The Research Matters

Okay, so Daniels and Zemelman talked a lot about reading in Subjects Matter. Which only makes sense. It IS a book about getting kids excited about and engaged with content-area reading. The authors discuss strategies for engaging students and enacting real learning, things that every teacher worth their salt wants to achieve.

But this guidance and information about teaching and supporting students in their academic achievement has not been arrived at arbitrarily. Rather, it is based on actual research that shows that connecting with students on a personal level, allowing them choices in what they read, and providing them with concrete and effective support are all immeasurably valuable in getting them to read, but more importantly, to understand. Because what is reading without understanding? Just another pointless exercise that may cause some short-term learning, but has no significant impact on real learning in the long run.

Daniels and Zemelman break down the big takeaways from reading research into two sections: what students read and how they are taught to read it. They emphasize the importance of variety in reading materials, variety in difficulty of texts, and the amount of reading students do, among other things. On the teaching side of things, they discuss the importance of teachers modeling good reading habits and encouraging students to discuss what they are reading.

I agree with all the assertions that they make, but there is one major thing that I’m worried about when it comes to teaching students how to engage in meaningful reading. That particular concern deals with students with a low sense of self-efficacy. How do we help students who label themselves as “bad readers” or just don’t like to read? These students will, of course, require more of our attention than their more confident peers. But will they ever be comfortable with or enjoy reading even if we constantly challenge and support them? What if they’re just not willing? I suppose this is a question that can be asked regarding many aspects of teaching. I think that part of the answer is that we, as educators, must be the ones who are willing to reach out to those students who struggle and try to help them academically, personally, and socially.

I hope that the ten conclusions taken from reading research that Daniels and Zemelman outline at the end of their book are things that I will be mindful of as I enter the teaching profession. They are clearly all very important and have real research to back up their importance. I hope that, if nothing else, I will be able to keep my students engaged with history and the reading attached to its study. Many students write off history as boring or a waste of time. I hope to show them that with the right approach and the right reading materials, history can be an endlessly fascinating subject that has more connections to our everyday lives than most people think. Really what I want to do is pass on my love of something that I have loved for so long.

Students Are Not Sponges, They Are People

            There’s a lot more to teaching than just simply relaying information and teaching skills. Teaching is about making real learning happen, learning that endures and serves the learner for the rest of his or her life. There is a marked difference between teaching skills and information and getting learners to retain and process information that is useful and significant, but it is sometimes difficult to know how to make the jump from the former to the latter.            

            In Chapter 11 of Subjects Matter, Daniels and Zemelman stress the establishment of genuine and supportive relationships between teacher and student, specifically in the context of reading. Unfortunately, many students struggle with reading, which is perhaps the most basic skill associated with learning any subject. As a result, we must be especially supportive and encouraging when it comes to dealing with students who struggle with reading. Simply portraying ourselves as human beings who make mistakes and struggle with things and not as all-knowing god-teachers will go a long way to making students feel more at ease and more willing to put in the effort to improve their reading or any number of other skills.

            And that is how we make the jump; not only in the context of reading, but in teaching in general. Building supportive relationships with our students in which we show that we are truly invested in their learning and improvement will ensure that what we teach sticks with our students for a long time to come. The other techniques for helping struggling readers that Daniels and Zemelman outline can also be applied to teaching as a whole. Modeling how good readers read can be transferred to mathematics, (modeling how good mathematicians solve problems) or history (modeling how good historians think), or any number of other content areas. Making materials accessible and building engagement with the material are also not just reading specific strategies. They can be applied in a larger sense to what we are teaching in our schools, regardless of content area, grade level, or curriculum.

            I think that, at times, it may be very easy for teacher candidates or new teachers to fall into the trap of thinking that all of their students will be engaged and have no difficulties with the material that they’re presented. The reality, however, is that there will be students in every class that struggle with one thing or another, be it reading, writing, critical thinking, or less academic issues such as paying attention or time management. How do we help these students? It all comes back to building relationships, and not just the typical teacher-student, delegator-delegatee ones. Instead, we must strive to establish meaningful and genuine relationships with our students. Take an interest in their hobbies or their life outside of school. Support them when they struggle in school, and let them know that you are there to encourage and help them however you can and that you believe in them and are rooting for them. That all sounds very trite, but it really is a pivotal component of getting students interested in and excited about learning. Knowing that you are an ally rather than an unapproachable authority figure will put students more at ease in your classroom, and will ultimately make them more successful in their academic careers.

I found this really excellent TED Talk about building relationships with students. Take the eight minutes to watch it, it's worth it. 

