Alright...this is a little rough because I'm not exactly set on my inquiry project, but I'm trying to incorporate it into my teaching unit. Because I will be using group work throughout my teaching, I want to use various grouping strategies to see if it promotes reading comprehension. Also because my content requires so much reading-most of it extremely unappealing to adolescents- I want to also use read alouds with my students. I read that read alouds are becoming more popular in secondary classrooms. I would like to see if using activites such as the read alouds, think-pair-share, and reciprocal teaching increase students understanding of the text and also students motivation.
As far as my contribution to the inquiry project, I'm not really sure since I haven't really discussed with anyone else who might be interested in the same ideas...
As far as reading in my content, I still believe that it is absolutely necessary. My opinion has not really changed much. I still wish that more history/poli sci/ econ teachers would attempt to make reading in the content more accessible for students as well as more appealing, instead of just assigning the regular textbook to read. I also hope that I can figure out ways to make government/economics come alive for my students and find ways to relate readings that are interesting to them and enhance their desires to discover more about a topic. It is still my belief that students benefit from reading in every content area.
Through doing my research, I hope to learn more about reading in my content and seeing how to better incorporate effective literacy strategies in my own classroom.
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I think you have some great ideas for the research project. I started out thinking about doing vocabulary as my topic but wanted it to relate to my action research project which involves using the jigsaw approach. So I think we are along the same line as far as using a good deal of group work. As far as your content literacy, I think you are definitely right about their being a lot of reading! Which in turn students don't like to do especially if they are not interested in any of those subjects. I feel that the more you can try to relate the subject to the students prior knowledge and to the real world (since there is A LOT going on right now dealing with political science and economics) then your students will be more willing to read the material. Also by creating projects for the students that requires reading to complete can help evoke the students' interest. Hope this makes sense:)
ReplyDeleteI think that for you literacy project you should look into having students read articles like we saw in the video today. If you teach Economics or Government this will be a perfect activity to do because too many students do not have a clue of what is going on in their own government. Even if you do not use this for your literacy project, you could use it for a literacy engagement.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I believe if students had an opportunity to see how important it is for them to be informed they might start trying to pay a little more attention.
If you don't like that you can look at using the QAR that we did in class today. I remember Dr. Crabb telling us that in History it isn't about knowing the dates, it is about the effects of what happened on those dates. Maybe give students something to read about a historical event and then ask questions that scaffold from text questions to questions that have them bring in their prior knowledge and experiences. I hope this is helpful. If not for this project then for the literacy engagements.
I like the fact that you are willing to try different strategies for reading in your classroom. I hated reading from a history text book, I had much rather watch a show on the history channel or a movie. One thing I always thought would be fun to do in history class, and political science would be to find old newspaper articles that were going on during the time period you are studying and have students read them. This shows students exactly how the people during that time saw what was going on. First hand experiences are always better than reading from the text book, and it will probably jumpstart a student's interest in the area.
ReplyDeleteNicole, I am so jealous of the content that you are going to be teaching. You seriously have a lot of opportunity to make your class very interesting. I would definitely incorporate the read-aloud moments as part of your normal procedure. As well, you might consider using the stock market in your econ classroom, classroom elections in your polisci classroom, and student theater in your history class. Just some thoughts, but i believe that you will have the ability to make your content interesting and fun.
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