D&Z: 3&4

Once again, I really liked this week's reading assignment. "Subjects Matter" is just a really informative and easy read. I really could relate to Chapter 3 "Why Textbooks Are Not Enough", throughout grade school I remember, for the majority of my classes, having one, very dated textbook. There were the exceptions though, most of my English teachers required additional novels, short stories or poetry and I even had a Social Studies teacher that required us to read Orwell's Animal Farm. In high school my Sociology teacher made sure each of her students got a weekly copy of Newsweek and Time. 

But for the most part I was taught from a heavy, outdated textbook. I grew up in Cranston and now substitute in the same district and from my observations, things have not changed. Recently, I was subbing for a middle school science teacher and when I opened the book I was surprised to see my friends name written on the front cover (along with the year it was loaned out; 2002-2003). Just like they state in D&Z, textbook companies work very hard to stay current, up to date and correct, but it is very hard to do so. In certain content areas current textbooks are important.

I understand why schools keep and reused textbooks decades after their original publication; they are very expensive. In the future if I am given outdated text, I will probably be that guy in the copy room making copies for my students of updated text.

UbD Reading

Before reading any of the chapter this week, the pre-writing assignment that we did in class last week had me thinking that I was not familiar with anything that had to do with this week's readings. I was wrong because once I started reading Module A I was immediately brought back to my 406 class with Dr. Kraus. I remember the day he passed out the blank lesson plans sheets and we had to fill in the  blanks. I remember think that this whole working backwards thing was difficult.

After doing the reading this week I have changed my mind. I makes sense when I started to think about it. Just like when you make plans with a friend or family member to do something; don't you have an objective of what you want to do. You don't just hop in a car a drive around aimlessly.

As a teacher I need to set a goal of what I want my students to learn and then create lesson plans working toward that big idea. Breaking lessons up into smaller pieces in order to achieve the main goal.

So I may have been skeptical about this process a semester ago, I really do not have a problem with it anymore. I also really liked how these readings were organized, it helped make difficult concepts much easier for me to understand. I could not find anything I really did not agree with or stuck out to me as being a bad idea.

A little bit of backward design could have saved this boy a lot of trouble.

D&Z: Chapter 1&2

Daniels and Zelmelman’s “Subjects Matter” is a surprisingly interesting and enlightening read. In Chapter 1 really liked the contrasting stories of Mr. Cosgrove and the young men at McDonald’s.  Obviously, the first story, the McDonald’s story is the more favorable way of teaching reading. Unfortunately, I think the Mr. Cosgrove story is an exaggerated way that most of us have been taught through the years.

In Chapter 2, I really liked the section where the authors mention that “reading is more than decoding”. It reminds me of the small groups discussion we had in our last class. As a group we couldn’t come to a conclusion whether or not simply saying a word (or decoding a word) was reading or not. This section of the chapter cleared things up for me.  Reading is not just receiving a message, a they put it, it’s much more than that. Throughout the chapter I found my self stumped on the sample reading passages. I love to read, but those passages had me scratching my head. But it was a great and effectual way to show us how our future students may be reading text that we supply them with. We can’t just be like Mr. Cosgrove and assume that our students read the assigned text, understood and have mastered the subject matter. As future teachers, it is our job to make sure our students are active readers and not just merely decoders.