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. 

The Unsinkable RAFT (Strong Chapter 6)

When I think of a raft, I think of a little makeshift boat you float around the ocean in if you’re unlucky enough to get shipwrecked. Pirates and Gilligan’s Island come to mind. Not teaching or designing lessons. But apparently, RAFT (I’m not shouting, it’s an acronym) means something very different to educators. You see, RAFT (or CRAFT, if you’d like to go a little deeper) stands for context, role, audience, format, and topic. It is a widely accepted tool for creating writing assignments that are meaningful, engaging, and well constructed.

Wait a minute. Writing assignments can be engaging? If they are thoughtfully and carefully constructed, absolutely. Creating an engaging and significant writing assignment is accomplished by pulling students into the lesson. No student will ever become interested in the collapse of the Soviet Union if they are forced to write a lengthy research paper about it. Asking them to assume the role of a resident of an Eastern Bloc country writing to a family member about their feelings about the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, will be infinitely more interesting and relevant to them. They will feel involved in the history and be prompted to think about the ramifications of such an important event, rather than just regurgitating facts, dates, and names to you in essay form.

As a future history teacher, one of my biggest fears is getting that question that every educator dreads: so what? Who cares? Why does this matter? This is a sentiment that students will echo across every discipline, but it seems that there are some in which it is more frequent. Math and science, of course, have very tangible, real world applications. Though students may not see it clearly at first, they can usually be made to see it fairly easily. History, on the other hand, is a subject where that significance and relevance is harder to clarify.

How then do you make students understand that what happened fifty, two hundred, or even a thousand years ago is relevant and important to them? You must insert them into the historical narrative. Just as they can be asked to consider the effects of science on modern medicine and technology, (things which almost undoubtedly affect their daily lives) so they can be encouraged to put themselves into the midst of events or times far removed from their own. They can be asked to consider the feelings and motivations of, as well as effects on people living during different historical time periods. Once this is done, we can then go about drawing parallels to the present? For instance, how does the spirit of innovation that burgeoned with the Industrial Revolution still exist in today’s world? How is the present echoed in the past?

Making history relevant to my students is simultaneously my biggest goal and my biggest concern. I understand that it is likely a goal and concern of every educator, but in my personal opinion, that is the only way that history can come alive. I have had more than a few history teachers who made no attempt or a very poor one at making history relevant. I was fortunate enough to have the resilience that encouraged me to remain engaged, but many students don’t. I think that infinitely helpful RAFT format will be an invaluable tool for reaching my students and making them see history not just as a series of disconnected events that happened a long time ago, but as a series of tightly related events that shaped the world as it is today.

I thought this little graphic organizer was kind of neat: