I truly love reading everyone's comments. I keep looking for the like button after I'm done. :) Hope everyone's enjoying their summer!!
Chapter 6: Engage for Deep Understanding
The toughest part of building deep understanding is often ensuring that all students are able to transfer the content to their own lives. How do you currently develop learning transfer in your students? What might you try to improve your results?
I liked many of the examples for developing deeper understanding in this chapter. Transfer is always a challenge, but I think so much stems from developing the vocabulary. Teaching ELL students the last few words is always enlightening to what they do not understand due to vocabulary. I use a lot of pictures and diagrams in my teaching to address their needs, but I think developing more labels across all areas of the curriculum will help. I have used the web diagrams often in Science, but plan to try more of them in other areas as well. I the core questions on p. 98 to help deepen thinking and plan to use them as well as a word of the day. The more students can incorporate their learning into everyday life will help to develop their transfer of learning and engagement.
ReplyDeleteAs I read through this chapter, the one concept that I really want to work on is discovering the properties. To me, if students share what they know with each other, they may be able to make a connection to their own life. They have to truly understand the basics before they can move on to higher level activities. We are in such a rush to teach the next skill or concept that we forget they are still just kids and need time to digest and learn. I also like how in this stage they have explain their thinking, which leads to a higher level of understanding. I also think there is great power when students can teach or coach each other. They can use their own knowledge as well as personal experiences. The last thing that stood out to me was when the author said it is the quality of questions that are asked, not the quantity.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree! Having them explain is the key!
DeleteI agree with Jen. I really emphasize vocabulary. I put more time into this to help my ELL students get a better understanding but I have found that all of my students really benefit. This approach aids them in building schema. So many of our kiddos do not have the background knowledge they need for understanding especially at the kindergarten level. We do a lot of vocab work with a predict/preview format. Depending on the students reply I clarify at the beginning right from the start or sometimes we go with their response and then adjust after the reading so we get a clearer understanding of the word or idea. An example that comes to mind is, "What do we think a Veteran might be"? and the response was "Someone who takes care of animals". I need to clarify right away or they will be confused when I read and not be able to make the connection needed for understanding. On the other hand when my students thought all birds migrate because they see it in the sky (with some birds) we can clarify at the end by re-examining the information to understand some birds stay throughout the winter. They understood the basic idea of migration but we needed to go deeper to understand only some birds migrate. This is where we can use what we know to connect information for deeper understanding.
ReplyDeleteI really want to try the vote with your feet technique mentioned in action #4 where you move to a corner in the room according to your understanding. I hope to make more connections for them so they can acquire deeper understanding.
Sometimes I forget that when I talk about a subject, that seems simple to me, can be confusing to my students because they haven't been exposed to that word. I need to realize these guys are only kindergartners and have been only learning for 5 years of their lives :) I think assessing their prior knowledge of the content will help me be a better teacher and see where the next step of my teaching will lead too. Asking lots of questions about the subject will help deepen their comprehension of what we are studying. I also agree that peer teaching is very important. Not only can they learn from me, but their friends are a big component in this matter. I also liked using incentives for using the new word. I thought that would be fun for the kids to try and work that in to their school day.
ReplyDeleteA quote I really liked was from the successful teacher on p. 93, "I just take a few minutes each day to think about which students I am not reaching and plan some strategies for the next day." I love that conferring and strategy groups allows us to do this with our students, but I'm looking forward to improving in that area-- which I think just takes experience.
ReplyDeleteI think I definitely want to improve on my gaging understanding by prior knowledge activities. Sometimes the students will really shock you by how much they already know, or by what they don't know. I was talking with a friend last night about how you remember "port" and "starboard" on a boat-- and we both had the same tactic to remember it. Left has four letters and so does port, starboard has more and so does right. He's 50 and that's still the only way he remembers it--- how can we expect students to just magically commit everything to memory? I would like to find more associations/mnemonic sentences, etc!
I loved that quote as well, Amanda!
DeleteHad no idea how to remember the difference between port and starboard. I think I will from now on. Thanks, Amanda!
DeleteAs I was reading through this chapter, there were several different activities that I found would be so easy to incorporate on a daily or weekly basis. The word of the day or odd word out are both perfect for class meetings. Tying in visuals and associations/mnemonics to remember those new words and their meanings could enrich the vocab during class meetings. I love the idea of "catching" classmates using new vocab. Just as we have students look for bucket fillers or acts of kindness, we could have them catch friends using new words. Something I am going to focus on this school year is having students teach each other. This is probably the third or fourth time the author has mentioned this engagement strategy and each time he provides another idea for how to have them teach each other. They could teach each other motions to remember the new vocabulary or teach each other what they have learned about the identifying properties.
