Chapter 4: Toward a Balanced Diet of Reading

              “Towards a Balanced Diet of Reading” is going to always be pertinent in my field of teaching as a future English teacher. Where the students find this balance, and how can I help them reach it? It has always been a question of mine about to assign for reading and does it always have to be the “classics” that every one of my high school English teachers covered. I was bored in those classes where the teacher would assign To Kill a Mockingbird, and by then I would have read it three times in other classes. I found that this chapter in the book broke down my questions, and not only applied the answers to English teachers, but also to other content based subjects. 

               One section that stood out to me is called “A Balance of What?”. It made me stop and wonder about how a balance of reading can be achieved. Many classes only use textbooks, and research is saying that those classes need to add more “real life” reading. The eight sub-sections about this topic broke down the question of how you create the balance and what kind of texts you can use. I found the Fiction vs. Nonfiction part to be pertinent to a wide range of subjects. A suggestion was a science classes adding in fiction and nonfiction novels to have students become more engaged in the material they are learning. The teachers can use the nonfiction books to give background or learn about how something was developed, like the chapters suggestion of learning about the creation of the atomic bomb, or use fiction books and use a science fiction novel to introduce to concepts of time, space, and astronomy. This chapter did a good job in breaking down what a balance looks like and how teachers in all subjects can use the concept of balanced reading in their classes.

               My favorite part of the chapter is about the Classroom Library. From personal experience, I always enjoyed going through the books that the teacher had in the classroom that the students were allowed to borrow. It always gave me good ideas for future books to read or exposed me to books that I had never heard of before. I knew, even before reading this chapter, I wanted to have a classroom library in my future classroom. Even this past year when I was doing observations at a high school, I found myself going through the books that the teacher kept on the shelves in her classroom. I find it to be a way for the teacher to foster reading within their students. One part that I didn’t think about was adding newspapers, magazines, and web articles into the library. Maybe some students don’t have access to these forums of literature and the classroom library would be a good resource to have students branch out and read other things instead of only assigned books. The most highlighted part of this section came from the box titled “Key Ingredients of a Classroom Library”. I found all of the points to be incredibly true. I started looking into some of the general interest magazines online and spent hours reading articles on http://www.time.com/time/ . Implementing the use of magazines and articles would really benefit a classroom library by finding a wider range of materials for a wider range of student interests.

Driving Around Central Falls

For my class, I was asked to participate in a Scavenger Hunt of the Central Falls Communities. Below are some of the interesting facts that I found and a few pictures that I took:

(2)  The oldest non-profit organization that serves the Latino community is Progreso Latino since the 1970s. It also is the home of the only food bank within Central Falls. Progreso Latino also has programs to help the Central Fall’s residents with citizenship, housing, and adult education.

(4) Even though the city is only 1.29 square miles, there are many schools within Central Falls. There is one pre-k school, three elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. Outside of the public school system, there is also St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Academy, which is a Catholic private school located in Central Falls.

(8) There is a local post office in Central Falls. It is located off of Dexter St, which seems to be the main street in Central Falls, and only minutes from the high school.

(9) The fire station and the police station are located in the same building, and around the corner from the high school. I would assume that there is protocol for the fire station when handling emergencies, but we were not able to talk to a fireman during our drive.

(12) During the Scavenger Hunt, I notice there were many public parks. Due to the snow though, I was not able to find all the names for the parks. One park that we did spend some time at was Jenks Park, which is located behind the high school. Below is a picture of one of the entrances that we found to the park.

(15) Tiffany and I visited the Moshassuck Cemetery where we found a Civil War Monument. One the monument it states, “Erected by the Town of Lincoln as a Tribute to the Bravery of her Sons in the War of the Rebellion 1861 – 1865”. It was incredible to find such a vast history in such a small town in Rhode Island.

 

(17) As we drove around Central Falls, I found that a lot of the restaurants located in Central Falls were Mexican cuisine. Occasionally we would see a Chinese restaurant mixed into the Mexican restaurants. One interesting thing to note about the restaurants in Central Falls is that I rarely saw a fast food or chain food restaurant. It goes to show the small businesses that the town offers and also how residents of the town must support themselves.

(19) We also visited the Adams Library in Central Falls. Due to the weather, the library was closed when we visited. While doing research online I found that the library offers events such as story time, weekly movies in the auditorium, and also anime and manga clubs.

(24) There are three professional baseball players that are from Central Falls. They are Charley Bassett (played from 1884-1892), Max Surkont (played from 1949-1957), and Jim Siwy (played from 1982-1984). 

