I am liking this book more and more.
Schmoker makes a lot of great points about social studies instruction and continues his less is more philosophy in this chapter. While the chapter focuses on social studies, any subject area could be substituted. Schmoker says literacy is the key to effective social studies instruction (as well as all instruction, in my opinion). He discusses the fact that history should be taught with a heavy focus on making connections and that both literature and history help us to understand ourselves better by understanding the influences around us.
Social studies as well as other content areas are extremely important because they are literacy in use. In language arts and reading classes, the students get the fundamentals and strategies, but literacy is at the core of the other subjects. The same strategies and basics need to be discussed, modeled and implemented to get further into the content.
Social studies is extremely important because it is a place where students have many opportunities to argue and dissect written and spoken arguments. Students need more reading, discussion, analysis, writing. Often in content area classes there are "too many activities to keep students engaged, but illiterate." (p. 135) I feel that if we focus more on less standards, going deeper into the few standards we decide upon, we will eliminate the possibility for that problem and more authentic assignments and more authentic literacy will take place. Students would be given more opportunities to analyze and argue through writing and discussion, which would increase more knowledge as well as modeling of this by reading more.
Other things worth mentioning:
On page 138, Schmokers gives a detailed process for reducing standards. I like this approach much better than the process outlined yesterday at the 90/90/90 conference by Cathy Lassier.
There are great examples on pages 140-161 of task, text, and talk. I think it would be beneficial for our staff to read certain chapters (language arts, chp 4, social studies, chp 5, etc) and discuss them in their departments (with our DRT team??).
There are good ideas of a scaled back rubric for social studies on page 145. I think there could be a place for this, but I do think we should look closely at the rubric from Lead and Learn they presented on Wednesday as a building-wide rubric.
Modeling, modeling, modeling. Again Schmoker mentions the importance of modeling and explicit examples of expected tasks.
My favorite quote from the chapter is on page 153: "To those who say there isn't time, I can only say: Yes, there is." Perhaps they are trying to teach too many standards, or assign too much busy work or ineffective tasks.
OMG, I just had tons typed and it got lost!!! AHHH!
ReplyDeleteAlso, it will not let me post. It just keeps asking me to sign in, sign, in, sign in!! :/
Here’s something like what I had:
In response to what Katie wrote about p. 135 - Schmoker also says, “We would rather entertain students than teach them.” This makes me think of several classrooms at JB in particular. Even though students are having fun, the teacher may not have many behavior management issues, the students are still not deeply involved in thought or interacting with learning - reading, thinking and writing.
We talked a bit in our meeting this morning about the use of textbooks - page 136 reminds us of the need to be PREPARED - that textbook pages should be selected (not the whole book or all of every chapter) aligned with units and topics. In addition, the curriculum should have good essential/overarching questions that all learning is geared toward and above all it should be molded around a strong literacy template (p. 74).
I like on page 139, where Schmoker really gives a good argument for the Fisher & Frey model for instruction. I think this could be shared with the entire staff down the road, not just the SS teachers.
Research comes up in this chapter. I think that this is something we need to talk to the staff about later this year. It will only get easier if done more often.
Katie mentioned modeling - I totally heard ‘ think alouds’ a lot in this chapter. I think this is not just storytelling or lecture, but true thinking out loud of the mental processes that occur when trying to delineate, reason, or find the significant parts of text. This goes along with showing kids HOW to learn. If we want them to eventually annotate text, we have to show them exactly how to do it, not just explain the process.
Page 153 has a great list that any teacher could use to facilitate class or partner discussions - also, nice quote, Katie!
I think some of us are confused about the reading and posting schedule. They are not every week but every few days. Here is the schedule for the remainder of our time:
Chap. 6 - Aaron - June 21-25
Chap. 7 - Concl. - Kristin - June 26-30
Intro. - Chap. 2 - Marianne - Aug. 1-3
Chap. 3-4 - Jen - Aug. 4-6
Chap. 5-6 - Rachel - Aug. 7-9
Chap. 7-Concl. - Joe - Aug. 10-12
Rachel
I really like the idea of “task, text, talk”. I think this is a simple format that makes what Schmoker suggests seem simple. One thing I really got from this chapter is that social studies teachers need to be purposeful and proactive. They need to carefully select their teaching materials. Rachel mentioned Schmoker’s opinion on entertaining students. I think this is easy to slip in to. It is EASY to show a lot of movies in social studies. It is easy to have them complete big elaborate art projects. But I think we really need to step back and ask ourselves… what are they really doing for kids? I would say – not much. Also, social studies teachers need to be actively looking for outside resources that fit their particular curriculum. Not only does it give students another opinion – but I think it also helps them to make a real world connection. Textbooks are used to provide basic knowledge, but basic isn’t enough. We need to show students how to dig deeper. I think this also fits nicely with Blooms. Students will learn how to analyze and be critical thinkers. We talked about this today – but I’m still wondering… Do we underestimate our students? Is that what causes behaviors? Just something to think about.
ReplyDeleteI also think that looking for outside texts can be applied to all content areas. I know that we subscribed to Scholastic Action last year (not sure about this year) and now I am really regretting how I used them. They should have been shared with other core areas as well. However – to be honest – I am not that familiar with all of the other core areas. Maybe this is where some brief curriculum mapping could be useful?
Thank you Rachel for sending out the schedule. I do think people were confused myself included!
