4+Mar+11+Meeting+Log

(Attended: Michael, Bobbie, Trace, Tom, Janine, Susan)

Writing Into the Meeting
The session opened with Michael, Bobbie, Trace, Tom and Janine looking at the NWP resources for evaluating digital work.

Discussion:
**Michael** wondered if any listed rubrics were keyed to NYS standards. He makes his own rubrics so he can establish points to match the assignment and worries that a common rubric will not allow that freedom. **Trace** discussed the advantages of creating the rubric with students. She liked the posted rubrics as a spring board for language to incorporate into a personalized rubric. Trace digital writing to complement historical studies and showed a history wiki were student work was documented. Bobbie saw application for this in math lessons. Brainstorm Content Uses for Digital Media: Collaborative Science Writing. History Topic Create Newspapers, Digital Stories, Smart board – how to use and document work and write on documents and take more images. Digital work allows access for students of archived work. **Tom** wondered how students view collections of work. Janine has science students using the wiki to collaborate on experiments and to look at previous investigations to help form new investigations. Tom spoke of how this is like a Jewish tradition of studying the Talmud. Writing in margins is like digital writing in that comments are read by others and commented on so the work grows with each reading – like an onion developing its skin. Tom has graduate students reflect in notes on reading and would like to see how reading other notes impacts on the student’s work. Bobbie found when she taught an online course it was helpful to see other interpretation of article and respond. Sometime a discussion occurred but many referred to notes in their reflections and paper. Previous writing was used by students. Janine noted that her students disliked the wiki because they couldn’t do the assignment at the last minutes. Tom reminded all of the fact that wiki writing is public and that has its own issues. Bobbie noted that in her online class the idea of audience did not necessarily compel students to write well. Michael discussed his love of using the flip video with students. He wondered how it would impact their reading if he recorded them in a self reading. Does reviewing help students understand the content more? Bobbie would like students to present hw from the previous day. Students would assess their own work and then do a second presentation. Would be interesting to see what type of change is made. **Tom** experienced viewing videos as a means to give voice to lower status individuals. A class he watched was being videoed as they discussed a story. The group was coming to a wrong conclusion inspite of a lower status student trying to redirect. As they watched the video, the students noticed their overriding of a correct voice. The video helped them see thins. **Bobbie** is going to a NY state technology conference. An English teacher reads submission and he records his response on the flip video, then emails work and students watch and respond to work. He does this to give students the chance to rewrite.

Susan presented her student work for content review:
She deal with 9th 10th grade curriculum math, science, and some 11th grade non math curriculum. She spend a lot of prep sitting in classes to refresh her content knowledge so she can better help students understand the concepts. Her greatest desire is to create ways for students to comprehend the text book. She finds most students do not read the text, they just hunt and peck for information. She tries to make an analogy for them of watching a TV show and continually walking out during it. You make get what happens overall but you miss most of the details that will be tested, worst yet the story makes no sense. Social Studies is like reading a story so you must understand the parts.

Last month’s group reading spoke about the prior knowledge that must be accessed to understand most HS texts. Many students aren’t readers nor or their families so they have little prior knowledge. She decided to use the technique of “magnet summary” to get them to read a news article and summarize it. The magnet helps the student focus on the main idea of passage and what are key words that will help focus or summarize. The student sample showed he could associate key words with the magnet and some wanted to know if you direct students to key words or do they pick. Susan does helps students focus in on main words and magnet word. For the keyword, the student must point to where they are in the article.

Tom saw application of this strategy to a English classroom. He would direct students to key words that push you to a theme.

Michael uses this as a summary strategy. The teacher needs to pick the number of focus words. He does this when he reads and has the whole class and then groups determine the key words. He also varies it by specifying a number of key words to pick, now if add word must take one out and have good discussions. Drives deeper level discussions.

Susan struggles with the Biology curriculm. Although a good reader, she has trouble sticking with the text and connecting. Vocabulary is specifically difficult. How do you teach reading to build vocabulary? Across the board 10th graders struggle. Have specific content voc but how do teach the reading to build the voc.

We looked at a biology vocabulary test and the chapter of the text where it was from. Flash cards aren’t always effective because the term on the card does match the test’s use of the terms.

Bobbie asked about online tutorials for absentee students. Janine said the key for her is to build a concept and add the vocabulary to the concept or mind picture.

Tom mentioned a content reading strategy book. The book describes a reading strategy and why/when to use it. One we looked at is called flip though text – look at visuals, find info, index highlighted word and predict what will lean and what challenges will you hit. Multisensory definitions help students build concepts for words. For students to internalizea term, they must see how the terms are interrelated.

Michael agrees that connecting random key words help kids study – order and sequence.

The session ended with discussing strategies to learn content vocabulary. Tom said he will bring the content strategy book to our next session. He also encouraged the group to plan out a conference session where we would discusses things we found to be useful in content instruction.