Trace

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 • Write an essay in which you discuss the chromosome ======

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 hypothesis and the gene theory. ======

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 • Write an essay, about five pages in length, in which you ======

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 compare and contrast the chromosome hypothesis and ======

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 gene theory. In your answer, provide specific references to ======

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 a.) essentials of each position, b.) modifications that have ======

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 been made to each position since it was initially adopted, ======

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 and c.) strengths and weaknesses that have been ======

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 attributed to each view by leading experts. ======

-Reflecting back on the year, can you name an idea/question/ strategy we discussed that you would like to explore further in the future? I am interested in that idea (from Hirsch of course) that (as I understand it) many of our reading challenges will be resolved if we fill in the gaps with knowledge - facts and concepts, so that students won't stumble over ideas and words they are not familiar with. Hirsch seems to advocate getting rid of the LA/literacy blocks we have, and spending more time in content area study. Interesting. I'm not really sure what to make of that, but I want to think about that more deeply. I notice that English teachers often have difficulty planning (especially early-career or pre-service), because they can't identify their content, and feel they need to take content from others (usually history). Of course, I'm on a personal mission to bring that content forward. In doing this, can an argument to counter (or at least balance out) Hirsch's argument? What is the content students learn when they read "those little stories," and why is that content important not just in terms of understanding other subjects, but just for the story's sake?

-In what ways would you like to keep the conversation about literacy in the content areas going either with this group, HVWP, or in your own school community?

I guess I said that above. What is the content of English? Is our main work to support the other contents (literacy), or is it something else? What's the value of the discipline? What is the discipline?

- What recommendations can you make to us about improving the group/experience next year?

I missed the book we read last year with all of the clearly articulated principles and theory as well as the practical reading strategies. Or what about a focused group experience in the summer? A week or two? = = = = = = =March 4th, 2011=

After reading the article about assessing multi-media projects in the classroom, I want to think about why a teacher would be interested in incorporating any multi-media work in the classroom, and what some effective activities might look like and what they would like to accomplish for students. I guess assessments should be designed to help the teacher discuss, look at, and evaluate what students are doing on an individual level. Each project is different, so each assessment should be different too. The article argues that a teacher might think about rhetoricality (?), which I suppose means that it gets the job done - or conveys the information the student wishes to convey in a clear, efficient, effective way. But before you can assess the student, I think you have to assess the design itself. Certain assignments/projects work best with certain goals. If I am interested in figuring out what historical events seem most important in a particular era, my project design might ask students to review, summarize, make judgements about, and clearly convey their understanding of each event and its significance. If I design the multi-media project well, the genre will fit what I am hoping my students will accomplish. A list of events and description of each events' significance might be one way, but if I turn this into a multi-media project, what ELSE am I accomplishing that I cannot accomplish if the project is just a written project? Does the genre serve the content/skills that I am hoping my students will work with?

Some multi-media projects I like to use in history:

digital stories web sites wiki-spaces (for discussion and display) posters, brochures, graphic novels (all can be supported with tech. work) newspapers

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= = February 4th, 2011:

Hirsch article. . . reading "gaps". . . baseball example. . . "If our schools understood and acted upon the clear evidence that domain-specific content knowledge is foundational to literacy. . . "

So I understand the assertion that content-knowledge is crucial to being able to successfully comprehend (and interpret) reading. I appreciate and agree with the base-ball example and the Dutch Colonial example. But I get the sense that Hirsch is advocating that we get rid of "those silly stories" and the traditional literacy block as we know it, instead filling it with content-specific work. My question is: What does this entail? What would this work look like? Does this really just mean more time in each of the content areas: Science, math, social studies, and ELA? Work with vocabulary, etc.? Reading non-fiction that has a purpose? And how do we figure out (although I know Hirsch already has) what students should be learning at each grade in terms of content? So as I understand it, Hirsch is saying that the reading strategies we teach in literacy work only a little bit, but what we need to be focusing on is filling in the gaps with content knowledge. How does this knowledge get presented? If it's reading, does the reading teacher then teach reading strategies that are content specific? That's pretty interesting, and would be a fun study. That might make for a terrific institute of sorts, if I believe in this, identifying reading strategies in each content area and then coming up with teaching strategies for them.

January 17th, 2011:

Every time I read the Shanahan & Shanahan article I am amazed that many teachers stop directly teaching reading at the secondary level. This notion makes me pause though and wonder what it means to teach reading in my content area (or at least the one I'm mostly living in now), which is English. What does it mean to teach secondary students how to read in the discipline of English? Certainly not decoding. In my experience, most of my students can do that work, work I assume is accomplished in the younger grades. Maybe this involves working with older forms of English, learning how to read Chaucer or Shakespeare. Maybe reading in my content area involves interpretation. How can a secondary English teacher provide students with instruction around interpretation? In the past, under the New Criticism model, students have learned to interpret (supposedly) by watching a master reader do that work. Trouble is, nobody gets to practice making sense of a literary text on their own. What methods do I or should I include in my curriculum in regard to teaching students how to interpret (not just decode and comprehend) literary works?

=writ of habeas corpus: In Latin: "have the body." A writ of habeas corpus orders government to deliver a person it has arrested to a court of law. Government must explain why that person has been arrested and held. If government cannot show that the person has broken the law, the person must be set free.= = = = = = = =December 3, 2010=

I was just reading a chapter in a book about content area literacy in social studies, and the authors advise against having students look up words in the dictionary. They describe that as a bad practice. Next, they assert that teaching students to break words down (morphology) is a waste of time. In the article we read for today, I think the authors give a different impression. I suppose that the difference is that the teachers are modeling how they go about learning new words. Looking up words and analyzing words are some strategies they use, among others. Not sure what that's about, but it surprised me.

