Hi everyone!

 

It is the second week of school and today was the first day my students were Plugged-In.  We began independent reading in class and I think it went very well.  I have about half of my students choose to use a book of cd from the PITR Level 2 collection.  Some students chose to read books from this selection, but opted not to use the cd support.  I noticed a few of students who chose not to use the cd had a difficult time staying on task with the reading, so next week I'll be making a few changes.  All and all, I will say almost of my students were engaged and were even fighting over the books already!

 I teach 9th grade Reading.  I'm going to begin "Among the Hidden" tomorrow with my freshmen.  Last year when I did this book my students were very engaged and it was easy to keep them on task with the reading.  Like Lee, I'm not going to over do it with supports and strategies with this book.  Though I want to make sure that they understand the main idea, build their vocabularies, and making connections to the novel, I also want my students to enjoy reading our first class novel!  I will definitely do a word a day and use the visualizing strategies. I plan on using the nonfiction readers with my students, as my students last year found the articles interesting.

 I don't plan on doing Lit Circles until October when I know my students better and spend more time setting up my classroom community.

 

Well, that's it for now.  I'll post later when we being our novel and share our progress.

 

 

Well, we're back in the swing of things here in Orlando.  I've spent the last week doing team building and "get-to-know-you" activities, and now that the students' schedules have been corrected and adjusted, I'm ready to get us started on our books. 

 

I have 9th and 10th grade again this year, although unlike last year, this year three of my five classes are honors classes.  It's been fun to consider how I might do things differently with the honors class.

 

So, here's my plan for the beginning of the year.  I'm going to use Among the Hidden (Level 2) with the 9th graders.  It's so engaging and, while the reading level isn't incredibly challenging, there are really important concepts that we can discuss.  The one negative comment my students had last year was that I had them do too much 'stuff' while we were reading.  In retrospect, I agree with them.  There's so much to do and such good stuff in the teacher's guide, but it can be overwhelming for the students.  So, I'm going to try to focus on visualizing and vocabulary.  We'll do the "Vizualizing to find main idea" and "Visualizing reading by making connections."  We'll do one vocab word a day as a class and I'll ask students to find another word of their own to add to their notebooks.  We'll keep a word wall and develop and organization for the words we add to the wall.  We'll also use a few of the nonfiction pieces to begin practicing research skills like developing questions and noting facts.

 

Both of my 10th grade classes are honors classes.  We're beginning by doing The Hoopster (Level 3) as Book-in-a-Day.  This is actually an independent title, but I did this with the students last year and it went well.  Each student is responsible for a small part of the book.  They read, summarize, and note questions they have about what happened before and after their parts.  Then we go through the chapters and each person shares their information.

 

After The Hoopster we're going to begin Lay That Trumpet in Their Hands and then To Kill a Mockingbird.  We'll focus on tolerance and civil rights.  Then we'll move into a study of the Holocaust with Night .  Although this isn't a core novel in Level 3, we teach it to all 10th graders at our school.  There are several great nonfiction pieces in PITR that tie these two together nicely. 

 

That's my skeleton plan right now and I'll blog more details when we get going.

This topic came up as part of the TeacherPlaces Book Clubs discussion of Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  Click here for the first post on this topic.

In that post, I cite the following definition for this phenomenon:

The book addresses a very interesting topic on pages 159 and following: the availability bias, defined as "a natural tendency that causes us, when estimating the probability of a particular event, to judge the event's probability by its availability in our memory." In other words, "we intuitively think that events are more likely when they are easier remember" (page 160). Hence people predict that homicide takes more lives than suicide, even though there are fifty percent more suicides in the United States in a year than homicides.

Tehre is more information about this bias at Wikipedia:

"The availability heuristic is a rule of thumb, heuristic, or cognitive bias, where people base their prediction of the frequency of an event or the proportion within a population based on how easily an example can be brought to mind. In these instances the ease of imagining an example or the vividness and emotional impact of that example becomes more credible than actual statistical probability." (Source: Wikipedia).

At the Book Club discussion, Sherry raises an interesting point about whether kids will now predict a greater probability of bridge collapse because of the bridge failure in Minnesota--a greater probability of bridges collapsing than, say, having an accident on a bridge.  Interesting question, and very pertinent to how our students build up cognitive biases based, in part, on how we handle the news of a particular event.

