Monday, August 30, 2010
Readicide Ch 1
This is my 2nd year being in a Science classroom and so I expected to hear CRCT discussed from day one, but it didn't happen and has yet to happen. My lead teacher is a rare form, one who believes in students learning through inquiry and not just through transmission. It is true that teachers are required to teach an insane number of standards, in fact so many that students are only skimming through the content. What kind of deep thinking or interest does this evoke? Gallagher wrote that students only have "authentic interest" when they are able to really explore an interesting idea. When standards are covered so quickly just to stay on the state's set deadline students are not able to explore any topic at depth. Students will be exposed to differnt literacy forms when able to study more things of interest. In the classroom I'm currently in, the lead teacher really strives for students to have the opportunity to explore their interests. In Science, students can be exposed to reading in many forms, such as lab write-ups and interactive Web Quest. As far as CRCT prep, teachers are forced to teach the content for the test if they expect a contract for the following year. I believe Judith A Langer said it best by this quote, "If students are taught to read and write well, they will do fine on a mandated reading test." We should not focus teaching students test questions, but rather on content areas.
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You are connecting to your experiences, Manda. Keep processing your reading - reflecting, challenging, questioning, and connecting ;-)
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment about the amount of material that we have to teach (cover) according to the GPS. We are not given the time to let the students investigate and develop the connections and interest that are required to truly learn science. I beleive if we take the time needed to teach students to think and question that they would do much better on any test. In the process of inquiry the students would learn the reading skills that we have been discussing and do well on any test.
ReplyDeleteI like how you applied what Gallagher is discussing in this chapter to your own experiences. I loved how Gallagher gave credit to the need for standards in his commentary in this chapter and what they do as far as holding teachers accountable in teaching appropriate material, but that the problem is in the amount of standards they are given. I couldn't agree more with his statement on this. There is an obvious need for standards, but they need to be effective and thoughtful standards that will benefit the students, not hinder them.
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