Not Your Grandma's Book Club (D&Z 9+10)

I really like the idea of content-area book clubs. It’s not an idea that has ever occurred to me, and certainly isn’t something I have ever experienced during my education. I think that if they’re used correctly and sparingly enough, they could be truly invaluable tools for really getting students involved and interested in the subject matter.

I think perhaps the single greatest aspect of these book clubs is how learner-oriented they are. Students are able to exercise considerably more choice and have more independence than they normally ever would in a classroom setting. Teachers, of course, must still guide student learning, providing support and help when necessary, but students are, for the most part, pulling their own weight and making their own decisions.

Pulling kids out of the black holes that are textbooks is another great thing about these book clubs. Instead of reading hundreds of pages of dry text overstuffed with facts, students can read novels, articles, essays, and countless other forms of text that integrate the themes of history, or science, or mathematics into a more easily digestible format. And really, that’s what we want in our teaching. We wants students to be able to get through things without too much trouble, maybe even have fun while they’re doing it, but still learn things that matter in the process.

While I would love to use book clubs in my future classroom, there are some things that give me pause to do so. For instance, how big an issue is time management? How do we make sure that book clubs don’t become enormous time sucks, leaving us with no time for other ways of teaching and learning? And what about kids who just don’t like to read? Sure, you can always “bribe” these kids with material that really interests them, and part of the purpose of using these book clubs is to get kids to really enjoy reading, but there are always kids who will be resistant and defiant for defiance’s sake. How do we get these students excited about book clubs, and ensure that they pull their weight in their groups? Daniels and Zemelman address both of these issues to some degree, but I would really be interested in knowing a little bit more about how to handle them should they come up.

Lastly, I really like the idea of inquiry units because, again, they allow for student choice. I think that every adult who has been through the education system in this country probably couldn’t even count the number of times that their big, year-end assignment for a class was an essay or research paper. Sure, there’s some value in having kids write these kinds of things, but it’s minimal at best. Asking kids to actually go out and explore, question, interview, investigate, and discover will be infinitely more beneficial to their long-term learning. Depending on how the inquiry unit is structured, kids can attempt to find answers or do research about things that are personally important to them, or do work that is valuable in an interdisciplinary context. I also really like the kind of backwards engineering of the inquiry units. It makes so much more sense to construct an exciting and expansive project and then see what standards it meets than to see what standards need to be met and then creating bland, recycled assignments to meet those ends. And this is something that we, as educators, should constantly keep in mind: what goals do I, and more importantly, my students, need to reach? Okay, now how do I get them there in a way that is fresh, exciting, significant, and effective?

I found this nice little rubric (not quite 4x4, but it'll do) that could potentially be used for book club assessment. While I would likely avoid using an actual formal rubric for evaluating student progress, I think this rubric does provide some good criteria to be on the look out for, and could possibly be reworked into a less formal assessment. 

Workshops Work if You Put in the Work

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Replace “horse” with “student”, “water” with “a textbook”, and “drink” with “read”, and you’ve got a pretty accurate sentiment. I mean, no one really expects high school students to read textbooks that are eight or nine hundred pages long, do they? Well, the sad reality is, yes, some people do. After all, textbooks tell kids everything they need to know, right? And what’s more, many are aligned to those wonderful state and national standards that seem to be the end all be all in education nowadays.

Alright, let’s take a break from the sarcasm for a second. Plain and simple, textbooks are not the paragon of academic reading that they are made out to be. Sure, they contain vast amounts of information in one place and are therefore not completely invaluable. However, the information within textbooks is often so condensed and cherry-picked (and sometimes inaccurate) that we can’t seriously expect any real learning to be enacted solely by a cover-to-cover reading. No, instead we must use textbooks sparingly and supplement them with other reading materials that are fresher, more accessible, and less sterile. 

So how do we make sure that our students are getting something out of the textbooks when we actually do use them? Well, we have to make sure that they are equipped with varied and effective reading strategies. As educators, we must model and actively teach good reading habits and strategies so that our students can get the most out of what they are reading and take in the information on a deeper and more impactful level. Preparing students to read with pre-reading activities, encouraging them to ask questions, take notes, and make connections while they are reading, and answering questions, drawing conclusions, and summarizing what they’ve read after the fact will allow students to be active readers not just passive sponges that absorb (or more often, don’t) what they read in thick, heavy textbooks.

