Theme 3 Learning Log

Theme 3 Learning Log

During this theme, our chapters focused on planning the actual lesson in the content area and then activating the prior knowledge and interest of our students. For my choice article, I chose to continue to reading about activating prior knowledge.

Chapter five was full of great information. The items that stood out to me the most was:

• Explicit instruction
• The well-designed unit structure
• Classroom discussion

Explicit instruction is the steps we should take as teachers to teach lessons or units. The book goes through each step and for those who are familiar with the gradual release model- I do, We do, You do together, and then You do alone-- this sounds familiar. When I work with my interns, I explain how important the gradual release model is. One thing I think is really important is remembering it does not have to all be done in one day. I loved the unit planner on pages 132-133. This breaks down a unit the teacher is doing and it is spread over the course of five days. While the students work, it starts with classroom discussion-- which is a great way to activate the background knowledge brought up in chapter 6-- and lays out the expectations of what the students will be doing. After the "we" discussion, it is clear the teacher has learning objectives for the students and it allows them independent practice to work together.

This also links to my other favorite part of chapter five, which was the classroom discussion. In the chapter, the authors talk about the use of classroom discussion. Collaborative structure is becoming a "necessity" in my school district, as well as cooperative learning taking a major role. During whole group reading, we are encouraged to take as much time discussing, as we do reading the story. Jigsaw, talked about on p. 152, is a common term used in my school. How can we have each student contribute something and then work together with others and put it all together? Though I struggle to do this in the whole group reading, due to the fact we have a very strict pacing guide, I tend to use this more in writing. Students have put together newspapers this year, and each student was responsible for one aspect of the newspaper. However, one thing I am working on tremendously this year, is think pair shares. Students becoming listeners is very important in this strategy because both partners are supposed to contribute. At the beginning of the year, I would see students turn and start blabbing at the same time. Now I have their desks numbered and tell them which number has to start the discussion. After we learned to that effectively, we moved onto telling me something your partner said and starting answers with phrases "We discussed" or "Johnny explained". I feel that makes them responsible for explaining to me what their partner contributed to the conversation.

Where I still need to work is on keeping the focus. I find if I give them longer than a few minutes to discuss multiple questions they get distracted. I am trying to give them one question at a time, with a shorter time period. That way there is no time for other discussion.

I feel that the cooperative learning not only lets them learn from each other, but allows them to get interested, which is part of chapter 6. When students get to work together, they are always more interested than just letting us explain things. This is why my district is making the big push for cooperative and collaborative working. Since I have started my masters, I have done a lot more predicting and story walks with my students. I feel when I do this, they get more excited about the story beforehand. Also, fourth graders tend to still be followers. So if they see classmates getting excited and then me getting excited about the answers I hear, they get more into it. I like the anticipation guides the textbook talks about on p. 181. I feel this is something I could easily implement as a "Do Now" once the students learned the procedure. As soon as the came in they could sit and do their prediction/anticipation guide. Then they can work together to discuss how theirs differed or was the same as what actually happened in the story. For starters, I would probably start with the figure 6.8 to break them into it. Maybe have them fill that out the day before we read and then transfer these to a short summary of their predictions. I think with a checklist, the fourth graders could completely do an activity like that.

The other idea I would like to try from this chapter is the ReQuest on p. 188. Right now, we sometimes generate questions for our ticket out into centers. Kids then sometimes look to see if they can answer their own questions or a friend's. However, I find their question generation is lacking. They want to just write a question to get into centers. I think by adding in an activity like the ReQuest, it would encourage them to seriously generate questions if I am the one to answer them. This would probably spark their interest more as well.

In the article, Fisher and Frey (2010) discuss how teachers can build background knowledge directly and indirectly. I know, like other teachers I have talked to, I am horrible at modeling. Doing teacher think alouds, I feel ridiculous. However, this year, I did a master's research paper and studied the use of comprehension strategies. During that time, modeling was a big part of my paper. So I know I did it more this year, but unsure of how well I did it. However, the article does mention reading a wide range of text and I do have 800 books in my classroom. These are organized by non-fiction and fiction and then into genres from there. It is quite pleasing to see students reading historical fiction and information texts because their background knowledge is being opened to a wide range of materials.

The article also gives great ways to check for understanding to ensure our activating background knowledge made a difference. Fisher and Frey (2010) mention the KWL, which happened to be the practice activity video I watched on our EDU lab for OAR 3. This allows students to think about what they know, what they want to learn, and then at the express what they learned. This is great way for teachers to check for that understanding. Sometimes the jigsaw or cooperative learning does not work there because I want to know individual instruction.

However, this theme gave more great ideas on how to improve classroom instruction. Though I do not officially teach content area, we have many expository texts in our book, so I know this will be helpful!

Article of choice:

Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2010). Building and activating background knowledge. Principal Leadership:

      Ready for Anything, 11(4), 62-64.