Subjects Matter Chapters 3 and 6

            I found chapter 3 to be very accurate and informative. How many of us have had that teacher that reads from the textbook all class and then assigns the questions at the end for homework? Probably most of us, and it certainly is not a good experience to go through. I mean, most of us probably zoned out and stopped paying attention after the first ten minutes. These teachers are looking for an easy way out, and are doing nobody any good except themselves. Chapter 3 discusses how we need to change the role of the textbook in classrooms and use a much wider variety of resources. This will help us get the best out of our students, and keep them much more interested and active in class. A great quote from the text stated, “We strongly believe that textbooks are overused, and should be supplemented generously or replaced with other reading materials where possible.” This is something that needs to be done in schools, as a variety of different materials will give students a more open-minded point of view, and access to information that will capture their interest and attention far more than reading the same textbook from the same author every day. Another issue is that some textbooks are just way better than others. If you are going to use a textbook, it is well worth the trouble to make sure you adopt the best one available. Avoiding the ones that are out-of-date, badly designed, and much too hard to read will benefit students greatly.

            Chapter 6 discusses what we really need to worry about covering that will be on the state test, as different states have adopted different types of tests that they administer, and how we should go about covering this material using textbooks and other resources. The section that talked about ways to use textbooks more effectively was very informative, as the author introduced strategies and even activities to do this in the best way possible. These strategies and activities described are great ways to help kids get the most out of their textbooks, while keeping the lessons engaging and the classroom reasonably lively. I thought these two chapters were helpful and will certainly be useful to us as beginning teachers in the near future. 

Understanding by Design and Essential Questions

            Understanding by Design relies on what Wiggins and McTighe call “backward design”. Teachers using this strategy traditionally start curriculum planning with activities and textbooks instead of identifying classroom learning goals and planning towards that goal. In backward design, the teacher starts with classroom outcomes and then plans the curriculum, choosing activities and materials that help determine student ability and foster student learning. “Teaching for understanding” is another central premise of Understanding by Design. Teachers should tell students about big ideas and essential questions, performance requirements, and evaluative criteria at the beginning of the unit or course. Students should be able to describe the goals (big ideas and essential questions) and performance requirements of the unit or course. While I was reading this article, I noticed how many great examples were used and how helpful they were in understanding the topic even better. Also, the examples of poor strategies and curricula were very useful. They gave a good visual of things to avoid when in the classroom, and helped to compare them with more effective strategies and to understand what makes certain methods effective and others not so effective.

            Essential questions are extremely important, as they reflect the big ideas and understanding goals of the unit. To me, an essential question is when a teacher opens a whole new world to the students. It leads to a higher order of thinking by pulling out content knowledge, connecting the knowledge to the topic at hand and seeing how one can improve. This is the best way to get students to understand what they are studying and learning, and how they can apply it and use it. I thought the article was very clear and informative. It outlined “big ideas” and how to use them effectively, examples of essential questions, specific understandings, and how to distinguish between essential questions and more common nonessential questions. Another thing that was highlighted was great essential questions from each subject, which I found to be very helpful in understanding how to go about writing and using them in our specific content area. The section on framing understanding was also very helpful. It taught us that understandings are the specific insights, inferences, or conclusions about the big idea you want your students to leave with. And because they can be gained only through “guided inference” whereby the learner is helped to make, recognize, or verify a conclusion, they are thus not “teachable” facts. I found this piece of information to be slightly surprising and very helpful at the same time, as it gives us a better understanding ourselves on how students actually come to understand and comprehend what they are learning and doing. Overall, I found both articles to be informative and certainly a great tool and resource for teachers and future teachers and educators. 

Strategic Reading: Wilhelm

            I thought this excerpt was very informative and helpful. It reminds us that the best teaching practice is grounded in theory, and the more we can understand the theories on which our practices are based, the more effective we will be at implementing them in our classrooms in ways that benefit our students. In chapter 1, Maxine Green introduces the term “wide awake” teaching and learning. This refers to the importance of teachers forming a conscious understanding of their teaching purposes and processes, and students developing an understanding of “what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how they are or could be doing it” (5). I like this term a lot, as it represents the need for teachers to constantly test and observe their theories and see how they affect student learning. This will help teachers to examine and modify their instruction and make sure it is as effective as possible.

