Research Organization

In Steve Moline’s article, “Using Graphic Organizers to Write Information Texts,” he says that when children are presented with a research and report type of task, they need to have scaffolding for how to organize the information they find in their final product. The graphic organizers he suggests are helpful, but my cooperating teacher has developed another way to help students organize data in her class research projects that seems very straightforward and helpful for students.

The students in my class have recently started a president research project where each student has one president and must find information on the president to write a report from and give a presentation. To help students stay organized, my cooperating teacher gave each student three envelopes, one for each main topic. The envelopes have a list taped to the outside with the subtopics in order of how they should appear in the final write-up. As the students research, the students are supposed to have separate, labeled index card for each of the sub topics and keep them in the corresponding envelopes. Once the students have note cards with research completed for each subtopic, they can begin writing that section of the report. They pull out their cards and synthesize the information in the order listed on the envelope. This way, the students understand what order information should be presented in and get practice ordering their notes in a logical way.

Along with the research/note organization, my teacher also has mini lessons and examples of pieces of the final project. On one day, she provided examples of a poor introduction and a good introduction. On another day, she presented examples of a poor “early life” section and a good “early life” section. She will be doing the same thing for the other main sections as well as for the conclusion.

Although my cooperating teacher doesn’t have a drawn web or other visual organizer for the students, she does provide the structure through the envelopes and examples of well-organized reports through her mini lessons. Just thought it was a great way to scaffold students’ research.

Integrating disciplines

Source

Students need to learn how to integrate subjects in their minds. Students need to make the connection between math and science to be able to succeed in chemistry. Rather than seeing math and science as two distinctly separate periods and subjects, utilizing the new and background knowledge across subjects will help them not only succeed during the school year but also remember what they learned.

I personally know that I remember new information better when I make multiple types of connections to other new things I am learning as well as things I already know. Students need to be able to make connections like these in order to tap into the full capacity of their learning and memory capabilities. However, students may or may not be able to learn to do this on their own.

Teachers need to learn how to teach the students through integration of subjects, or at least teaching students about the links between subjects. How powerful would it be to have an art teacher talk to an English class about William Holman Hunt’s painting of "The Lady of Shalott" or other similar paintings while they are reading Lord Tennyson’s ballad? How many more connections could be added by a history teacher? Understanding of the poem could be much deeper and memory of the connections would be much stronger.

What I am trying to say is that teachers should be teaching in a more collaborative and integrated way in order to teach students to make the connections between the subjects. When I was in my middle school placement for student teaching, I saw teachers teaching in exactly the same way they have always taught middle school, completely separate from other subjects. Sure they met as teams, but that was only by subject. Math with math, social studies with social studies. The thing that bothered me most about this way of teaching was the school had been built to facilitate collaboration between subjects.

There were four classrooms and a shared space that made up a pod, and each classroom in a pod was a different subject. Furthermore, most of the students had most of their classes in one pod; a student who had math in pod B usually also had history, language arts, and science in pod B. So why weren’t these teachers collaborating and trying to link their curriculums to find places where they could teach the student to utilize multiple disciplines at once? Yes, it takes a lot of time, but isn’t a school supposed to be about creating success for the students? I think if schools would open their eyes to how beneficial integration of subjects is, there would be more time allocated to collaboration between subjects as professional development.

Pacing

During my first week back at my student teaching placement, I had the opportunity to take over teaching quite a few lessons. For some reason, I found pacing my lessons to be much more difficult than I had found in the past. I'm wondering if this is because I've learned more about teaching and all the different ways students can and should be taught. I've learned so many new strategies and techniques, and I'm trying to use them all in my teaching. However, now that I'm using all of these strategies, my lessons have become too long and the students haven't been getting enough work time. What's better: to make sure every student learns during every lesson but have decreased work time, or make sure the students get enough work time and seek out those that didn't get it during the lesson individually? It's another part of the balancing act.

Pendulum

Many people ask me where I want to end up as a teacher and what grade I want to teach. Prior to starting my teaching certificate program, I would have said with confidence that it would be middle school math. However, I'm finding it more and more difficult to say with surety that this is where I will truly end up. Don't get me wrong; I am loving my intern placement at the middle school level. I only teach the subject that I'm most passionate about, I get to work with students who are starting to be able to have real conversations with an adult yet still have child-like wonder and silliness at times, and it seems to have more structure and control than the elementary environment. However, I am coming to discover things about my 5th grade placement that I have surprisingly come to love and want for my furtue career.

I have found that even though I originally picked middle school because I wanted to be able to have "real" conversations with my students, 5th graders are fully capable of having these kinds of conversations. In fact, they bring more to these conversations because they are just learning how to be a part of them and have not become jaded in the slightest by reality. They bring the element of fresh imagination to spice up conversations.

Other things that are starting to change my mind are the teaching of multiple subjects, being able to bring more fun into the classroom, having (slightly) more flexibility with curriculum, having deeper connections with your students because there are fewer of them, and having a connection with the students' parents. All of these things have begun the more drastic swinging of my mental pendulum toward upper elementary teaching, and I'm not sure where my preference will end up. Being only halfway through my program, there is a lot that could change my mind, and I could end up truly anywhere.

Practice Makes Perfect

As I get farther into my practice of student teaching, I am continually surprised by how much more difficult teaching is than it looks. Every Wednesday and Thursday I watch my teacher teach math to 7th and 9th graders, and I think, "I could do that, easy. I just have to do what he does, easy." During the last couple weeks, I've started taking over parts of lessons and have found out that it is not easy to emulate his lessons. I forget to say things I had planned on saying, I forget to show specific ways of solving problems, I forget to wait for the kids to be quiet before I start talking, I forget the students names (well, there are 150 names to learn), and sometimes I forget how to solve the word problems by the method I'm supposed to teach (oops). Although it is starting to get easier as I get more comfortable teaching, I'm realizing that it's going to be a less easy process than I was expecting...I guess that's why I get to have 6 more months of practice!