Week 3- Discussion Questions--

FEEL FREE TO ANSWER ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS-- These were the questions I had prepare for our Friday Book Club Discussion. 

On page 142, in the Anticipated Guides Strategy- prior to reading the text, students are given a set of true and false statements about a topic. Students have to determine which those statements are true and which are false. Then after reading, students reexamine the statements and based on the reading see if their predictions were correct.  1. Do you think this strategy is effective?

I feel like this strategy could be effective in an honors class. However, if it was practice in a regular class where students’ readiness levels vary (above, average, and below) it could be confusing and maybe overwhelming for the low performing students. Students are given true and false information about a topic, what if a student thinks of a false statement is true, and after reading they realize that it is really false, that just added extra information they didn’t need. Maybe when they try to recall information about that topic, they end up recalling both the true and false statements, or maybe the false statement that they thought to be true. I feel like this strategy could confused and overwhelm students with false information they don’t need.

On page 144- the Pair Read Strategy- in pair students take turns in reading a section of the text and the non-reading student summarize what was read and vice versa. 2. How does the teacher make sure everyone has summarized the information correctly? 3. How can she access understanding from all the students in the class?

Again, I like this strategy but it would work best in an honors class. The fact that it is done in pairs, for example, in a class of 24 students, there will have 12 small groups and there is no possible way the teacher is going to go around every group to hear each student’s summary of the read information. On the other hand, this is a good strategy because each student is accessing each other as one read and the other summarizes; it puts the emphasis on the students. However, at the end of the day how does the teacher access understanding from all the students? I would give an exist ticket with the essential questions of the lesson and access students that way. If students do not answer the essential questions correctly, it would be clear that the teacher would have to re-teach the lesson differently.

“One traditional but problematic strategy for addressing word problems is focusing on key terms…… the use of this technique results in an incorrect interpretation of the problem” 4. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why?

For many years, I have seen this strategy used in mathematics and even now I use it when solving math problems. I always found this strategy helpful because it helps the reader get rid of the extra unless or misleading information in a problem. It puts the focus on what the problem is asking and the important piece of the problem that will help you solve the problem. I would have to disagree with the author. However, I could also see why he made that statement. It is better for students to see the word problem in its entirety and not just in it “broke important piece” because the student might not think a given segment of the word problem to be important to solve the problem. However, the best way to use the entire word problem is by having the students rewrite the problem in their own words to help them determine what the important pieces of the problem are, to then be able to solve the problem.

Week 3 review

We agreed that the big idea for this reading was that being able to read and write does not mean that one’s able to read and write in a specific content area. It requires more specialized literacies. Just because one can read in math does not mean one can read in science and vice versa. Although our readings were about reading in our specific content area, they both provided us with many distinct strategies. All the strategies that we discussed were geared towards helping students learn to comprehend what they read. The biggest connection that we made was the idea of metacognition. The reading strategies that we shared from our readings all helped students think about their thinking in order to become independent learners. We also found that the use of concept maps/charts help students understand how to read their text.  For example, Alex’s reading mentioned the use of the Herringbone graphic organizer and our reading mentioned the KWL chart. Ultimately, reading in a certain content area requires the use of specialized literacies. We found that visual literacy is most helpful for students to read their text.

Week 3- Chapter 11

I have never seen a student or teacher read their textbook prior to starting a lesson or even after for that matter. Often time, students view teachers as an audio textbook or walking textbooks that splits (teaches) out the information they need to know.  Textbooks are only used when student have homework questions to solve. Encouraging students to read a mathematics textbook could be a little frightening for students for several reasons, 1. Math textbook are written differently than an English book or a novel and they are not written in a friendly and exciting way for encouraging students to actually want to pick it up and read it. After reading the vignette of Mr. Howard’s class, I noticed how he incorporated reading of the textbook into the lesson. Instead of the information coming from his teaching, he made the lesson student centered, so that the lesson was derived from them and their textbook.

