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.