In order to narrow my session attendance decisions, I focused on sessions that would help build my toolbox as a teacher. Strategies, methods, special considerations, that kind of thing. I kept somewhat away from the more content specific sessions. I plan on coming back, and when I have a job and an idea of what courses I’ll be teaching, I’ll probably attend more of those. In the meantime, I tried to broaden my ideas of how to present material. Hopefully, that means that my English teacher readers can get something out of this as well. The descriptions below will go into the basics, if my professional readers have further questions, want copies of materials, or would like to discuss any of them, send me an email or a comment and I’ll get you what you’re interested in.
All the presenters were very good about providing something for attendees to take away from the presentation. With so many sessions, I don’t think I could have kept track of it with just my notes. Of course, this resulted in a lot of paper, which gets heavy. I ended up going to the post office on Saturday afternoon and mailing a box of paper to myself, which is part of the reason I’m not posting until now.
Friday:
9:00am – Using Effective Before-, During, and After- Reading Strategies
Like many of the presentations, this was accompanied with a PowerPoint presentation, which we were given in hard copy form. We were also given an activities packet, and we modeled each activity in a shortened form.
According to Robert Marzano, an educational researcher we were told more about that I can’t remember, the most important before-reading strategy is direct instruction of vocabulary related to the content. Essentially, the students must have something to build on, and we must provide that. This doesn’t mean looking up definitions in dictionaries, as students may not understand the academic definitions located there. This means creating definitions that work for your students in (my opinion) a culturally responsive way.
I think this is also a good during-reading strategy, and during student-teaching I came up with the idea of integrating a little art into the unit by having students create bookmarks of decorated and folded colored paper. Inside the bookmarks were their definitions, so they were always accessible while reading. Students would be encouraged to add words they didn’t know to the bookmark. I never had the opportunity to use this idea, but my mentor implemented it after I left.
Once the vocabulary has been provided, it’s important for the students to work with it, activities like creating word cards for each word on index cards with spaces for a term description, a space to draw an understanding, and space for additional notes is useful. These can be turned in with a self reported rank of understanding from 1-5 to check for misconceptions, then returned and used for word sorts or other activities (like creating the bookmarks, perhaps). Any activity that engages the student to think or rethink about the vocabulary during the unit will cement understanding of both the reading and the vocab. Other activity suggestions included Frayer Models, Term Description Group Writes, Think-Pair-Shares, and vocab games. (Ask for further descriptions)
Anticipation guides like true/false, agree/disagree, and predict/confirm guides are also useful. This involves writing a bunch of statements with space on both sides of each to write in answers, the left for before reading, and the right for after reading. Gotta do it after as well though! Before only is pretty useless. Include many levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in writing the statements. We were also given examples of Pre-Reading Plans.
During reading, scaffolding different kinds of note-taking helps students organize their thoughts as they go, as well as teaching the skill of taking good notes. Using the existing structure of the text to organize ideas at various cognitive levels aids this scaffolding. Some sections are pre-filled in by the teacher, beginning with the higher cognitive levels. As the year progresses, gradually replace the higher cognitive level answers with blanks, and provide the lower cognitives. Graphic organizers were also stressed, and some were provided.
Reflection after reading was emphasized, and we were warned against rushing out of the unit without allowing proper time for solidifying the new knowledge. One interesting idea was the idea of ‘question cubes.’ Essentially, they are two six-sided die, with Who-What-Where/When-Why-How on one, and Is/Isn’t-Did/Didn’t-Can/Can’t-Will/Won’t-Might/Might Not-Shoud/nt, Would/n’t,Could/n’t on the other. Roll the die, generate questions, answer.
(Yikes, that’s more than I had expected. Don’t worry, I don’t think they’ll all be this long, case in point:)
10:15am - Deepening Learner Understanding via Opportunities Possible With Games & Simulations
This was run by an instructional facilitator from Tennessee. He was smart, and put everything online. Thus, I don’t really have to do much to present it to you. I will tell you that it’s not going to stay there, so download anything you like from there. It’s here: http://www.e4tn.org/cms/index.php?page=ncss-conference
Basically, this was about creating games. The idea is that if the student doesn’t have a strong anchor point to enter into the topic of study, we provide an experiential reference point through simulation and game. It can also be an entrance point for controversial topics. For instance, in the Triangular Trade Simulation, one of the items for trade is enslaved Africans. When the inevitable question arises (or should arise if one is teaching with social justice in mind) of how people could do such an evil thing, ask in return why, in the game, players traded enslaved Africans? Enter discussion from there.
Games and Simulations can be used to create common anchor points before a unit, work with information during a unit to elucidate difficult concepts, or to apply knowledge after it’s been learned. All are useful, but of course they aren’t the only methods we should use. For more ideas and to get manipulatives to use in the classroom, Dinah Zikes (google her, first result) was suggested.
11:30am – Engaging “Low Achievers” in Complex Historical Reasoning
This was more of a case-study used to present a collaborative program called “Persistent Issues in History” network. Basically, Auburn University and Indiana University have begun accumulating resources for teachers to use and laid out guidelines for effective use of those resources. Namely, that they are Scaffolded, Authentic, Address Multiple Intelligences, and Facilitate Effective Collaboration between Students.
The PIH Network was featured in the April 2005 issue of Social Education, and I have the PDF if anyone is interested. Basically, in exchange for doing most of the research on a topic, the PIH Network asks its members (membership is free) to write useable lesson plans, with video whenever possible, and post them on the website. Use without contribution is highly discouraged. I’ll be looking into it more when the opportunity for focus arises. (i.e. when I have a topic to experiment with). Website is www.pihnet.org.
After a lunch break, I wandered the exhibit hall and accumulated a great deal of resources that I’ll be reviewing soon. I went to another session in the afternoon, but it wasn’t honestly all that good, so I’ll skip it here. In the evening, there was opportunity for networking and socializing at a couple receptions and a small party at one of the hotels. Saturday was chock full of some intense sessions; my notes are eight pages long. See you tomorrow!
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