Some days are diamonds - some days not so much!

I'm composing this after class, and maybe should wait until I've had time to really think about class. I [finally] taught the Ordeal by Cheque lesson - my favorite lesson of all the example lessons I teach - and it felt a little flat - off somehow. For the first time ever this lesson seemed less than motivating. Maybe it was just so late, and once again I tried to do too much. Maybe it was me - was I too tired? Maybe I feel this way because the reflection on the lesson was rushed, and instead of just stopping [like I've done several times this semester] I had to give an example of what NOT to do - again. Yes, maybe that's it. I packed too much into the lesson [four reflective activities?? What was I thinking!!]. OK, so here is what I WISH I had done.

I wish I had done the Literary Report Card and ended the lesson. Then I could have unpacked the lesson and provided examples of the other reflective strategies as a set of possibilities. The Polar Opposites would still have been a good example of a way for ELA teachers to enrich vocabulary and have students reflect on the story. The character map could have been compared to semantic maps, synonym maps, and concept maps. Finally, the diamante could have been another example of a way to use poetry to help students reflect on their learning. Maybe next week I'll get the students into content partners and have them create some of these - and discuss ways to adapt these strategies for other content areas.

So, here's what I've learned and what I need to remember [again]: when I try to do too much, I end up watering down the lesson - because students don't take away from the lesson what I really want them to see.

I wonder how many times I will have to mess up this way before I don't ever do this again??! I'm sure my students tonight wish I had learned the lesson for good and all. Just goes to show - sometimes even those of us who have done this for a loooong time mess up!

Snow, Ice, and a new granddaughter - complications not foreseen

I'm prepping for a class I haven't seen all together since January 7th, and wondering how I'm going to pull off a visit to my new granddaughter in Denver, who will be a week old tomorrow. Thank goodness for doctoral students who are fabulous teachers. I have the Bookend class arranged for - Jamie [social studies] and Leigh [math] are going to teach the class on Feb. 15th, and do a better job than I could do because they will be teaching actual lessons from their own experience, then unpacking them. I know they can do this because I've seen them do just this on several occasions, so I'm not worried at all about Bookend. I had planned to ask them to come teach the class before Nora [the new granddaughter] was born, so this isn't something new. The "regular" section, though, is a bit more difficult because Leigh is taking a class on Wednesday evenings [when the "regular" class meets] and can't come in February. Maybe Jamie can come and do just her lesson - that in combination with online work [both synchronous and asynchronous?] will be fine - they [online classes] just take twice as much time to plan.

Because we [the "regular" class] missed the very first class of the semester due to the snow/ice, we are a week behind the schedule I had originally come up with - and since we meet every week, I will miss two class meetings with these students, not just one. Synchronous work is what I prefer, but I'm worried about the time difference - and frankly, worried about everyone's Internet connections as well - add to that the class size [nearly 30; really big to be online all at one time] and you have a recipe for disaster. I think maybe I'll come up with an online interactive lecture they can watch and interact with at their leisure and react to online, and some readings they have to reflect on and respond to at least one other class member. Then we can talk about differences in face2face and asynchronous classes and how those differences play out and impact learning. That might work, actually. Whatever I decide to do, it cannot negatively impact their experience of this course - or their learning in the course. I know that every professor believes his/her course is the most important one in a program, but because I also hold an MAT and my program lacked a literacy course of any kind - I know first hand how crucial this course is [whether anyone else shares that view or not!!]. So, I'd best get busy and get the interactive lectures done!

Advice to me: relax and breathe!

OK, here goes: I am thinking about class next Tuesday and trying to resist the urge to teach you everything I've learned in the past 41 years in one night. Seriously, though, I need to just chill a bit - we have some unfinished business to take care of on Tuesday night, and I have to be comfortable with not "covering" anything new at all if that's how things go. That's why I need to just relax and breathe a bit.

Here are my thoughts at the moment about class this coming Tuesday [2/9/10]:
1. We need to spend some time with the SCLA data you bring to class - how do you analyze it? Do you have your scoring guides [aka rubrics] ready to use? I also need to share the scoring guide I'm going to use with the SCLA assignment - that is, the rubric I'm using to grade YOUR work!
2. I need another opportunity to use the List Group Label strategy with you, without messing it up this time. I also want to share with you the review sheet [aka vocabulary reinforcement sheet] I used with my students so you can see when and how I used the vocabulary reinforcement strategies with my own students. Then maybe some of this will make sense to you.
3. We need to make some time for Book Clubs to meet - I don't want to forget that!
4. I really want an opportunity to have you experience a Semantic Feature Analysis activity, but that may be pushing it for Tuesday evening.

All of the above may be just too much for one night's class, and I know where I'll draw the line. That's the secret, you know, as you plan, you plan in modules [and you plan more than you think you'll get to], then you can decide as you are teaching what will actually make the "prime time" and what won't - what will be left for another day and what simply won't see the light of day.

OK, it's snowing out and I need to get home before I can't -- Here's to a great weekend!

Rethinking Instruction

Yesterday in content reading classes we did the study strategies jigsaw - what I have termed learning to learn. I have read through and "graded" all the reflections and once again find myself wondering if this Jigsaw is the way I want to go with this information. I wonder if the artificial nature of the activity makes it less useful for my students, and if there is a better way - a more economical way [with respect to time] to accomplish my instructional goals. The hard part is that these students, by and large, have already developed their own note making strategies and are good readers, making the exercise "feel silly" for some students. I get that comment every year and wonder now why it's taken me this long to see a different way to do this activity.

