Synthesis Blog 5

As we’ve read through Subjects Matter this semester, we have seen many ways that students can engage with text, improve literacy, and how we, as teachers, can aid all of these. As we transition in class to starting our own book clubs, it has been very helpful to read the chapter in Subjects Matter about book clubs and all the ways they accomplish certain literary goals, and we’ve also been able to see pitfalls that could occur as our classroom takes on book clubs. I believe this helps us learn what it looks like to organize these types of activities and groups, but because we are participating in a book club, we can see first hand how ideas in Subjects Matter are valid and true.

I believe, as the book discusses, roles should be assigned to students for book clubs. Still being a student myself, the idea of group members pulling all the weight or slacking off is all too familiar. As Subjects Matter says, “these structured discussion groups combine two powerful educational ideas: collaborative learning and independent reading” (page 243).  I believe reading groups help to bring in skills that are unique to this specific learning task/tool, and they provide a format for students to truly learn about ideas discussed in a text because they are analyzing the text individually, with a group, and then being assessed through creative assignments.

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Resource Blog #4 (Cross-Curricular)

The resource that I found this week is titled iCivics. This resource is an interactive website that has story-type games and simulations. Obvious by its title, it takes students through topics such as the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the branches of government. From what I can tell by playing several of the learning games, this site is engaging for students because of its story telling component and ability for students to choose the story’s direction for themselves. Another reason I would recommend Social Studies teachers using this site is because it doesn’t just give students hard facts; this site allows students to think critically about how people during each time period would respond to certain challenges or governmental decisions. I believe this allows students to connect decisions that the government makes or the structure of government to its affect on its citizens. I think it is a very beneficial skill for students because it can make connecting history to real-life situations much easier. Teaching students history through the lens of the people involved in specific events helps them to feel more real and significant to students. This also really helps with engagement in the classroom. The last and one of the greatest positive things about this site is that it is free! This always makes resources an even better find!

Website: https://www.icivics.org/ 

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Strategy Lesson Reflection

I feel like presenting for our strategy lesson went very well. I think that we were able to communicate our ideas well with the class, and majority of the feedback that we received agreed with this. There were a few things that happened that I felt like were really good. For one, as a group we really understood what would be helpful in an actual classroom, and we were able to implement that into our lesson and communicate that to our peers. I think that assigning students to groups ahead of time really showed that we were thinking about and aware of behavior management strategies within our lesson. I also believe that our concept can be practically used in a math classroom and, when used well, could be a real asset to the teacher and the students. One of the “grows” that we got most consistently was saying that we should walk around to make sure the students are on task or either so that we can pick up some of the interesting or helpful things that students are saying in their groups. I think that this advice is so helpful and would be very good to implement in the classroom. Overall, I think that our presentation went very well, and I enjoyed hearing what everyone had to say!

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Historical Fiction in English and Social Studies Classrooms: Is It a Natural Marriage?

Summarize the article:

This article is detailing the process and the findings that were made from a gathering of ELA and Social Studies teachers. These teachers gathered to determine whether ELA and Social Studies learning could happen togethers as a collaborative type learning for students rather than being separated and treated as though each subject had no meaningful connection to one another. As they talked about how to facilitate students learning, the teachers of each content area realized that they were aiding their students in similar ways; they were just calling it different things. As the teachers kept discussing what this looked like in the classroom, they began to realize that because of many different realities of the high school classroom, collaboration between ELA teachers and Social Studies teachers would be relatively impossible using their original ideas. That then led them to the conclusion that literacy is something that is needed in all classrooms even without directly including ELA teachers in collaboration. They make a final point saying literacy is important for every classroom and for every content area teacher.

Make connections:

When reading this article, I noticed a lot of connections that I could make to texts that I have read and classes that I have been in. Of course, I believe this article most closely relates to the content we have been discussing in this course all semester long, but pulling from experiences prior to this class, I believe my experience in social studies classroom has been able to connect to the content of this article very well. I have done assignments in my classes that do closely relate to the content this article has discussed, and I have seen it grow my own literacy in the classroom.

Critique the article:

I think my concern with this article was in line with something the authors even mentioned at the end of the article. Collaboration across classrooms can be so difficult and there are any logistical problems to consider. These problems concern covering a certain amount of material and time constraints that make collaboration very difficult across subject areas.

Explain why the article is important:

This article is important because it walks us through the process of figuring out that each content area can focus on and build students’ literacy even without being in collaboration with ELA teachers. This article basically walks us through the process and rationale for even this course. We are learning how to realize literate students are needed to learn in our classrooms, and we are also learning how to help students who are not yet math literate, for instance, grow in their literacy of a specific content area and grow in their confidence overall.

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