Reading Journal

We've all heard of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences: verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, body/kinesthetic, musical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal. I see these different capacities all the time in my classroom and am always interested in ways to appeal to a broader range of students. In this effort, I find it helpful to stay abreast of Benji's on-going experiments with the Art of Teaching.

One of Benji's recent experiments: the reading journal. These journals were made of regular 8.5 by 11 paper, turned sidewise, lined and hole-punched along the crease in the middle. The students personalized the journals by choosing their own binding--colorful bits of ribbon threaded through the hole-punches.

Inside, the journals offered a variety of ways into the novel Beloved, which the 10th graders spend a few weeks on during Quint III.

There was a page headed "List of Characters."

There was a page set aside for "Themes."

There were numerous pages for reading notes and pages set aside for different kinds of writing exercises, including exercises in passage analysis and two personal responses. (Suggested personal response topics included: how the novel made the reader feel, connections with other books or ideas and questions which Beloved brought up for the reader.)

There was a place for the student to design their own reading quizzes--and to outline the answers they'd be looking for with these questions.

This approach had the virtue of offering a variety of ways into the novel--instead of a single "make or break" assignment. The specially designed pages freshened the delivery of these assignments in a surprisingly powerful way, even though some of the exercises were more or less variations on familiar approaches. Most of all, the care that went into making the booklets both lightened and deepened the mood.

Benji certainly isn't making any claims about Howard Gardner's theory, but these personalized reading journals do offer more points of entry into a work of literature than a traditional paper...while building some of the same skills that traditional literary analysis calls for. And I'm thinking that changing up the way we practice a skill looks could change the way the brain approaches it.

Celebrity

Recently, Harumi and some of her colleagues adapted the party game Celebrity for the classroom. The game involves correctly identifying famous persons or events and so lends itself to test review.

To prepare, students were divided into two teams, given two different term sheets and asked to prepare definitions of various persons, events or concepts.
Some of the terms included HMS Beagle, Australopithecus and differential reproductive success.

In class the next day, the two teams listened to each others' definitions while taking notes. Teachers and classmates weighed in, asking questions, correcting misconceptions and fine-tuning definitions. Students took these refined definitions home to study for class the next day. The idea was to be prepared to describe and identify each term correctly.

Celebrity works like this: students randomly draw terms out of hat and try to offer descriptions which their classmates will recognize. In the first round, each player can describe the person, term or concept at some length; during the second, the description is sharply limited to a two-word phrase-- a distillation of the earlier, long-winded explanation. The team or person to guess the most terms correctly wins.

Not surprisingly, preparation is key; the better students know each term, the more imaginative their descriptions can be--and the sharper their classmates' guesses. However, the game angle has the advantage of being student-centered, competitive and often quite hilarious. It makes memorization a means to an end instead of an end in itself--and yet the students come away knowing quite a lot more about Darwinism.

Brain Rules

Trolling the web recently, I came across UW professor John Medina, whose book Brain Rules recently came out in paperback. (Very co-incidently, while lost in Laurelhurst today, I noticed a mysterious campus-like facility called the Talaris Institute, which turns out to be his research institute. Who knew?)

Medina has dedicated a long career to understanding how human beings process information and has boiled his conclusions down to twelve simple rules.

The Rules

Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.
Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.
Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.
Rule #4: We don't pay attention to boring things.
Rule #5: Repeat to remember.
Rule #6: Remember to repeat.
Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.
Rule #8: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses.
Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.
Rule #11: Male and female brains are different.
Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

These twelve rules appear on Medina's interactive website. I know we've all heard plenty about brain stuff before, but there is something engagingly wonky about this website. You can click on each rule for a "mini-tutorial," which includes video, audio, charts and explanatory text. I found Rules #2, #4, #5, #6 and #10 particularly relevant in terms of how I teach.

Of course, the way my brain works, my challenge is to find a way to allow new ideas to have impact. Too often, I read or hear something striking and fresh about teaching...and then I go back to doing what I usually do.

So! I hereby vow to slash text from powerpoint presentations. And maybe look for ways to introduce smells into the classroom...

Workshop

Last week, I shared some classroom management ideas from Adina. This week, I'd like to describe a writing workshop which I observed in Suzanne's writing class. What was most striking to me was the initiative which the students displayed throughout this process. They had obviously internalized the rules and terminology and were accustomed to running workshop with little overt orchestration from Suzanne.

Each workshop focused on a piece by a student author, which the students had all read and critiqued in advance; the author sat quietly throughout the first part of the workshop, listening and taking notes. Suzanne also took notes quietly throughout.

During this phase, a student presenter took responsibility for facilitating the discussion; he or she had carefully reviewed the work under consideration and prepared a set of questions. The rest of the class weighed in with their own questions, reactions and impressions.

The presenter was adept at guiding the discussion and moved the conversation forward with prompts such as: "How did you think the dialogue established the main character?" "Did anyone have reactions about Richard?" "Does anyone else wonder about the oddly light tone?" If the conversation lagged (which was seldom), the presenter was practiced at asking questions such as: "Does anyone else have questions?" and finally, "Should we open it up to the author?"

This was a pivotal moment. Quite a lot of interest had built up as the students shared their impressions. When the presenter finally turned the conversation over, the readers got the rare chance to have their questions answered--and the author got to weigh in to the feedback which had been offered.

One by one, the author answered questions. On the day I observed, the author stood by some of her choices and seemed to be in the process of re-considering others. It was a fascinating shared experience of decoding and discovery and everyone in the room seemed aware of the privilege which this process conveyed upon readers and author alike. This is a rare feeling to achieve in a classroom...and Suzanne has clearly shown her students how to get there.

Student Roles in the Classroom

As you know, a lot of recent thought in education has gone into shifting emphasis away from teachers in the classroom and towards the students. Not surprisingly, it turns out that giving the students an active role helps them learn. If students are given some responsibility in the classroom, the information they process while on task tends to sink in.

Adina has been assigning her students jobs in the classroom for quite a while now. This enables her to step away from the center of attention and the students are able to step up.

The various roles are as follows: Facilitator, Recorder and Researcher and they are fairly self-explanatory.

The Facilitator takes responsibility for leading the discussion. He or she comes to class prepared with open-ended questions or structured activities designed to highlight key ideas and keep a conversation moving.

The Researcher takes responsibility for tracking questions that come up during class and does some quick research at home to find the answers. (For example, you might find yourself needing to know: who was the US Ambassador to the USSR during the Moscow Show Trials?)

The Recorder takes notes during the discussion. There are a couple of ways you can develop this role. It's most effective if you leave time at the end of the class for the Recorder to summarize out loud the main points of the conversation. This provides an opportunity to reinforce certain ideas...or to bring out ideas which didn't emerge. If you want to go Totally Crazy, you can also ask the Recorder to type up a quick summary which you can upload on your Teacher Page. This not only offers the students an opportunity to make a measurable contribution to the class, but also creates a written record of the discussion, useful for test review and perhaps for students beginning an analytic essay.

Adina is so organized that she has this all sorted out at the beginning of the quint. This way, students know what to expect and the rotation of roles is built in.

Date	Discussion topic	Facilitator	Recorder	Researcher
9/17	Agam. to 121	Austen K	Quinn F	Alex R
9/18	Agam. to 141	Will O.	Ann	Hanah
9/19	Agam. To 158	Wren	Hannah	Ranleigh
9/22	Agam. Done	Lulu	William	Brisa

Whoa!

(By the way, from 1936-1938, the US ambassador to the USSR was Joseph Davies, whom Historian Tim Tzouliadis has taken to task for his "glittering obliviousness.")