            Informed by Vygotsky's and Hillocks's assertion that what is learned must be actively taught, the authors offer a model not of teacher-centered or student-centered but of learning-centered instructional practice. This process begins with the teacher first modeling a new strategy in the context of its use and how to use it, then the teacher engages in the task with the students helping out. The students then take over the task of using the strategy with the teacher helping as needed. Lastly, the student independently uses the strategy and the teacher watches (11). This instructional process allows teachers to focus on what the students are learning as opposed to what the teacher actually did (which is what teachers have traditionally focused on). This allows the responsibility for learning to shift from the teacher to the students. I believe that learning-centered models should be used far more often, as they are highly effective in getting students to think critically. Also, it increases students’ motivation for learning.

            It seems clear that applying Vygotskian learning theory is the best way to meet the goals of more learning-centered instruction. The ultimate goal is for students to develop a wide repertoire of reading strategies that they can independently deploy in a wide variety of situations with a wide variety of texts, and to be able to use these strategies to participate and contribute in their communities and cultures (30). I thought that the authors did a great job of outlining the best strategies and processes to accomplish this goal, upon many other goals. Overall, I found the reading to be refreshing and extremely useful. Many of the strategies and situations discussed were completely new to me, and it is always helpful to learn about different theories and practices and how they can be used to benefit your students, and yourself. 

Literacy Profile

            One of my non-school social worlds is baseball. I played baseball from age five through my senior year of high school, and I now work as a coach at an indoor facility in the winter time. I would say that I am more literate in the sport of baseball than I am in any other non-school world. I have been involved in the sport for sixteen years now, and I can honestly say that it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life so far.

For most of my life, baseball was just something fun to do. It started getting more serious when I was fourteen and I played on an AAU team. We would travel and play four games every weekend of the summer. At the end of the summer, we went to Orlando, Florida and played in the AAU Grand National Championship. That summer was very intense and certainly revolved around baseball. I was around it constantly, whether it was playing in one of our eighty games, or watching it on TV. That was the summer that I became much more serious about the sport, and started to become literate in baseball.

When AAU was over, I immediately started high school. I tried out for the freshman baseball team in the spring, and made it. I was the ace pitcher on the team all year. After that year, I played on the varsity team for my three remaining years. My senior year, I was once again the ace pitcher on the team. I was never a good hitter, but in my career pitching in high school I finished with a 20-8 record. During high school, my influences were my favorite pitchers, Johan Santana and Tim Lincecum.

Baseball is very much a mental sport, in addition to being a physical sport (which nearly every sport is). There are so many different plays and signs that one needs to remember, whether you are coaching or playing. There are hundreds of situations that you have to practice for and need to be ready for at any moment in a game. To be successful in doing this, you need to master the language of baseball. This includes getting signs from coaches and other players, understanding certain situations, learning to make split second decisions as successfully as possible, and many other things. In addition, like most sports, you need to play with a certain mindset to be successful. If you go up to the plate thinking that you won’t be able to hit a pitcher, you will almost always end up not getting a hit. Pitching is the same way. I always went to the mound thinking that I could get every single batter out. The few times that I pitched with a different mindset when I was younger, I ended up pitching terrible games. Those mental lessons are the most important literacy practices that I learned in my career playing baseball.

My ongoing experience around the sport of baseball has impacted my life in so many ways. It has taught me how much hard work pays off in the end (something that I have learned in my schooling career many times), and how important team work can be. I am certain that baseball has made me a better person, and I am confident that certain people close to me would attest to that. I also believe that baseball will greatly help my future as a teacher. I have been coaching players ages 9-17 for three years now, and I know that this experience will help me interact with my students better when I finally begin my career. It has taught me many lessons and showed me so many important things to work on and be aware of when instructing kids and teenagers. These are experiences that I never would have had if I did not play baseball, and for that reason (upon many others), I am extremely grateful that I started playing when I was young, and kept up with it for so long. I met one of my best friends when I was very young playing baseball, and have met so many other great people over the years. Baseball taught me a lot about the sport, but more importantly myself, and for that I will always love baseball.