Mr. Howard cleverly used the prereading, during reading, and postreading approach. Students read headings of a textbook section and wrote what they already knew about the topic and generated questions (prereading), then they had to interpret the information they were read from the textbook and attempt to answer the questions they came up with (during reading), and lastly had to refer to the Big Ideas of the lesson and write about what they learned and whether or not they can give examples of where the big ideas take place (postreading). I would love to see this approach being used in a classroom setting to see if it really works. I have only been exposed to seeing students and teachers use the math textbooks when it came to solving questions from it. Furthermore, I really wonder how this approach would work for students with learning disabilities, IEPs, and especially ELL learners who often times have trouble comprehending and verbalizing what they read. However, I agree with this practice because it can help students become more independent learners and take charge of their own learning. I would say this practice could work best with Honors students, and then again, I have never seen it done before.

After I read the brainstorming strategy, which allows students to share with a partner what they already know about a certain topic. Furthermore, it allows teachers to see which word or context students are struggling with. I found it really interested to read that using unrelated and unfamiliar context in mathematics reading helps students make sense of some mathematical concepts. I have seen this done in my CPD experience. I remember when my mentor was teaching students about complementary and supplementary angles. She made an unrelated connection between complementary angles and someone giving you a complement. She said complementary angles form 90 angles, when someone give you a nice complement you don’t slouch when you sit down, instead you sit up straight forming that L shape, which makes up 90 degrees. The connection she made between supplementary angles was with supplements such as vitamins. People take supplements to make everything in their body system “flow straight”, key word straight makes a 180 degree angles. She even made a second connection between supplementary and sleeping. When we sleep we lay down and we form a straight line. Students seem to catch up on this fairly quickly because they can relate it to their lives.

I also like the Prereading graph and display strategy, the authors explained that it is important for students to attempt to read graphs and displays before they read the related text. I have also seen my mentor teacher use this strategy in her class. When she introduced circle graphs, she showed her students three examples. They didn’t take any notes on it; they just had to talk about it without going in depth with the details written on the circle graph. Student predicted that the circle graph had a circle so somewhere along the lines they would use the property of a circle being 360 degrees. They read they titles and made predictions of how the data was collected. For example, one of the circle graphs was about three sports. Students predicted that it was probably conducted using a survey. They also predicted that it was probably about American sports played in school since they didn’t see soccer listed. I really enjoy hearing the students just make predictions just by looking at minimum information given to them. It really activated their prior knowledge and also allows the teacher to check for understanding.

I have to say the sketch the text strategy is my favorite since personally I am a very visual and kinesthetic learner. Sometimes, math can be abstract for some students; there are way too many steps and rules to follows. Maybe, if the student had a visual representation or create their own visual presentation of a mathematical problem it will allow them to understand the problem better. I have seen it done in my CPD as well. My mentor teacher was teaching customary unit conversions. Instead of just giving them the unit conversions from unit to unit, he instead drew out Mr. G. With the whole class, the came up with a visual representation of Mr. G. They drew a big Gallon shape, and with the Gallon they drew 4 quarts (shape of a milk bottle), and within each quart they drew 2 pints (shape of an ice cream pint) and within each pint they drew 2 cups. They went ahead and did the same thing to make Mr. G come alive using a different representation, They made Mr. G in an almost animated human body, where the Gallon made up the body, the quarts made up the arms and legs, the pints made up the palms and feet and the cups made up the fingers and toes of Mr. G. They really liked this representation of the customary unit. Personally found it very interesting and fun and I would always remember the liquid customary unit conversion just by drawing Mr. G.

Alex- Week # 3

            This chapter was focused on developing reading in a science classroom. It centered on identifying several strategies that teachers could use to promote reading in the classroom. These strategies were based on 5 principles. These were; understanding the purpose of reading a science text, develop ways to preview the reading in their heads, monitor their understanding of the readings, extract correct and useful information from the texts, and to summarize that information.

            The first two sections looked to set up the rational for the chapter. The first dealt with performance expectations that students could use to focus their reading. Some of these include making inferences about the reading, comparing and contrasting different ideas presented in the readings, and using evidence to support their ideas. The authors describe these ideas as a “self help” for students as they read. The students can use the list as a guide that will allow them to focus their attention on the important ideas in the text as well as help supplement what they have already learned in class. The book provides a scenario where students perform research on the differences between sugar and artificial sweeteners.  For example, when the students break up into groups to discuss their findings, they will apply what they have read in order to defend their ideas to their peers as well as use their knowledge to evaluate other work.

