Week 8 Reading #1

Communicating Evidence of Student Learning

Stripling, B. K.(2007). Teach for Understanding. In School Reform and the School Library Media Specialist (pp. 37-55). Westport, CN: Libraries Unlimited.

“Educators can only teach for understanding by creating learning experiences that require the development of essential knowledge, the use of cognitive and metacognitive skills, and the application and transfer of knowledge” (p.38).

Creating understanding of the deeper meaning of texts in order to understand the author’s purpose or theme is a truly difficult task. As I read the opening antidote on page 37 of this article I felt as if the author was writing about the exact situations I have faced in my classroom. Time after time, I have been fooled into thinking that my students understand a text on a deeper level only to find out that they were unable to derive a deeper meaning of the texts we read and discussed at length. In order to activate the part of the brain that connects with texts on a deeper level, it is essential to allow students time to engage in metacognition.

The article goes on to outline the process of creating understanding. Moving from accessing background knowledge all the way through accessing habits of the mind. Quite frankly, inquiry based learning and building “habits of the mind” is my particular passion. As I read through this article I was totally “geeked” about the fact that I had used the information presented in to help a group of particularly difficult students to access meaning and gain an understanding of how to understanding texts.

In order to help my students gain understanding, I have allowed them to move though all of these phases and in the past in the past my students have found success. One particular year was quite different. The particular group of students has a large number of students performing lower than expected in our school district and, possibly as a result, had serious behavior issues. In order to help empower these students to understand their role as learners, I had to focus on the Habits of the Mind.

When I asked the class what they had to do to understand texts, I was amazed to hear all the right answers. They completely knew how to reread, create connections, create a movie in their heads when reading, etc. They knew all the right answers and seemingly knew how to understand text. Yet, they seemed completely incapable of doing this on their own. This information left me perplexed. How could students who articulate comprehension skills in such depth, be unable to perform? Familiar, with the Habits of the Mind text from my days at Oakland University I started to think about the empathy and metacognition pieces. I quickly came to realize that I needed my students to engage by spending actual time thinking about the text on a meaningful level. I had to change my tactic of falling back on comprehension only when students were lacking understanding.

With a new tactic in mind I went into school with my college homework in hand. I placed articles with annotations on the ELMO and shared with them the somewhat snarky inner dialogue I have with the text while I read. The students were shocked to see that as an adult I still annotated texts. Even though we had practiced annotations in school they began to realize that I wasn’t just making them do pointless extra work. That very Friday day during reading time students started to grab sticky notes, write down what they were thinking and place them in their novels. One student mentioned that doing so was making it a lot easier and faster when it came to the written comprehension piece tied to his reading. As a teacher, I saw that the writing was way more introspective then in the past.

The next tactic was to change the comprehension questions. Instead of a question like: What was Langston Hughes trying to teach Rodger in “Thank You, M'am”? I had to change the questions to metacognitive ones like: If you were Rodger, how would you feel if a stranger dragged you to her house? How do you think Rodger felt when he was treated with dignity? Can you think of an adult who treats you with respect? If so, explain what it feels like to garner that kind of attention from adults. If not, what does it feel like to not have a strong connection to an adult?
These questions helped the students empathize with Rodger but beyond gaining empathy for the character they started to gain an understanding about how to think about characters. On page 43 of the chapter Teaching for Understanding Stripling writes, “…the best way to prepare ourselves to teach for understating is to design instruction and develop teaching methodologies that facilitate inquiry.” By changing the questions to empathy based questions student apathy started to wane. Students who were generally considered underperforming started fiercely defending Rodger. Moreover, they were asking more questions and making inferences based on the text about Rodger’s upbringing as well as the life and upbringing of Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones.

By the time we got to the step of demonstrating understanding the assessment basically wrote itself. The final test question was choose one of the following: Write a letter to Rodger or Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones explaining how you feel about the actions they took in the story Thank You Ma’am. Be sure to share your feeling about at least three specific actions from the text. Or.
Create a journal entry from the viewpoint of Rodger or Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones that explains what they was going through his or her mind on the day they met. Make sure to write about at least three particular actions he or she took and why he or she decided upon these actions.

The final result was spectacular: heartfelt letters to Rodger and Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones from kids who were just a few days before completely uninterested in putting forth thinking about texts. The other positive result I witnessed was students doing what they knew to do but prior to this activity weren’t doing. They were going back to reread, quoting texts and placing sticky note on the text.

My job moving forward is to bring this type of in depth analytical thinking to all students on a deeper level when I move to the media center. On page 51 Stripling writes, “…the complexities of building understanding cannot be overcome by individual teachers acting alone.” I believe providing teachers the opportunity to delve deeper into inquiry will allow me to become a greater asset to the staff and students of my school. As I use my experiences to help teachers develop inquiry-based lesson, I will truly be able to share my love of learning with all of our school’s students.