Journal Club

In this article Nathaniel Petrich is discussing the importance of implementing book clubs into schools but not necessarily into lesson planning. His idea of a book club is like an extracurricular assignment where students meet once a week during a Friday lunch. His two main arguments are that book clubs promote better, classroom relationships, and they spark up a passionate desire for learning and reading. None of these outcomes could be accomplished without a safe reading environment which is another topic he emphasizes throughout the first half of this article. The rest of the article is about an experiment where he studied a group of 5^th graders participating in book clubs; his goal was to determine what his students liked and disliked about book clubs and using this information to create an ideal learning environment.

As I read I was thinking about our own studies about book clubs. Like we have previously discussed in class, Petrich also likes to allow students to choose their particular roles in the book club. Ideally, it’s designed to help everyone learn more in a short amount of time, and these roles give students a sense of belonging which helps them feel comfortable contributing their thoughts. As I read, these all seemed like wonderful ideas in the most ideal situation where all students had a burning desire to learn, but I don’t think that’s always the case. Many students can’t stand reading, and they will only read the bare minimum in a schoolyear. This article was important to me because it allowed me to see whether or not I want to start a book club for my students. Done correctly I think book clubs can really excel student learning, but I always need to decide if it’s a good fit for my group of students.

(WC: 300 Cross-curricular)

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1171691.pdf

Resource Blog #5

Match Fishtank is a very reliable online resource for teachers within K-12. It also thoroughly covers the four main content areas of science, mathematics, social studies, and English. For now, I’m going to focus outside my content area in the mathematics department. The mathematics content actually only covers 3^rd grade through 8^th grade, so this would be a perfect tool for middle grades teachers. Match Fishtank’s main goal is to properly prepare its students for college by offering rigorous assignments and teaching. You will have to create an account to access its material, but the website is free and very useful.


Lesson plans are available to give teachers some structure to build off of. Worksheets are provided that offer many practice problems, and there is a section for learning vocabulary. This site even equips teachers with several formative and summative assessments that can be used to gauge where students are academically.  There are several lessons provided for each grade, and each one offers a very detailed summary of the unit. I personally think it’s too wordy, so if I’m teaching I would go through the summary myself before class and teach a shortened version of it.

There are a couple things that this particular site does well that makes it stand out from the other resources I’ve found. There is a section solely devoted to creating exceptional math teachers. Once you’ve created an account and logged in, you can access these lessons that challenge teachers to become the best they can possibly be in their respective grade levels. Another thing that I like about this site is that after completing each lesson the standards that have been satisfied through the teaching of the lesson are listed in front of you, so you know you’re on track.

https://www.matchfishtank.org/

(WC: 296 Outside Content Area)

Synthesis Blog 5

After reading chapter 9, I believe a book club is a great strategy to include in lesson planning; I think it would ultimately cultivate an atmosphere of independent thinking. The book club example in the book reminded me of the Think Alouds that we have been creating. The students in the example have thoughts and questions written out on sticky notes which they can talk about among themselves in class.

I really liked how it mentioned that book clubs are mostly student-led. The teacher obviously needs to facilitate to a certain extent, but once the students know the teacher’s expectations, they can take over the conversation. I also like how Subject Matters describes the book club as a playful environment. This should be a very low-stress environment for the students, even if they didn’t read the assigned reading. They can still contribute to the conversation, or they can sit and listen to their peers.

As a teacher, my most important job would be to find books that are both fun and educational and that related to the content in the classroom. Students also shouldn’t feel forced to read one book, so they would need a variety to choose from. I like how within each book club each student is assigned a specific job whether it’s the questioner, the connector, the vocabulary person, etc. This way each student gets to contribute his/her own thoughts, and everyone walks away with a better understanding of the book. Adding onto the low-stress environment, the rubric for these assignments which is provided in this chapter is designed to give students the freedom to have fun with the assignment. They simply have to read, discuss it, and show the notes to prove that they read.  