ReplyDeleteI am going to piggyback off of what Nicole said and stress the 'having them explain' concept. When students are turning and talking, they are explaining their thinking to one another. I really thought about book clubs with the older kids and how much thinking, explaining, and organizing they are doing on their own. This also made me think about those kids who aren't ready for book clubs and have a difficult time explaining their thinking. This chapter made me realize that lots of these students are missing the 'five actions for building deep understanding.' I think that vocabulary is also a huge factor and the transfer of it. I know that our ELL students really struggle with this as well. I even noticed that some of the higher achieving ELL students in Math struggled with vocabulary quite a bit. In the future in my classes, I will work on organizing content labels. I would really like for the students group the labels and work on answering a series of questions about each label. I really think that the kids would be highly engaged in an example activity like the one on pg. 98. In using activities like the example one, I hope that the students would be able to link the properties together with labels and then hopefully this would deepen their understanding of the concept. I would like the kids to also do more turn and talks too, even in the computer lab!
ReplyDeleteAs, I was reading through this chapter, there were many activities that I want to incorporate into my classroom. I want to remember that no matter what topic I am introducing, everyone's prior knowledge is different. I want to make sure that I assess that knowledge, so I know where to begin and how to plan each lesson. I also like the idea of students teaching each other. There was a solution "Let the students be the experts" that looks like it would be a fun way to review a topic. You have half of the students as experts and the others as reporters. Dividing them into pairs the reporters ask the experts questions for 2 minutes and then switch. Then debrief with the whole class.
ReplyDeleteAlong with everyone else, I want to introduce vocabulary daily by using some of the strategies mentioned on pg. 102. I also like the idea of having students getting "caught" using the new vocabulary.
We teach vocabulary daily; but we have to remember it has not been learned until the student is using it, both orally and in writing. Something that I have often heard is "X is just a big, fancy word for Y." No, the name of something is its name but its name may vary in context. There are no big, fancy words. There are only words that are more or less precise in expressing meaning and words that are more or less appropriate for the context in which they are used. I hope students will be able to learn that being able to speak and write in different registers is useful and fun.
ReplyDeleteLet Students Be the Experts reminded me of the Silent Way in language teaching. Caleb Gattegno said "Learning teaches me how to teach." Once students become the experts, all we have to do is set back and watch to know where to lead them the next day.
I did a lot of highlighting in this chapter. Great ideas!!! I stated in an earlier blog that I want to focus more on vocabulary and start a word wall, but was unsure how to use it successfully throughout the entire school year. Thank you, Eric Jenson for the ideas! First and foremost, I love that he suggested using incentives for using new words. I was thinking that instead of just new words it could be any word on the word wall. With these incentives, it will help keep the word wall alive all year long. YAY!!! Some incentive ideas include: give out white tickets (Be a Learner, of course), allow the student to give themselves a round of applause using an instrument of their choice, chose where they want to sit during class since I assign the seats, hit the “Yes” button which plays “I’m Walking On Sunshine”, walk down the stairs and open the door at the end of class (I’m not sure why this is so cool, but it definitely is.), and hopefully other ideas since I’m still brainstorming. I would welcome suggestions. I love the ideas he provided to use the word: use the word in conversation with another student, create a question for a partner about the word that the partner answers, create synonyms and antonyms, create similes and metaphors, illustrate the word, and connect the word to their own lives or the world at large.
ReplyDeleteSomething else that really struck me to deepen understanding is discovering properties. I loved graphic organizers while teaching in 6th grade. They really help organize information. Who knows why I stopped using them when I switched to music? Well, no more. I’m back in the graphic organizer business. I think the kids will really enjoy “Odd Word Out” or matching two columns, one with the label and the other will the property and “quizzing” another classmate to put the matches back together.
I’m ready to Reach ~ Teach~ and Empower kiddos!!! Bring on 2014-2015!
I loved the idea of the "Word of the Day". If I still had a classroom I would incorporate some of the suggested vocabulary actiivites into morning meeting. I agree with Beccah, the incentive for using the new word is brilliant. I can see the kids eating this up. I remember during a read aloud the author used lavatory instead of bathroom and my kids loved asking to use the lavatory from then on out. Kids love using new words, grown up words, once they understand them and how to properly use them.
ReplyDeleteThe “Solutions You Can Use” for Actions 3 and 5 resonated with me because they provide great examples to apply context and meaning authentically. Exercises like word-of-the-day and brief writing tasks would not take up much time out of the school day, but the amount of learning that would happen over the course of the entire school year is amazing. I loved how the book suggested several times to turn the learning over to students. Asking them why what you’re teaching matters will help them understand how it applies to their life. The Tyrannosaurus rex example made me laugh and I could see why students would be engaged enough to want to answer that question. Little tricks like this will make a difference in the level of student engagement and empower me as a teacher!
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