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.