D + Z Chapters 8 and 9

Last week I attended the 34th Annual New England League of Middle Schools Conference in Providence. I attended a really informative session called "Flipping for Middle School Social Studies: Using the Flipped Classroom for Teaching Social Studies," held by Jean Singers and Andrew Swan of the Bigelow Middle School in Newton, MA. Ever since being introduced to the concept of a flipped classroom, I've been interested in applying that model to my future career. Singers and Swan did a great job showing the benefits of a flipped classroom, demonstrating that it's an idea that can become a lived reality with a lot of frontloaded planning. I think that Social Studies is a content that can especially benefit from a flipped model: instead of making students read boring textbooks at home and then come in to a lecture everyday, students can watch short, content loaded videos and come into class with the background knowledge they need to enhance their learning at a higher level (applying what they know to new scenarios, analyzing primary sources, evaluating historical evidence and text, and synthesizing their knowledge into an original product). The flipped model has built in collaborative learning, a method that is especially fruitful for already super social young adolescents.

Reading workshops and book clubs, the two things discussed in Chapters 8 and 9 of Subjects Matter would be two great additions to a flipped classroom. Critics of the flipped model (parents and administrators) might complain that students are not doing enough content-area reading in home and in school. By using both sustained silent reading workshops in class and longer-term book clubs, students will get an extra dose of literacy instruction.

The way that Swan and Singers ensure their students are accountable for the information they should be retaining in their videos is through what they call "mastery quizzes." A student is assigned a video to watch at home- the video is under 10 minutes and contains only the most necessary information from a given "section" of a chapter or unit. Students have 2 days to watch the videos. When the videos are due, students are given a low-stakes quiz to check for comprehension. If a student passes, they are allowed to move on to the application phase. In the application phase, students are given a sheet with 5-8 different activities that require students to use what they have learned from the video. Students can complete more than one per class. Students who did not pass the mastery quiz can redo the quiz after rewatching the video. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and knows the basic content. After the application days, during which the teachers also have time to conference with students, students are geared towards multi day projects. Once those are complete the process cycles back again.

After learning about reading workshops and book clubs, I think they would be great additions to a flipped classroom. Here's how I'm imagining setting up a typical week:

Friday: assign a video to be watched over the weekend

Monday:

• mini review of the video / background knowledge activity (have students do something like tweet the text or use cluster mapping to keep track of what they've watched/learned)
• Think Pair Share about the video
• Mastery quiz: check comprehension- does everyone know who X is? what does Y mean? (basic comprehension of the terms, people, ideas, and places that are going to be found in the higher level activities later in the week)
• Book club: have students read independently for the remainder of class. Students should be reading a book of their choice, with 4 students reading the same book. This would be a historical fiction book that takes place in the time period the unit is on. One book per unit.
• Assign reading workshop: this would be 1 or 2 short articles / other non-textbook reading pertaining to the section

Tuesday:

• Reading workshop: 1/2 the class
• Students will have read articles in groups of 4. Each group has a different set of readings. Students would be asked to come in with a completed KWL as well as 2 discussion questions. 
• After students meet in their groups, use the jigsaw method so that each student has gotten a taste of what the other groups have read. 
• Discuss as a whole class
• during this time, I can conference with individual students 
• Application: give students a sheet with different "application" level activities that can be done in groups or individually
• These would be activities like reading/interpreting maps, evaluating political cartoons, short RAFTs, etc.
• Students who complete one activity move on to another

Wednesday - Friday:

• Group project based learning. Projects would be geared towards the enduring understandings of a section/chapter.

While this is a rough outline and does not stick to the exact methods of reading workshop vs. book clubs (I've changed them a bit), I think this model does a good job of combining UbD goals, flipped methods, literacy skill building, and collaborative learning. I'm still toying with the idea of also having a summative, formal test at the end of a unit. I'm sure that would make the administration happy, but is it necessary? I think that, with all of these activities, there would have to be a lot of built in informal assesessment.

Now I just need to start building up my library.....