Also surprising, and this has come up a lot in my own work lately. . . the value of direct instruction. Writing instruction has to happen in order to help students become better writing. Students can't just be made to write. Strategic instruction has to occur. Students don't learn how to apply grammatical rules and concepts to their written work by doing this work in isolation, they need to be shown how to apply this learning to their writing. Students don't just learn vocabulary by reading, or other "discovery model" activities, some direct instruction needs to occur. This idea is radical to me, because it runs counter to the way in which I was educated as a teacher. I was told (at least implicitly) that direct instruction is bad somehow, that students will acquire the skills they need to acquire "in the process of" working on larger projects, in the context of "authentic work." But this article (and other experiences) reminds me of the value of direct instruction that is strategically focused on building skills.

Interesting also, was the impressive amount of new vocabulary words that students will encounter in any given content (especially science!) chapter/unit. Makes me realize how important it is to pay attention to this topic in the content area literacy work. Makes me realize that vocabulary is crucial. How can we create opportunities in our classes to help our students become introduced to. . . experience. . . and master crucial vocabularies? Is it important to distinguish between a vocabulary word as it is used in a discrete discipline and how it is used in the "real world?" Like learning to code-switch? = = = = =** Reflecting back on the year - working across the content areas - can you name and describe a strategy that you can commit to using in the future? -Thinking hard about non-linguistic representations - Eric. . . Paulette. . . Nicole. . . Jack. . . Reading about this in the book seemed important - using a different part of your brain "to see" and understand, encountering this word - maybe vocab. in a new way. • ** “The boordiddy larped the argle in the ershent because the argle zoolked the boordiddy.”** • 1.) Who larped the argle? • 2.) Where did this larping take place? • 3.) Why did the boordiddy larp the argle? • 4.) Did the argle deserve to be larped?5.) Write a letter from the boordiddy’s perspective, explaining why the argle got larped I found the idea of using Bloom's as a basis for working with text really helpful. I want to experiment with this. . . I am going to use this lesson with my undergraduate students who are learning to work with Bloom's. I also found the journaling in science really informative to work with. I am so impressed with the commitment to use these journals, and I love the visuals as well. It's very interesting to see how different students write different things and use elements like visuals to support their learning. I also like process assignments like "peanut butter and jelly sandwich," which demystifies the process of journaling. What are some strategies you use or might be interested in using to help your students build schemata in your content area? What are some distinct characteristics of (your content area) texts that you can point to as important or characteristic of your discipline? What are some ways in which you activate your students' prior knowledge? How do you make visible (demystify) reading strategies you use to make sense of text in your content area?**=

Notes from our meeting on 3/12 - Making predictions: Ellen makes students accountable for predictions - rely on previous experiments or relying on previous experiences. . . the idea of the visual model.

Nicole - "I want to know more about my students' journaling" journal as a "do now" practice - Ways Nicole uses journaling: access prior knowledge before starting a new topic, to clarify vocabulary (students write own definitions), doing certain lab activities/station activities, Curious about the inquiry questions, adjust survey quesitons. ..

January 8, 2010 Reflecting on Jack's Presentation, and its connection to students taking control of their reading and students learning about academic literacy. The connection here to academic literacy is so obvious and so thoughtful. I really appreciate how you become more specific and sophisticated in your requirements for kids who are writing about their books as the year progresses. This connects with some of the traditional values (literacies) of ELA. Grounded in Atwell's work, students here are truly taking control of their reading. You have given them a safe space in the structures you provide, but flexibility for them to experiment with technology (and learn those literacies as well). This seems very, very important. A plan that was less thought out might be overwhelming or confusing. I'm imagining that work like this would work well in history. Students might be responsible for selecting an historical event or person who interests them. . . might read about that person with a presentation in mind, and might then present on this person. Maybe it could be a presentation of a primary source document, to prepare kids for DBQs. . . then these are stored somewhere over time, and kids can study these. . . Supreme Court Case decisions, famous speeches, etc. and the work might be extra meaningful because of the presentation format required, the way the presentation is clearly/safely scaffolded, etc. Students are learning about academic literacy in novel, authentic, and important ways.


 * January 8, 2010**
 * Reflecting on Laura's NING presentation and its connection to Social Learning**

This is about reading in an indirect way. . . students share their "reading" of the classroom. . . what happens there, what's important to focus on. . . what's important to remember when they are blogging on a NING site. Thinking about social dimensions and Laura's presentation. . . Laura's NING site creates what at first glimpse might appear to be a risky venture for students writing about their learning in a science class. Risky, because writing for a public audience can make students feel self-conscious, and in doing this, they leave that "safe," traditional exchange between a teacher and student. However, I think it's interesting that Laura provides safety nets along the way to make this venture feel less risky (I'm betting) for students than would initially appear. First of all, students are not required to write a lot of text. . . this is not a long essay they have to share. Second, Laura reviews student work before posting it on the web, insuring that a student won't feel embarrassed if words are misspelled, etc. Also, students are writing about their impressions of a shared experience, one they were a participant in, (so they are positioned as experts).

And speaking of this. . . what's more powerful (literacy is power) than being the ONE who gets to interpret a shared experience and have his/her voice posed as the "authority" on that day. An implicit, but very powerful reminder about the importance of literacy.