Connections, Predictions, Discussions...Oh My!

Motivation is key in learner engagement. As I think back to my own experience in elementary school, I struggle to find a memory of me actively engaged in the lesson.  I often would become bored with the teacher cased instruction and would loose focus.  As you can assume, my lack of attention led to a lot of confusion.  I keep these memories in the fore front of my mind.  I use this to remind me how important learner engagement is in the classroom. Therefore, I try my best to create meaningful activities that will hook the students’ interest to the content being covered.  When introducing new concepts or literature into the classroom, I have designed pre-reading activities that allow the students to share their perspective on the topic. I have found memories of my classes actively engaged in prior knowledge discussions anxiously awaiting a turn to share their thoughts.  In a previous blog I mentioned the use of an anticipatory reading activity with the novel Walk Two Moons. This activity has the students choosing whether they agree completely, somewhat, or not at all with statements that pertain to the theme.  As I think about the day that I give this to the children, I am reminded at how intrigued they become with the book.  Whispers such as "I would never...There is no way...Of course not...Absolutely" fly around the room.  While this is exciting, it is even more so when I pass this same sheet out, with their pre reading responses, at the end of the book.  Several students have reason to support their changes while others continue to agree with their original answer and using the book to support or refute their reasons.  This activity has been a huge success in engaging my students with the content in the novel.  This anticipatory activity also encourages my students to make predictions and ask questions.  Typically, these are written down on chart paper and posted in the room as a reference and discussion tool.

In order to help engage my students in reading new material, I show them that reading and learning can be easily connected to their lives.  To do this, I choose novels in reading class that align with their own development and issues that they face.  While this is easier to do when choosing novels, it is often more of a struggle when teaching subjects like math and science.   Like reading, I have found relating social studies content to the students’ lives to be pretty simple. This past year, I created a scenario that was easily related to the students’ lives.  For example, I wanted them to better understand why the colonist thought it was unfair to be taxed by England without representation.  I designed a scenario in which 1 student was chosen to make all the decisions for the class and no one else had a say.  We discussed why would this be unfair and how changes could be made to make it fair.  The connections and opinions were quite scholarly which helped them digest the information more clearly. 

Often, I use the same strategies over and over.  On some occasions, I have seen a lack of student engagement develop because they can predict the expectation (example: using a KWL chart).  Therefore, I’m excited to read this chapter in hopes to gain insight into other strategies I can use in my classroom especially for math.  There are several strategies that I find easy to incorporate with language arts, social studies, and science, but I find that I seldom have used prior activation strategies in math like I do these other subjects.

After reading chapter 6 and learning about a vast array of strategies to activate student’s prior knowledge and interests, in addition to the study on informational text reading I am reminded the value that can be found in taking the time to implement strategies to assist in developing students metacognitive skills.  The book attends to this importance by reminding its readers that students “need to recognize how new material fits into the conceptual frameworks they already have” (Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz, 2010).  Such a sensible idea often poses challenges for the classroom teacher.  Therefore, understanding each students needs based on their academic performance and social development is important.  As I have grown in my learnings, I have come to find that making connections to text is crucial in obtaining a complete understanding of the concept.  This has become even truer as a graduate student.  As I read the chapters for all my classes, I have found to connect much of the content to a professional experience.  While attending graduate school and working full time is a challenge, the experience as a classroom teacher has made this journey ever more fulfilling.  With this firsthand experience, I am reminded how important scaffolds are for student understanding.  The book mentioned something that really moved me as it was comparing motivated readers to unmotivated readers.  It states that “…they perceive that they have some level of control over their reading…” (Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz, 2010).  Additionally, the study proves how important implementing strategies in informational text reading is especially as it pertains to activating prior knowledge.  I find that students in my own class who make connections with the text have a less difficult time understanding the content being taught.  The most important reminder gained from this weeks reading was that students need help establishing a perspective in order to make meaning of what they learn.This can be done by providing scaffolded strategies that activate prior knowledge and encourage cognitive interaction with text during reading.  

Upon completing this chapter 6, I am most excited about implementing the story impressions.  As I was reading this strategy, it was easy to see how it could be used in a variety of subject matter.  Being that it is a pre-reading strategy, students can take risks on their story prediction, but have a sense of confidence by using the story chain.  This takes the concept of making predictions a step further, because the students are expected to make connections between the chained events.  Rather than simply, giving them the title of the book or the content that will be covered to make a prediction, they have some ‘ground’ to stand on when using story impressions.  I plan to use this is several of my units for the upcoming school year.

  I stated above that some strategies are over used like the KWL chart.  It was great to be introduced to a colossal amount of new ideas.  Another strategy that interested me reminds me of the KWL chart, but it seems to have more purpose.  I rarely use the KWL chart because of the lack of learner engagement I have experienced with it.  I can remember my first year of teaching trying to use this.  I felt like I was spending more time pulling responses and discussion out of the students than I should have been.  While it can be a great tool earlier in elementary school by 5th grade it tends to loose its luster.  However, the IEPC chart to me could be seen as an advanced KWL tool.  The incorporation of visualization, elaboration, predictions, and confirmations hold the students to higher standards by delving deeper.  This strategy will be easy to implement in language arts, science, and social studies. Introducing this into my literature circle unit will be an effective way of holding students accountable for their independent reading.  By providing a brief information card pertaining to their book, the students can easily complete an IPEC (obviously after it has been modeled and practiced). 

After reading this weeks material, I feel refreshed!  The strategies suggested have me eager to implement.  Moreover, after reading the article Inducing Engagement with Information text, I was  reminded how important it is for students to learn how to connect to their text and develop strategies to be metacognitive thinkers.  Therefore, teaching strategies to students to monitor comprehension and engage in their learning is important.   Therefore, with my new school year only weeks away, I am more excited than ever to help my students become engaged and build connections in their learning.