ReplyDeleteBecky makes a point above that the use of videos and elaborate art projects may not be the best use of teaching students. I think it goes back to Schmoker saying earlier in the book, we should be identifying areas in the text that students need to use. The whole textbook does not need to be read but areas pertaining to the standard or topic should be. I think the use of video is ok if it is pieces, not 2-3-4 days of just sitting and watching. I also believe that SS projects can still be used, but tweeked to implement more factual writing.
I really like the idea of curriculum mapping with our grade level teachers. I know that the 8th grade did a dubbed down version of this last year and felt it worked very well. I wish this is what we would have been doing more of 3 years ago when we had team time! I still feel that this can be completed fairly easily. (Maybe month by month chunks)
After reading this chapter, it made me realize that I really have no clue what goes on in Social Studies classrooms. I don't really know what topics they cover, other than the basics: Ancient Civilizations, Geography, and American History. Do they have any formal writing in their curriculum now? I really think it would be worth our time to do curriculum mapping as Aaron said! I have to believe that our Social Studies teachers are doing great things in their classrooms; I just don't know about them. Unfortunately, the emphasis is usually on Reading and Math so Social Studies and sometimes Science gets thrown to the side. Maybe if we can show them that we are invested in finding ways to incorporate literacy into their content and give them affirmation on the tasks they are doing well, it will help in the area of effort and efficacy.
ReplyDeleteTo comment on what others have said, I agree with Becky that students need to read current events to become invested and connected. Middle school students are living in the present and they want to see the relevance of what they are learning.
I also highlighted the section about task, text, and talk. It fits nicely with the Fisher and Frey model as Rachel said, and I like how the book provides specific examples of the process.
One of my favorite quotes from this chapter is on page 147. "When we routinely "model and make explicit" how we as adults read, think, and make connections, students learn to do it too." We must constantly model, model, model everything we think and do so students can become confident in their own abilities.
I think social studies is an area that we need to find out what our power standards are. Maybe social studies teachers feel they need to cover the book and aren't really considering what the standards are. I know when I taught social studies last year I felt overwhelmed with the book, but the district standards are so vague that I wasn't sure how else to approach the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important that the text book is used purposefully. If this is something we are going to present to our staff, I think a lot of modeling is going to be needed so we don't end up with a bunch of students reading and answering questions all day long. I think the "thinking and writing" part will need to be stressed along with the text reading.
Our current 6th grade text isn't that grade (in my opinion), and Gamble's stories are fun, enteretaining, interesting, and informative. I wonder if we could find these same stories in a variety of texts so students have the chance to read, think, and write about them. Or maybe Gamble just writes his own text book. :)
I know that I am a little behind schedule in responding to this, I am sorry, but there were two things that I wanted to touch-on.
ReplyDelete1) Amanda and Becky both brought up how Schmoker advocates bringing in outside resources that address current events to supplement the main context/text that is being covered in class. I think that this is a great way to make any curriculum more meaningful to our students! I taught Treasures as a sixth-grade classroom teacher for four years; as a first-year teacher it was nice because everything was there and laid-out for me, but the next three years it was just unbearably boring to teach. I think that if whoever is responsible for teaching Treasures would pick maybe one of the five weekly themes (that they and//or their students found particularly engaging) from each unit and just focus on that theme while pulling-in outside resources to go into much greater depth that it could really be a fun curriculum to teach. Just something to think about as we have our 6th grade Language Arts position open, and some questions as to what exactly that position will look like once filled.
2)In Kristin's comments she mentioned how important modeling is when it comes to reading out of a text book. This is very true. I am an above average reader and I like to read, but when it comes to reading a text book neither of those two statements apply to myself. Reading a text book is a completely different type of reading, in my opinion. I'm sure I am not alone in remembering spending lots of time in college (okay maybe I didn't spend nearly enough time) reading a text book only to close the book and have no idea what I had just read. We must teach our students, specifically, how to read out of a text book. How to break it into chunks, annotate, re-read, etc. This will be a valuable skill for them as they move on to high school and then college.
Thinking differently about our use of textbooks has been a big “aha” for me. In the past I believed teachers needed to accommodate for the difficult text students need to read instead of teaching students to read the text. I think we can do both. Accommodations are necessary, but all students should have ongoing modeling and practice with note-taking, underlining, discussion and annotation of textbooks. If checks for understanding are part of this process then student growth in this area is realistic. I believe along with non-fiction writing, this may be one of the most important things we do to prepare our students for high school and beyond. The emphasis on not only modeling (model and make explicit how we read, think and make connections p.149) but regular checks for understanding which are critical and not something currently done building wide. I feel the Fisher and Frey lesson plan presented at the Feb staff development will help change lesson delivery and the feedback sheet Eric created will help both Joe and I provide the individual feedback and accountability for consistent implementation building wide. We will have to be creative since we can’t actually mark up books…someone mentioned double entry journals as a possibility. Another thought is maybe we could work with our Social Studies teachers first on the Interactive Lecture Model and then have them demonstrate/share at staff meetings. I also think our Social Studies and Science teachers will be able to narrow their curriculum easier then some of the other subjects. One year at JB students had these classes every other day and all teachers agreed at the time that they had plenty of time to cover what was expected…having said that math will probably be the most challenging when we narrow our focus.
ReplyDelete- Marianne
Once again Schmoker emphasizes the importance of read, write, and talk. I can see debates easily being implemented in SS. An aha I had was that not the entire text book needs to be read. They can pick out the most important parts and teach how to closely read the text. Read Alouds are important to help students understand what you think as you read. I like the quote on pg. 149- "When we routinely 'model and make explicit' how we as adults read, think, and make connections, students learn to do it too."
ReplyDeleteI think there is a lot of value in curriculum mapping.