(30) One other interesting thing that we found during are drive around Central Falls was Chocolateville, or the Chocolate Mill Overlook.  The original Chocolate Mill was one of North America’s first water powered chocolate mills and its creation even pre-dates the well-known Slater Mill in neighboring Pawtucket. The Overlook is located on the Blackstone River in Central Falls approximately where the original mill was before it was severely damaged by a storm and later demolished. To learn more about the Chocolate Mill, you can go to the link posted here: http://www.chocolatemilloverlook.com/

I found this assignment to be highly enlightening in learning about a town that I previously knew nothing about. Even though the weather was barely cooperating with Tiffany and I, we still were able to drive around the town and learn a lot. Despite the fact that Central Falls is so small, it is a highly populated area. I wonder… Do the residents know about the history that their town contains? Even though I did not get to look into all of the topics on the Scavenger Hunt worksheet, I will still be researching them to learn more about the history that the town has to offer.

UbD: Understanding by Design Review

Starting this reading assignment, I thought that I had a pretty good understanding of what Understanding by Design meant.  I had assumed that the definition of this concept would somewhat be like the students would understand the material after careful design of lessons. I was only thinking about the concept on the surface and not really digging down deep to understand what the two major concepts, understanding and design, really meant when creating the units for the classroom. I found that understandings are specific insights, inferences, or conclusions about a big idea or picture that the teacher wants the students to take away from the classroom.  When thinking about design, I learned that is about how the lessons are created last when planning a unit. The design aspect really is described better when looking at Backwards Design. The first chapter I read was about the concept of Backwards Design.  The stages are simple: 1. Identify desired results 2. Determine acceptable evidence, and 3. Plan learning experiences and instruction.  Usually, teachers start with the lessons and then apply them to the overall curriculum goal or outcome. But with Backwards design, it is the opposite where the goals are addressed first and then the lesson plans are made from what goals need to be met.

Even in my 406 class, this backwards design was never talked about. We were taught to start with the lesson plans and then work our way up to results and assessments. This concept made me stop and think about the pros and cons for each of the unit designs. Which one would really impact my students better? Which one would help me better organize and focus the lessons to the important aspects that need to be understood by the students? I found that I was thinking a lot about the Backwards Design and how it would be more conducive to the learning that needed to take place.

One part that I found interesting that all three readings touch upon was about understanding what part of the curriculum are important concepts that had to be taught. They separated all of the information from the curriculum into three circles: worth being familiar with, important to know and do, and “enduring” understanding. From all of my previous instruction about curriculum, I was never really given a way to separate the curriculum in a way that was easy to understand for teaching purposes. This graph helps me understand that not everything in the curriculum needs to be in the “enduring” category, and instead only be touched up during the lessons.

I enjoyed reading about the Understanding by Design concept. By learning about all these different techniques for creating lessons and figuring out goals for the classroom, I think that teachers can have higher performance and more directed teaching for the students. Teachers should always be implementing new ways to create lessons so that the students can get the most out of them, and with the is type of unit structure the teachers can better see where the focus needs to be set in the lessons.

Chapter 1 and 2 Review

These chapters were highly informative for me when I think about the kind of teacher I want to be. I want to be able to help build the toolbox in my student’s minds that they can use to better understand difficult texts. 

One thing that struck out to me was the two very different stories of reading and learning. The first story was very proactive in getting the students to use multiple sources in understanding the concepts of the lesson. The teachers taught the students ways to better understand the concepts that were prevalent in modern day. The other story, Mr. Cosgrove's lesson on photosynthesis, was a laid back approach to teach the students the material. His class reminded me of the classes that I really disliked when I was in high school. In my opinion, I find that teachers should implement a combination of these two stories and methods of teaching their students. A cross subject project may not be conducive to every school and group of students, and also a teacher shouldn’t only assign readings and not really discuss the topics. If a teacher can find a way to take the better parts from both of these stories, I believe the students could benefit greatly. By assigning reading from different genres of literature such as books, journals, articles, newspapers, and magazines, the students could better understand topics.

 

I found that I was highlighting and underlining things in the chapters that I learned I was subconsciously doing because I am an advanced reader. It was a reminder for me to think that the things that come easy to me have to be taught and explained to the students. It really makes you think about your previous schooling and teachers and how they built these unconscious actions in my head. I’ve been doing things with the text that I didn’t know I was doing and were scientifically proven to help readers perform better. 

I am looking forward to finishing this book because I know that I can learn a lot about how to help my students become better readers. After reading the first two chapters, I can tell that the information presented is not to be looked over, but instead learn and implement in classrooms.