            The second section dealt with a topic we have covered extensively in class, metacognition. According to Thier and Daviss, the performance expectations came out of several meta-cognitive goals. As we have learned, metacognition is the act of thinking about thinking. the Authors wanted to show that once students have develop the skills necessary to understanding their thinking and understanding then they will be much more adept at adjusting their habits in order to maximize their understandings. To do this, the book suggests that the teacher lead the class through several “reading comprehension prompts” that mirror the performance expectations. Within each topic there are several questions that the teacher could ask in order to guide the class. For instance, one topic is labeled, “summarizing” and under that there is a question that reads, “Can I identify all of the key concepts and write a summary using these concepts?”

            Once these two main ideas are laid out then the authors go about listing five strategies that can be used in the class. One that I found particularly interesting was called “Write as you read science.” Just as the title suggests, students will be combining reading and writing to solidify the key concepts presented in the text. For this strategy, students are asked to identify passages that are interesting or confusing as well as take notes about what they have read on a separate sheet of paper. The point is that by physically writing out what is important students are more likely to remember how to find it later on. I really enjoyed this strategy because it is so simple. There is no extended writing required from the students other than making a few simple marks and writing some notes. However even thought this is a simple task it has a powerful effect. I have noticed myself that I tend to remember things better after I have written the information down. It is almost like muscle memory in athletics. I also agree with the text when it says it is best to provide guidelines for students at first. This way they can really have a chance to practice.

            I felt this was an interesting chapter. Though I was not surprised as I was during my last reflection I did find some very useful information. I really liked how the book set out guidelines for both students and teachers. I would feel much more comfortable using these strategies because I have a framework to build from. What I did not like was that there really was no distinction between the performance expectations and the meta-cognitive sections. I understood that they were related but it seemed like they just restated the same information. Other then this, I found the reading to be very helpful and can easily see using some of the strategies described in the book in my CPD.

Melissa's Response

Chapter 11 starts by explaining that teachers want their students to make sense of math and to develop their abilities to learn on their own. It is important for students to be able to read a math text and interact with it properly in order to apply their knowledge to solving problems. The chapter goes on to explain the three phases in the reading process which include prereading, during reading, and post reading which will help students improve their abilities to read math texts. The vignette that helps us to see these phases in practice depicts a teacher, Mr. Howard, talking with his students about the lesson they will be learning. I thought it was interesting that Mr. Howard asking students to come up with questions about the section prior to reading it in order for them to have a reason to read. I liked how they were talking about the different steps and he said he wanted someone to explain what they were supposed to do in their own words and not just recite what was written. Looking back at my middle school career I think I relied too much on the knowledge of the teacher and did not try to build my own knowledge. I think this was because my teachers would always give us a topic, give us the procedure to solve the problems on the given topic, and told us to find the solution. I was never given the option to think a different way and to find my own procedure to solve a problem which ultimately hindered my ability to develop my ideas regarding math concepts. To relate this vignette to the social dimension of the Reading Apprenticeship Model, the atmosphere of the classroom was comfortable and students were able to express their opinions about what they did not understand without any worry. I liked how Mr. Howard did not just answer the questions that students had but instead asked the question to the class so that another student could answer it. He also made sure that the students were aware of the vocabulary list and told them that those are the words that they should be able to describe in their own words.
After the vignette the chapter explains practices that we can use in our classroom during each phase of the reading process. The practices for prereading include using textbook signals to generate questions for reading, brainstorming, PreP, K-W-L Prompts, anticipation guides, and prereading graphs and displays. I have heard of most of these prereading practices but it was great to have examples of when they should be used and how they could be applied to our classroom. One prereading strategy that I did not know of is PreP. It is a prereading plan that is designed to stimulate students' interest in the topic and also use their background knowledge of a subject in order to increase their comprehension of the topic. PreP is another way for students to brainstorm what they already know about a topic, generate ideas, and see how concepts relate to one another. If I were the teacher I would put my students in groups, allow them to discuss the topic and then give them some time to write about it. I would want them to write about it because Zinsser has explained that writing improves comprehension of a topic.
Two of the during reading practices that I liked were Question-Answer-Relationship and Sketch the Text. I like the QAR strategy because it helps students enhance their metacoginitive skills which does not typically happen in a math class. In this strategy students answer questions directly from the text, make linkers between related ideas in the text, use their prior knowledge to interpret the text in their own way. Sketch the text is similar to the Visualizing strategy that Alex and I used for our strategy study. Math is an extremely visual subject and "many students have strong visual literacy skills" (p. 145) therefore I think it is important to incorporate sketch the text to help students understand the concepts they are reading about. I think that sketch the text will not only help visual learners but also engage all students in the class. I remember when we performed our strategy student everyone was more excited about reading the text when we told them they would be doing a drawing activity as well. Overall, this chapter was extremely helpful because it gave many examples and descriptions of strategies we can use as teacher to help our students to understand what they are reading.