If anyone has example of this phenomenon to share, please do so here as a comment or at Book Clubs as a post.  When the Book Club is finished, we can keep this topic alive here if folks are interested. 

Over at the TeacherPlacesBookClubs I recently posted a summary of a research article that folks might be interested in here.  How asynchronous discussions impact learning is a very interesting topic, so I am reposting it here for comment. 

 "Asynchronous Discussions and Assessments in Online Learning"
Journal of Research on Technology in Education 39/3, Spring 2007

I recently read an article in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education entitled "Asynchronous Discussions and Assessments in Online Learning" (JRTE, 39/3, Spring 2007). The authors studied the use of online discussions in five graduate level courses at two midwestern universities. The article makes a number of points that are worth touching on here:

• first, the authors note that prior studies demonstrate that online discussions allow "every learner to respond to questions, participate equally, and offer a potential to support the co-construction of knowledge through meaningful discourse" (p. 311)

• one of the findings indicates "that the structure of an online discussion is essential for successful learning" (p. 315)

• one of the study's participants noted that "discussion questions need to be designed and monitored to grow and adapt to the responses from students so that they don't get repetitive and boring" (p. 315)

• other participants noted "that providing optiosn for students to choose among options of interest can diminish redundancy of the responses in the discussions" (p. 315)

• assigning participants roles within the discussion is another technique seen as effective by participants in the study (p. 316)

• others noted that "it is necessary for a sense of community to be built first" for "learners to feel comfortable sharing their opinions with a group they may not know" (p. 317)

• the authors also emphasize the importance of writing for students in the asynchronous environment to "facilitate reflection, metacognitive processes, and articulation of students' own learning" (p. 323)

These findings were particularly interesting to me, as the authors cite Vonderwell's 2004 study to say that online learning "requires the reconstruction of student and instructor roles, relations, and practices" (p. 309). We are truly reconstructing many things when we participate in a virtual discussion, especially one that is asynchronous.

What I appreciate in the authors' findings is the idea that structure is key to making an online discussion successful. My learning on this topic comes from years as a classroom teacher and, more recently, as product developer on a project designed to help struggling older reader learn to comprehend and discuss what they are reading. Radical redefinitions are in order when we remove the participants from the constraints of time and place that have traditionally defined the teaching and learning situation.

So...in the leader's guide to the site we have recommended 1) a start and stop time for the study of the book in question, 2) a model of "reading and doing" rather than "reading and attending" as would be the common approach to a class or book club, and 3) an active, organizing role for the leader, so that the tasks associated with the group do not become "redundant and boring."

I hope that further contributions to this research collection will help us all discover ways to make networked discussions like these rich and satisfying for the participants.

Just a note on user images or avatars. If you click on Account settings in the upper right and then on Your site picture at the top, you can scroll down to a place to upload your own avatar or user image, personal icon, whatever...

Just use the Browse button to locate on your computer an image you want to use to represent you visually on the site. You can also visit AvatarsR.Us to download an icon of your choice to your computer which can then be uploaded to this site.  This is a free service with copyright-free images for you to choose from.

Icons or avatars add to the fun of the site, so pick an image and dress up your posts! (Oh, yeah, that's me with the baton over there...)

A question came up yesterday concerning the use of the "Filmscript Language" graphic organizer for Monster.  Anne and I brainstormed some ideas:

(Keep in mind that that Janet has designed Plugged-in to Reading to reflect her strongly held belief that "if you present it to them, it is information; if they build it themselves, it is knowledge.")

So, you can use this graphic organizer in many ways to let them "build it themselves":

1.  Use the organizer to assess background knowledge.  The TG suggests that you put the g/o up on the overhead and ask the kids to define as many words as they can.  This could also be done in small groups if the class is disciplined enough to work this way, with each group taking a few of the words to assess.

2.  Use the organizer as an ongoing vocabulary collection tool.  Give each student a copy of  the g/o and have them fill in the definition for words they recognize or predict the definition, and then use the sheet to offer definitions as the words are encountered in the reading.

3.  Use the organizer for a vocabulary scavenger hunt.  This approach gives kids even more independence in ferreting out the specialized vocabulary words and providing definitions. Set aside some time every day or two during the study of the novel for this activity.

