Readicide

From the first chapter of Readicide, I get that high stakes testing is killing the education that our students are receiving. Instead of students being taught the skill to think critically they are taught how to think on the surface and how to take a multiple choice test.

I missed a lot of the current high stakes testing that students are taking now, but I have seen the testing impact through my tutoring experiences of college freshman. I have seen that they do not know the basic concepts in math or science that they desperately need if they want to succeed at the college level of math and science.

During my reading, I began to wonder if any research has been done on the number of entering college freshman that are declaring as Undecided. I wonder if this number has risen in recent years. I would suspect that it has risen because students are not given enough time or opportunity in high school to become involved in their learning. This is because teachers are hurrying through material so they cover has much as they can before students take the BIG test. By not allowing students to immerse themselves in material they may like, teachers are killing not only students desire to read by also learn.

From this thought and other ideas from Readicide, I believe that I will not skim through the material in my Chemistry class. If I go in-depth and ensure that students understand the material then I know they will 100% get those questions right. Also, the skills students will obtain from the material covered will aid them in figuring out other areas of the test even if the material is new to them. I believe that it is more important for students to have critical thinking and reasoning skills than it is for them to have good memorizing skills.

Scary Words

In Chemistry there are a lot of new words that are not much outside of the sciences. The words can be very intimidating. Due to the fear chemistry students have of the words that are brought before them in a classroom, I have chosen to do my inquiry project on vocabulary. Without a firm foundation in the vocabulary students will become easily frustrated and confused.

I sometimes still get the meaning of some words backwards because the words are very similar. Also, new vocabulary words typically come in pairs. By coming in pairs, students tend to get confused and just give up. I hope to give my students some tools and present new words in a way that will help them not only remember but also understand.

Through the research I have done I am seeing a lot of work about word association, use of etymology, and putting words to music. Personally, I have found word association the best way of remembering the difference between vocabulary terms that are brought out in pairs. I hope as I continue to do more in-depth research that I found ideas for introducing vocabulary that I have not thought of.

Reading articles and having to really look at how important reading in my content, has made me see how difficult the skill is. It is a skill that I was able to pick up on, but I see myself as a good reader. I could not imagine how difficult the task can be for a student who is not confident in their reading abilities.

a time to read

The current adolescent readers have grown up in a time where anything they want can be found with just a click of a button. The access they have to all information has dulled them to the things that take time to get through and process. Due to their access to anything at a click they only want to spend time on things that can give them instant gratification. When it comes to reading, students will just find the short version or a video that covers the same reading material. Students do not understand the disservice they are giving themselves in not allowing their minds do the processing instead of the PC. From the immediacy that they achieve in many aspects of their lives, adolescent readers do not know how to take time and read the things given to them in classes. They read quickly which prevents them from actually seeing what they are reading. When reading in different content areas, skim reading will never allow students to even prick the surface of what the reading is discussing.

Content literacy is subject that I feel that I just learned as I went. It was a lot of trial and error and I still make a lot of mistakes. I am seeing the importance of exposing and teaching students how to read in different content areas. It is important because students today have access to the Internet and the intentions of writers online need to be known to make informed decisions on their opinions. Even though students are reading less tangible books they are still reading, but their readings are opinions and ideas of people all over the world.

In my content area, Chemistry, reading articles is an art that I am still trying to master. Reading chemistry articles can take hours because each sentence is filled with important information. I have learned that reading the abstract and conclusions of an article is the best place to start reading. By reading these two sections first you are able to find the things that you need to be looking for as you read rest of the article. Also, note taking is extremely important. After each sentence and paragraph, you need to ask yourself what was important about it and what does this show me. After asking these questions, writing down the answers and then writing points about how this aids in understanding or if it created even more confusion. If it created more confusion then figuring out why it was confusing is the next task. Typically the reason is because the vocabulary used was unfamiliar. It takes a lot of time to read a Chemistry, or any science article. However, if students are able to learn the way to go through an article, the task of reading the article becomes a little less difficult.

From my experience and the things I have been taught the best way to effectively read in my discipline is to:

1) Get some background information: Going in blind will not be to your benefit.

2) Read slowly!

3) Take a lot of notes

4) Don’t understand something: STOP! Look up words or ask someone to help clarify a few things

5) Read the abstract and conclusion first

6) Graphs, Figures, and Tables actually help to look at

Sorry, this doesn't really flow but I wanted to make sure that I got all my ideas down.

I'm excited about my blog!!!