Catherine's Response - Week 3

Dear group members,

As I read Chapter 11, I couldn’t believe the many ways in which reading and math could be effectively implemented. This chapter presented various practices that math teachers can use in their classrooms in order to promote reading and produce independent learners.

The beginning of the chapter introduced what the reading process is in mathematics. It was interesting to know that it was broken down into three phases. The first stage is called prereading, where students develop purpose, questions, and taps into their prior knowledge. Once students complete this phrase, they enter the during reading stage, where students are now searching for the answers to their questions, making inferences, and visualizing. Finally students then reach the postreading stage, here students now reflect on the knowledge gained. When we first learned about the reading process in class, I was unsure about how a student could “read math”, but this chapter was extremely helpful in clarifying by thoroughly explaining it. This chapter provoked me to revisit a very important piece of reading, “The Reading Apprenticeship Framework in Reading for Understanding.” On page 20, the framework describes the characteristics of a “good reader.” I concluded that a “good reader” must undergo the three phrases mentioned in this chapter. Surely, “good readers” in math class are the ones who make sense of their mathematics text and are able to take it a step further where they connect to the world. This reminds of Paulo Freire when he says, “Read the word and the world.” Such a powerful statement!

            Furthermore, I enjoyed reading the dialogue between Mr. Howard’s and his math class because he was able to model the reading process.

For Alex- Mr. Howard, decided to focus his lesson on teaching his students how to read their mathematic texts. When Mr. Howard, asked his students “how do you know there aren’t any more major headings?” and his student answered “There aren’t any more labels in red,” I immediately thought about formatting cues. Also, Mr. Howard pointed out the importance of the bolded words. I found this great! Too many times, students either neglect to care or are unaware about these formatting cues. Once students are able to point these out on their own, they will become better interpreters when they read any text. Overall, the dialogue clearly showed that the teacher posed questions and clarified where as his students searched for the answers and did most of the explaining. Whenever students have the opportunity to engage in discussions amongst each other, it is then that they are experiencing a powerful learning experience, not to mention that it is an easy way for the teacher to assess them. 

            In addition, I believe that the strategies/practices that were presented in this chapter all fall into the four dimensions of the reading framework. The personal dimension is certainly achieved because each strategy activates student’s prior knowledge, eventually causing students to question/reflect how much they know. The social dimension fosters the reading process in math. It is all about the environment that the teacher establishes. According to The Reading Apprenticeship Framework, the social dimension is about “developing a safe environment for students to be open about their reading difficulties (page 21).” For example, the Pairs Read strategy is used during the second phase in the reading process. For this strategy, one-person reads the math texts and the second summarize what was read to them. This is an excellent way to incorporate the listening, speaking, and reading in math. My personal favorite was Sketch the Text reading strategy because as student read they draw pictures to illustrate concepts and relationships. Extremely helpful for the visual learners! I remember my mentor teacher gave his students a sketch that illustrated liquid conversions. It was literally a big gallon in the center with a smiley face (He named it Mr. G) and attached the quarts, pints, cups, and ounces. It was such a clever way to teach liquid conversions and of course, his students loved it.

            Overall, reading to learn is not a simple process that can be mastered overnight, but instead it requires a great deal of practice, support, and motivation. The reading process is vital in mathematics because it creates collaboration between the reader and text with the goal to create independent learners. Once students are able to become independent learners, the world is theirs.