As you can see, these options focus on the organizer as a tool for inquiry and discovery rather than as a static exercise to be completed, graded, and put away.  At the Bradenton institute earlier this summer, Janet commented several times that so much of what constitutes real teaching takes place between the traditional teaching activities of planning and grading.

You can view a copy of the organizer in PDF format here.

As I dig deeper into the "why" behind the program, I notice that I am having a difficult time assessing the students' work.  A traditional letter grade seems inappropriate to me for most of the graphic organizers.  I am going to try and align the work with state goals and have the kids revisit the graphic organizers until they can meet standards.  Is this realistic?  Is there a better way?  Am I going to be making a million copies?  I am just really struggling with the idea of giving something like "golden lines" a point value.  What constitutes an A? a D?  Help!

I am very excited about the opportunity to bring so many people together... literally on the same page.  I have many questions.  Missy what did you decide on as the next novel to dive into? How is it going?  I am looking forward to hearing from the teachers in South Bend.  The fact that they could hardly stop reading long enough to  teach strategies because the students were so set on finishing the core novel, created a lot of excitement.  I am also anxious to hear from the teachers in South Carolina as they begin their exciting adventure into Plugged- in To Reading.  In the past week many have asked questions about the materials, schedules, and graphic organizers.  I will post some of the feedback I have received as soon as I figure out how to accomplish this.

 One particular question is about the Google graphic organizer. The particular group of students had difficulty with this.  Any suggestions on how to make this easier?

Since I am no longer in the classroom, I am looking forward to hearing about your exciting moments.

 Angie

Well, I thought I'd copy Melissa's idea to let others know how the core novels went for me and my students.  I think I can say that Melissa and I probably had similar experiences.  I read Among the Hidden with my 9th grade classes (3 of them) and Slumming with my 10th grade classes (2 of them). 

I think Among the Hidden is a great way to start.  The reading itself is not challenging but there are very interesting issues for the students to contemplate and discuss.  Actually, my students hated the audio at first.  I told them to get through 5 chapters and then if they didn't like it, we'd stop listening and I could read out loud.  But after five chapters, all classes voted to continue with the audio.  Also, like Melissa's kids, we quickly got to the point when they complained when we were stopping and begged to hear more.  There were several times when I had to point out that we had less than 2 minutes left in class and that's why I wouldn't allow us to continue on to the next chapter.  The suspense/cliffhangers at the ends of the chapters make Among the Hidden an ideal book to begin with. 

After reading about Melissa's interactive word wall, I decided to try more with the vocab.  I had them start playing with concept circles.  For example, I put propaganda, rally, revolution, and crusade together and asked students to explain how those words are connected.  Then I gave the title of "change" and asked them to explain how they're related to change.   Then I had them categorize words and make their own circles.  I also gave them circles and asked them to fill in a related word.  It makes so much sense that they'd do better with the words if they're thinking about how they're related to other things and I found it much more successful that way.  I look forward to the next core novel where I can use Melissa's word wall idea and the concept circle together.

I will say that Melissa and I had one difference.  My students felt that I had them do too much while we were reading.  I think I got a little carried away with the different strategies and graphic organizers.  So, I'll need to tone that down next time I teach this.  But the book was really a success.  In fact, although I had copies of the sequels already in my classroom, I had to go buy more because the kids wanted to keep reading about Luke.

I would say that my 10th graders were less enthusiastic about Slumming.  My 2nd period class was so quiet, I often wasn't sure whether they even liked the book.  But almost every single 10th grader said it was good and that I should read it again with my classes next year.  The reading of Slumming is definitely more challenging because there are 3 different points of view and the readers have to do a lot more inferring.  Those are the things we focused on as we read.  We used the graphic organizers to keep track of what we knew about each character and what we could tell about them from their words and actions.   

This is a great novel to have students talk about how people are judged.  We had some great discussions.  The fact that there were 3 very different main characters really broadened our discussions.  For example, Alicia led us to discuss how blind girls can be sometimes when it comes to guys they're attracted to.  We looked at the inferences she made about him and the evidence she based those inferences on and the kids agreed that she made faulty inferences.  But we also agreed that all of us have done the same or know someone else who has.  I'm glad that I was able to do this novel with my 10th graders because I think we had much more mature conversations than the 9th graders would have had.  But, this might be perfect for the 9th graders after we've had a few novels under our belts, and especially after they've discussed novels in the lit circle format.