(WC:289)

Resource Blog 4

As I looked for a cross-curricular resource for mathematics, I stumbled on the website Cuethink. This website was designed to better equip students with tools allowing them to think aloud. A lot of the time mathematics heavily relies on step-by-step processes to answer problems; giving students the opportunity to think aloud ideally cuts back on slight, mental errors which could alter their results. Cuethink also provides extensive, application questions that challenge students to think deeply to solve problems.  

Students can choose their topic and grade level, and the website provides a plethora of practice problems. Cuethink provides the 4 steps of problem solving including: understand, plan, solve, review. Each of these categories equips the students with questions like “What strategy do I use?” or “Can someone see how I got my answer?” that challenges them to become better readers/thinkers. This is a very communal based website which encourages students to learn from one another as well as the teacher. Peer-to-peer feedback is provided which allows these students to check each other’s work and encourage growth. Unfortunately, this website does cost money. For one teacher with 30 students, it costs $100 annually. It is a fantastic resource if funds are provided, so teachers don’t have to pay out of pocket.

While mathematics is out of my content area, we have been learning how intertwined subjects are a lot of the time. I very well might have to teach mathematics at some point throughout my career, and I will definitely consider using Cuethink as a resource. Nowadays, tests are so heavily weighted in the application sections, and standardized tests love using application questions. I think Cuethink would benefit all students in the long run because it challenges them to work through difficult problems and ultimately succeed.

https://www.cuethink.com/

(WC:294, Cross-curricular literacy)

Synthesis Blog #4

I’ve enjoyed both the article about connecting science and literature and the one about connecting history and literature. I think history and ELA almost go hand in hand because most of history is communicated through literature. In the article, a study was done where three teachers (an ELA teacher, a social studies teacher, and a social studies teacher educator) all monitored each other’s teaching to learn how to create the optimal learning environment for their students.

Each teacher agreed that in order to teach historical fiction effectively they need to abide by three different rules of thumb. First, teachers need to grow students’ background knowledge of the historical event they’re learning about. Second, students need to embrace historical empathy to really understand the reasoning behind historical leaders’ actions. Lastly, teachers want to encourage the comparison of fictional and nonfictional writing to give students different ways to think about texts.

I personally think these are all great mindsets to have when teaching any social studies class because many of these classes are based on history. ELA teachers need students to understand history just as much as history teachers need students to be knowledgeable in literature. I think if we as teachers focus on these three, key strategies many students will become more passionate about these particular subjects. Many times, students are passionate about a single subject, and other subjects seem pointless to them. Teaching in ways that promote two different subjects at the same time can increase student engagement in subjects they were previously uninterested in.
This strategy can be used for other subjects as well, and the goal is to show students that what they learn in one classroom can have a positive or negative impact on their understanding in another class. Obviously, our goal as teachers is to set up our students for as much success as we possibly can. 
(WC: 311)

Lesson Plan 1 Reflection

I really enjoyed our lesson strategy, but I think we should’ve begun our lesson using a different standard for this particular strategy. The point of the strategy is to have our students apply prior knowledge to discuss what the upcoming lesson will be about, but if we are assuming our students don’t know about these concepts, then they hardly have any prior knowledge to guess what’s happening in the picture.

After looking over our classmates’ glows and grows report, I realized there were a few things we need to change for future presentations. A commonly written grow was about our use of time. We had quite a bit of dead time while we waited for our classmates to finish the exercises, and I think we just needed to practice running through the lesson a few more times to get a better understanding of our time management. One of our classmates (pretending to not understand what a cell was) noted that the mitochondria looked like a jelly-bean, and we didn’t take that opportunity to build off of her observation. Next time, we will take these seemingly silly observations and incorporate them into our lesson plan to help the students remember the concepts based on their own, initial observations.

For me personally I need to come more prepared for my future presentations. I walked into class 1 minute late thinking my group was presenting at the end of class, but my group members were waiting for me to present. I didn’t have time to put my phone on silent, and it buzzed the entire time I was presenting which distracted me significantly. I am also just easily distracted; I need to not let people’s activity on our google doc distract me while I present.
(WC: 292)