One idea I've thought of happened because a student needed to miss this particular class in order to teach his Internship class, an experience that I think is more valuable than the Jigsaw [or just about anything else I could drum up in class]. I didn't think it fair to penalize him because his schedule didn't mesh with one I had made up for our class way back in August. So, we talked about it and I came up with an alternate plan. Basically, he will use one of the note making strategies to hold his thinking about chapter 11 [on study strategies], then find two other students who used the other note making techniques and talk with them about their methods. Then, he will write a reflection about the methods and compare and contrast their advantages and disadvantages. As we were negotiating this, it occurred to me that perhaps I had stumbled on a better way to accomplish my instructional goals with this chapter.

In fact, as I type this, I am thinking that I might just begin the semester by teaching each of the note making strategies prior to the initial chapters - having students use a different note making strategy each chapter, then in groups discussing them. I have a couple of charts they could complete as they discuss the information, and then write a reflection on the process. That would free up an entire day - and would help students in a more authentic way. They would see how I modeled the use of note making and discussion as part of our class - it would not be as artificial. This might also be a way to feature the advantages of some of the methods that students just didn’t see in the present activity. INSERT, in particular, took quite a few hits in their reflections. It isn’t one of my favorites, either, or wasn’t until I discovered how much Mary’s physics and chemistry students liked it. Chapters 2 and 3 in our textbook are particularly difficult – written more on a graduate level than for initial certification students. INSERT would be a good strategy to use with those chapters precisely because they are so difficult.

Another related problem that surfaced in students’ reflections is that very few of them perceived the idea that even if they didn’t like one of the note making strategies, they will have students in their classes who need to be taught several note making strategies so they can choose one that works best for them. Most of my students seemed to think they will be teaching kids much like themselves. At least that’s the impression I got from comments about teaching “only 2-column notes because I really liked that one” or “I’d never teach INSERT, it’s too much trouble” or “chapter mapping won’t work with high school because there is too much information to record.” Perhaps three to five students understood that these strategies could and should be adapted to fit their particular content area and some actually gave excellent ways to adapt them. The idea about putting page numbers on the INSERT sticky-notes was superb! Someone else mentioned that perhaps students could map each section rather than the whole text – a good solution to the conceptual density of many science and social studies textbooks. Another student mentioned altering 2-column notes for math. Perhaps I need to be pleased that a few students really “got it” rather than worrying because all of them did not make the connections I hoped they would make.

So, maybe I've come up with a different way to teach the note making strategies, and do it in a more time-efficient manner. Also, this might give me an opportunity to highlight the different aspects of each strategy. One of the difficulties I noticed as I read students’ reflections is that they are having a hard time understanding where their students will be in terms of students’ ability to read and understand text . . . only one student made the connection between these note making strategies and using a CLOZE or other initial assessment to determine the amount of support students will need to read and comprehend the text. After all, most of them admitted to never reading their textbooks and they all did very well in high school. The most depressing part of all of this is students’ possible solution to this problem – it is one I fear. These students will probably revert to “giving notes” on the overhead, once again doing the students’ work instead of actually teaching them how to read and comprehend complex text such as newspaper and journal articles, primary sources, and the textbook. Giving notes is great crowd control; it feels comfortable because most of these students endured that kind of mind-numbing teaching when they were in high school. Unfortunately, it also impedes students’ literacy development and extinguishes curiosity and motivation in students.

As students completed the Jigsaw yesterday, I began thinking about how I’d handle Thursday’s class. I decided to have them take notes on the first part of chapter 7 – on guiding learning, and figure out what to do during Thursday's class later. I had originally planned to do the Columbus lesson, way back in August, because it is one that makes the point of matching strategy selection to your teaching goals. But this week is homecoming, and ESPN’s College Game Day will be broadcast from the CU campus. Great. I’ll be lucky to have a half-dozen students in class on Thursday. I don’t want to use that lesson for a hand-full of students, it requires discussion, and more points of view are better than just a few . . . but on the other hand, the students who do come to class will probably be the only ones who actually consider using these strategies, so maybe it would be productive after all. I’m getting way to cynical now. All because I realized [even before class] that the Jigsaw was probably not the best way to go – but I had already given the assignment, and was too stubborn to change course in mid-stream. I didn’t want to have students spend time making lesson plans and arrive in class to find I had changed my mind. I’m upset with myself and taking it out on students, which isn’t fair. What’s worse, I know better. At least they called it as they saw it. I’m grateful they trust me enough to tell me how they really feel and think about things in class. Without their honesty, I’d never be able to improve my own teaching. As I type this, I’m tempted to delete all my cynical comments, but I won’t do that because in order to get honesty, I need to be honest with them and with myself. I need to take a good hard look at how I’ve approached this particular chapter and make some changes now. It won’t undo a failed lesson for students this semester, but maybe it will improve the class from here on out. We have such excellent students in secondary education – they are bright, optimistic, concerned about their students’ learning, anxious to do a good job. I want them prepared and confident about their teaching from their first day to their [hopefully] retirement. We lose too many good teachers before they’ve had a chance to find their own art of teaching.

So, it’s back to the drawing board for Thursday – but I don’t think I’ll do the Columbus lesson because I wouldn’t have time to do that lesson AND focus on the ideas in the first part of chapter 7 and that’s what students will be prepared to discuss. I’ll need to come up with a way to focus and direct their small group discussion, and a way to have the groups share their information. The Columbus lesson can come next week. For now, I’ll need to back up and punt – something I seem to do too often for someone who has been at this for nearly 40 years.