FIN Commons

Announcement!

Lesson study accomplished (but we still have to survey the information gathered, so not completely accomplished but you get what I mean). Our lesson study was organized as a series of three classes with each class serving to build skills and synthesize ideas between the reading and statistical information in regards to social class.

Reflection 2

Day 3, the final day of our study, felt better than day 2. Let me qualify “felt better.” What I mean here is that day 2 seemed to go slowly primarily because students seemed stuck not only in deciphering difficult terminology in the article like “rhetorical fringe” but also because they then had to tie complex main ideas, quotes, and analysis of those quotes to reading data accurately and then being specific with their explanations of that data. Oh yeah, and I add that everything had to connect to the textual main idea and answer a unit question. (I shudder at the ambition of our project.) This is what I observed as helpful to students in terms of seeing and using data; Myra asked two essential questions when she explained how to read the information: who is being described and what is being measured? (The light bulbs that popped on were truly blinding.) I place emphasis on this observation because what Myra asked is what I ask when I teach reading: who is being described and what is taking place? Do you see any other implications? I am eager to hear what you think.

Let me tease out the connection further. By choosing common strategies that will work to connect math and English, students are becoming “literate” in multiple disciplines. I place quotations around this word because I think that literacy is more than the ability to read a novel, a poem, an essay. Literacy is the accumulation and understanding of knowledge, any field of knowledge (and that could mean cultural knowledge as well as skill based knowledge, like, oh yeah, I know who Plato is and of course I know the function of a Z chart, plus let me tell you about AB540 students). In previous conversations with students, the definition of literacy was brilliantly simple: the ability to read and understand what you read.

I end by saying that this lesson was not perfect. I think both Myra and I were putting our best feet forward–teaching-wise–possibly trying to0 much with the hopes of finding out as much as possible. I am at fault. I cooked up the concept while Myra invented exercises that would coincide with what I “cooked up.” The result was yummy, but maybe a little too rich. Before I close let me add what I found delicious: Myra’s “data sandwich.” Here is another common strategy that I use when I teach writing. Essentially, the formula is this: They say x. I say y. The X in this equation is what the author says, the quote. The Y is an analysis of that quote. (Am I using math concepts unknowingly? I’ll admit to enjoying addition and subtraction, maybe even algebra. I definitely like geometry.) The result is a “quotation sandwich.” Don’t groan. I know thousands upon thousands of English teachers use this strategy all the time. I only point out this connection because of what Myra was able to invent to dovetail with this skill: the “data sandwich.”

Questions to consider

Let me work my tired brain a bit more. Should our approach be to invent and connect skill-based strategies rather than thematic approaches for the developmental classes? We fully intend to collaborate on major assignments. However, I am wondering if we should wait until the students reach transfer-level English and math to launch fully integrated projects.