What about reading materials that aren’t textbooks? Well for those, we have reading workshops. Now that’s not to say that reading workshops cannot be used for textbooks, but they are more effective and more appropriate for materials such as articles or novels. Reading workshops allow students to delve into more exciting and more accessible content area material that is connected to and has meaning in the real world. Students can network with one another and discuss what they have read accurately and effectively if they have some accountability for their reading material. Reading workshops are also an invaluable tool for classroom management, as they allow teachers to speak with students one-on-one to check progress and understanding, as well as provide support. The physical movement of the teacher also encourages students to be on task gives teachers a better handle on the atmosphere of the classroom.

My only real concern with what I read in these two chapters of Daniels and Zemelman is the sheer number of reading strategies provided. I’m not saying that the variety and number itself is problematic, rather knowing how, when, and to what degree to implement them is. The authors provide us with twenty-six strategies that we can teach and model for our students. That’s quite a few, and I’m sure there are dozens of others they did not discuss, as well as combinations and variations of the ones they did. So how do we know which ones to teach? We can’t realistically teach them all. So do we pick our favorites and try and push those? Do we keep teaching and modeling until we find two or three that work? I found the reading strategies chapter overwhelming as a teacher candidate, so I can only imagine how students would feel if they had this multitude of strategies and ideas thrown at them. I would think that like any teaching tool, it must be used sparingly and only when truly effective. If it doesn’t work, don’t force it. Just go with the flow and adjust as necessary. But this is generally easier said than done. It’s something I’ll have to explore once when I get into a classroom. How can I strike a balance between using good strategies and letting ones that are not practical for my own particular situation go?  

Textbooks! What Are They Good For? Absolutely… Something (D&Z 6+7)

“Don’t assign the whole textbook.” That’s one of the first headings in chapter six of Daniels and Zemelman’s Subjects Matter, and what a novel idea it is. That’s not sarcasm, either. A lot of teachers and administrators could stand to hear that. We are so often concerned with just covering all the material that we fail to realize that making students read an entire book is a nearly impossible and Herculean task. Not every aspect of a content area deserves the same attention and so as educators, we are faced with the difficult and unfortunate task of having to decide what is important and deserves our time and consideration and what is not and should be skipped. Ideally, we would be able to cover all aspects of every subject we teach, but this is just not practical and is not an effective way to teach, especially in regards to the use of textbooks.

The two ideas discussed in this reading that I really liked were jigsawing and the Guide-o-Rama. This was not the first time I had heard of jigsawing, but I think this was the first time that I really saw just how effective it could potentially be, if used correctly. Jigsawing allows you to reduce the workload (i.e., ridiculous amounts of reading) that students have to do and also facilitates group discussion, which can be immensely useful in getting students to open up, think critically, and communicate their ideas with one another. I thought the Guide-o-Rama was great (despite the cheesy name) for a very different reason. In those situations where your students will have to slog through a chapter or two of the book with no reprieve, the Guide-o-Rama can really help them know what they should be focusing on and to what degree. So often, textbooks these days are filled with so many asides in the form of secondary text boxes, graphs, maps, charts, and anecdotes that it can be difficult to know what to read, what to skip, and what’s actually important. Providing students with a guide that tells them what to read, with what depth, and perhaps in what order will undoubtedly make things easier for them. In addition, the ability to add in your own thoughts and tips will allow the students to know your feelings about the text and know that you had some difficulties or questions with it yourself. This is all a part of making yourself more accessible to the students.

The chapter on building a community of learners was, to me, the less interesting of the two. That’s not to say that it doesn’t contain some important information, though. Establishing your classroom as a safe place for asking questions, an environment of accountability, and a community where people of all different backgrounds work towards a common goal is pivotal in being an effective educator. You need to build students’ trust and bolster their self-esteem so that they will feel accepted socially, which helps them infinitely academically. I had a professor a couple of semesters ago who constantly stressed that asking questions is important, that there is no such a thing as a stupid question, and that we should not hesitate to ask questions if we had them. That really struck me, because a lot of teachers may relate that sentiment halfheartedly, but this professor really seemed to mean it. I think that creating that kind of atmosphere in a classroom will ultimately lead to a lot of unhindered curiosity and trust between students and teachers and students and students.

One thought that I had while reading this chapter had to with the effective use of textbooks and implementing alternative strategies in the classroom. If, as a teacher, I decide not to rely so heavily on the textbook, is it acceptable for me to do sort of a one-off teach-aloud to my students explaining to them the flaws and limitations of textbooks? I think that that sort of honesty could be refreshing and encouraging to students who feel that reading textbooks cover to cover is a laborious and only marginally useful task. At the same time, however, will that cause problems for me in the long run? Will I run into opposition from administrators, parents, and fellow teachers if students develop this sort of anti-textbook mentality? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but it is certainly something I will be giving a lot of thought to as I move closer to beginning my career as a professional educator.