini-posters is a strategy that Heather employs, especially in her Silver Dyad class, to provide additional help to students who are more visual learners, or need a little extra help understanding the material.  After the class she asked Alison Cartwright, the special education teacher who is in the classroom to help out during the Silver Dyad class, for some help coming up with ideas to better help the students understand the steps for writing a five-paragraph essay.

As Heather walks the students through the steps in writing the five paragraph essay, she is subtly, or maybe not so subtly, providing them with a template to follow when writing their essay.  She follows up on this template idea by having them complete a highlighting editing exercise later in the writing process.  Basically, this exercise has forced the students to take a careful look at what they’ve written.  They need to highlight their hook, thesis, topic sentences, conclusion and clincher, as well as identify 3 specific details in each body paragraph and work on transitioning between paragraphs.  The heavy-duty scaffolding that this provides the students seemed to be extremely helpful in keeping them focused on the task of writing the essay, and not feeling too overwhelmed.

After Heather had gone over all the steps in the writing process she passed back the brainstorming papers the students had completed the previous day.  The timing for this was wise, because if she had passed them back before going over the basic steps of how to write a five paragraph essay, then the students would likely not have paid as much attention, and may have begun writing their essays without listening to the instructions.

During the classes I’ve observed there have been both minor and major interruptions.  The minor ones are often dealt with in one of two ways: by quietly confronting students or using non-verbal classroom management skills, such as proximity, or alternatively by confronting the student in front of the whole class.  While I am unsure of the wisdom of confronting an adolescent in front of all of his peers, it does seem to work in most cases they’ve employed it.  Heather, Melissa and Alison seems to have a good sense of which students will respond favorably to this public calling out, and which will not.  In most cases it seems to be a type of jesting that is okay due to the bond that they’ve developed with the students.  In the case of major interruptions, I’ve seen things get a little out of hand when a student is unmotivated and vocally angry, and when the teacher rises to the taunt that he gives.  The whole class quieted and the student was trying to verbally spar with the teacher.  Heather finally just told him to “Get out!” and I presume that he went down to the principal’s office.

Student Opinion Survey

Please spend a few moments answering the following questions. Your opinions and thoughts matter. You are not required to give your name, so please answer as honestly as possible.

1. Do you enjoy your freshman English class? Explain why or why not.
2. Do you believe that it is important to take English classes in high school? Explain why or why not.
3. Do you enjoy the reading assignments required for this class? Explain why or why not.
4. Do you read outside of school? If you answered yes, describe what you enjoy reading.
5. Do you enjoy writing? If yes, describe what kind of writing. If no, explain why.
6. Do you believe that reading and writing are valuable? Explain why or why not.
7. What are your plans after you graduate from High School?
8. This is a two part question: Do you enjoy classroom discussions? Do you prefer small group discussions versus whole class discussions?
9. What do you believe the value and purpose is of classroom discussion?
10. When you have had classroom discussions, what role do you play in the discussion:

____              Discussion Leader
____             Discussion Contributor
____              The Thinker (silent but listening)
____              The Uninterested (unprepared to contribute)
11.  Who do you think is the Discussion Leader in your class? Explain why you think this.
12.  Rank in order from 1-Favorite to 5-Least Favorite your preferred method of learning:
____            Hands-on Activities (role-play, demonstrations, debates)
____            Lectures
____            Discussions (Large and small group)
____            Projects (presentations, writing projects)
____            Homework assignments
13.  Describe your strengths in reading.
14.  Describe what skills in reading you would like to work on improving.