Using a Textbook / Building a Community

"Is covering the material the same as understanding it?" Ask Daniels and Zimmerman in Subjects Matter (189). As I know from personal experience, the answer to this question is no. Just because you read something, that does not mean that you understand it or will remember it. In Chapter 6, Daniels and Zimmerman deliver a few great strategies to maximize textbook learning. I really liked Jim Burke's "meet your textbook" sheet, especially the inquiry about reading speed. Especially with middle schoolers, it can be hard to manage homework time. By becoming aware of your own reading pace, it will be much easier for you to tackle your assigned reading. I also appreciate that "reading" speed really means reading and taking notes, emphasizing the importance of active reading. I also think that the SQ3R method would be very helpful for students, but I can totally see why they caution teachers not to let SQ3R be the be-all-end-all in reading strategies- it has the propensity to become rote.

With all the strategies in this chapter, Daniels and Zimmerman have made it clear that it is important to scaffold these activities with each student. Every teacher success story in this book reports that the teacher took the time in the beginning of the year to explicitly model exactly how to participate and use each strategy. Especially with the types of on-going projects that are in these 2 chapters, it is crucial that students know what is expected of them and that there is accountability between students. Otherwise the activity wouldn't work at all.

They also emphasize how each of these activities could be given a social dimension- this is a big plus for middle level learners as they are going to try to be talking to each other anyways.

I have 2 questions, however, regarding the content from these 2 chapters. One is about taking risks. While Daniels and Zimmerman offer a few opportunities for evidence of "risk taking," I still wonder what that actually means and how can you see it? What's a risk and what's a guess? What makes a risk safe? Daniels and Zimmerman say that modeling your passion for your subject, valuing students opinions, and holding brief in class conferences with individuals helps "make the classroom a place where students trust the teacher and believe that it's safe to take risks, a place where it's OK to ask questions when they don't understand something, and they can expect to receive the support they need to handle challenges" (206). That all sounds great, but I'm still working out what that all means, what it actually looks like, and how you that you've achieved that.

My other questions is more basic, but, how many multi-day, check in projects can you really have going on at once? Is it possible to do book clubs, to do individual conferences, to have "passion project Fridays," etc. all at once? How do you figure out which things you want to commit to? Because, if you really are doing book clubs, for example, you're doing them. All year- right? Especially if you took the time at the beginning to scaffold it.

Zimmerman and Daniels, Chpt 4, 5

            Two big ideas that I picked up on in Chapter 4 were the idea of the responsibility of choice and the windows and mirrors theory of book selection. Daniels and Zimmerman write that giving kids choice about their reading material does not give them an easy way out but that “the flip side of choice is responsibility” (70). I’m sure that it is tempting for some students to choose a piece of writing simply because it is the shortest, but I think that as long as you follow up the readings with valuable activities, it won’t matter which piece they chose because they will be accountable for it. Even more basically, if you only offer choices that are valuable and content-rich, it won’t matter how short they are- a nod to Daniels and Zimmerman’s argument that sometimes it is perfectly appropriate to have 3^rd grade material in a 9^th grade classroom.  Activities like jigsawing or think-pair-share seem like they would make students accountable for reading their choices closely; knowing that you are partially responsible for another student’s learning makes you take it seriously.

            I appreciate the thought of the “windows and mirrors” theory of book selection. Research shows that students who feel that they belong to their school community perform better. I’m sure that, beyond academic performance, there are other social and psychological benefits to seeing yourself reflected in the material that you read. On the flip side, one of the most valuable aspects of reading is its ability to transport you somewhere else, to help you live an experience through the identity of someone else. I believe that this helps students develop empathy and the capacity to compromise.

            In general, I really appreciate the wit with which Daniels and Zimmerman return back to the Common Core Standards and the wiggle room teachers have to teach it. My understanding has been that teachers generally do not approve of the CCSS because they feel it takes away their autonomy and puts too much pressure on simply covering the content versus teaching it. By reading Subjects Matter I am starting to come around the the Common Core; I think you just need to actually understand what it means so that you can defend your choices, versus approaching it as a bureaucratic enemy.