The Five Minute University!

What a great and accurate video!!  I think I may have graduated from there!!  I think so much of what Fr. Guido says rings true in education today - memorization, and ultimately, remembering very little.  His description of Spanish and Economics is spot on!  I was actually talking to one of my roommates today and I mentioned something about economics and I said 'that is the only thing I remember from economics.' 

But as much as I feel that Fr. Guido's description is accurate, I also think that while we are in classes - and even memorization to a small extent, does exercise our brains where they otherwise wouldn't be.  I was thinking about math the other day.  In high school, I had to take through Pre-Calc.  To this day, I believe I have really only used addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and a very very small amount of percentage figuring (mostly estimating) in my life.  As I was teaching math to my students these past few years, I kept thinking about why they needed to know these advanced formulas or topics, and when they would even use them in real life.  I feel like the reality is, most won't.  Continuing in that line of thinking, I think that's where Montessori schools are really great because the children mainly focus on what they want, what they are drawn too.  Chances are, those areas of interest are going to be what they end up doing in later life.  However, I think that even the things we won't use help to stretch us and exercise our brain muscles.  Even the things we struggle with.  Do I use advanced math in my own life?  No.  Was it worth it to take all the way through Pre-Calc - I don't think so, I think I could have been exploring other things.  But I think it helps students to be more well-rounded and stretch their abilities when they do things that they don't love, though I think that should be in moderation!  However, I also think if a student is forced to do too much of something that they have no interest in or don't feel drawn too, school can become a turn-off and they may just shut down and disengage in all learning. 

My question this week is should we require students to take advanced classes in topics they have no interest in?  Is it valuable for them to learn things that they probably will not even use in their lives?

Writing as a Vehicle for Literacy

I think it is in the Hebert article where writing is compared to a vehicle to use for reading comprehension.  This seems a very appropriate image to describe a part writing can play in the world of literacy.  It is a way to transport information from the mind into a thought as it requires students to take something they have read and express it.  As the Keys article states 'writing has potential to foster the generation of knowledge by actively translating new meanings into verbal systems.'  Writing is almost like putting the foot to the gas pedal and taking what was read and going somewhere to it, its an action! 

As I'm writing this, I'm thinking about how our blogs do this for us and for our material.  One of the important aspects I took from the Keys, Labbo, and Hebert articles is the importance of letting students drive their own writing car, so to speak, to give them the freedom to go at the pace that they have set and on the course they want to go, to allow them to make 'personal interpretations' (Keys) and personal reactions (Hebert) of and to texts and topics.  In many ways, I feel we experience this in our blogs.  We get to process our readings and take what is personally meaningful and explore it.  Writing about the readings and materials helps me to process it and take meaning from it, to think about it, and to comprehend it.  The Keys article gives the example of science - how often, writing in this content involves such strategies as fill-in-the-blanks, etc, but does 'not often consider projecting personal interpretations, hypothesis, explanations into science writing...'  I think about how much more meaning our material has when we are given the freedom to dive in and to write about it.  If we were given fill-in's, the synthesis would remain superficial.  Each content area can benefit from having students write.  I think it takes time and teaching students how to write (Hebert), but if teachers make the investment in doing this, writing can become a powerful vehicle for students to explore and comprehend material. Writing also gives the students an understanding of what it means to be an author, and through this, as Hebert points out, they can improve their reading!

The past two years, I've done writers workshop with my students and this weeks readings have really made me reflect on how I have and should use this and other strategies as a teacher and how I can improve my students writing time to help them have a better experience and get the most out of it.  I love writers workshop time.  This past year, my students would beg to do it, and they would do it for as long as I let them, and most of them would use the time productively.  I could really relate to the Labbo article and it helped me to really reflect on how I do it and what I should do differently.  I tended to do things more hands-off than most of the things I've read about writers workshop, but it has mostly been out of fear of discouraging students, so I was a little excited when I read that article and suggested teachers should 'focus more on what the child is trying to do and less on what we are trying to teach' (Labbo).  Two years ago, when I first started using WW, I was far more structured and rigid, afraid if a student didn't have a formal outline.  This past year, I tried demonstrating and suggesting to students to use some kind of formal outline, but I wasn't as strict about it.  I let them volunteer what they wanted to share and if they wanted to share.  I tried to let them tell me more about their writing and decide what form of writing they wanted to use and how they wanted to approach it.  I feel like I can see the difference in my students desires to write.  It made a big difference allowing them to choose which tools they used that I provided.  I am thankful for the Labbo article because it helps me to be more intentional about how I approach my WW - I had already started changing some of the things I did, but out of fear, that article helps me to be intentional and confident in how I will approach it!! 

I felt like the Hebert reading was really valuable, practical, and useful for really applying to ones teaching, evidenced where it says 'practices in this report should be used by educators in a flexible and thoughtful way to support student learning' (p 5).  I thought the entire article was really good, but one thing that really stuck out to me was more the actual style of the article.  I was thinking about it compared to some of the other recent readings and I just feel like it was much more easy to read and to comprehend....I was wondering if anyone else had that experience and based on what we've learned in this course, why that might be?  :)

I guess my question for this week is focused on the Writers Workshop aspect of the reading.....from my own experience, I feel that I've learned the value and importance of giving students freedom in writing, but practically speaking, students must write a five paragraphed essay of different types in middle school and even more in high school.  Practically speaking, how do we balance freedom in writing and teaching the formalities?