Tyler Delobel

Education 340 Case Study/Reflective Paper

Mrs. Holman, Mrs. Orswell

November 27, 2016

The First Steps Twenty-one Years Later

All teachers are teachers of reading because humans naturally retain information through

reading. However, as teachers, the job that goes with teaching reading opens an entirely new set

of doors. As teachers, we are assigned to give the necessary tools to our students that help them

properly retain what they are reading. How they interpret sentence structure, how they find the

authors position of the matter, how they should filter what they read based on the context of the

reading; these are just a few of the infinite questions that should be answered through a teachers

teaching. Without having this guidance from twelve or more years of instructors, we would be

staring at a blank page with scribbles on it. Every year, the classroom is the setting for instructing

students how to read and each teacher interprets that question differently with their content area.

At Wellington Middle School, all teachers are teachers of reading but not just through

assigned reading. At this school, I have witnessed a number of teachers reach well outside of the

box to accomplish the task of reading through interpreting. Every week, history teachers like

Mrs. Berkner assign readings in the textbooks for the students so that they can retain the

information required from the curriculum. In their textbook, students are assigned to read facts

about the number of European settlers who first traveled to America. The assignment she

previously assembled before this class began deals with the different religions, approaches to

lifestyles, and treatment of the Native Americans of each of these settlers, so she tells them to
focus on those specific areas before they even open the book. Once they have read the assigned

pages, she opens her Google Doc that asks the students to describe the positions of each of these

settler groups. She is not concerned with the fun fact on page 876 that states how heavy the ships

of the Quakers were due to the type of oak wood they used to build their ships. She cares that the

Quakers were a passive people due to their religion and that this attitude found its way into their

positive treatment of the Native Americans. To help find the context of this unit, Mrs. Berkner

takes the time after students have read to imagine the classroom is a courtroom during the

independence process of the colonies. In her best British accent, she gives students context by

resembling the role of the English Parliament and states concerns that they have. She asks her

students, who have now become colonists, why they should not be proud to pay taxes of their

homeland. To the Parliament, it is an honor to give donation to your homeland and they have

decided to enforce it as such. Through her preferred methods, she is able to give her students the

tools (what to look for in the book, the importance of the religions/approaches, and the context)

that allow them to use those handful of pages productively.

I often mirror reading with thinking when considering its role in the classroom.

Following Benjamin Blooms taxonomy, there are six learning objectives he claims make for a

better understanding: Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and

evaluation. (Ritchhart 6) I feel that sometimes it takes more than reading a textbook to

comprehend a subject. Both Mrs. Berkner and Mrs. Holman are no strangers to this. Mrs.

Holman uses hands-on techniques nearly every chance she gets in her classroom which grabs at

the attention of more students. As my high school chemistry teacher always used to say, There

is no such thing as a non-visual science. There are three steps of interpretation in my example of

Mrs. Holmans class: Reading, visually seeing, and further analysis. Mrs. Holmans students may
have prior knowledge on the differences between a chemical change and a physical change, but

not many of them know how to identify them in everyday life. Mrs. Holman, having taught this

unit for years, knows this and has made a handful of experiments around her classroom to show a

number of each. This not only keeps the students excited for class but it practices their prior

knowledge and what they have read prior to the experiments. In their notes, they are assigned a

log of each experiment and have to determine in their small groups whether or not the task was a

physical or chemical change. Once everyone has finished, she brings the room together for a

class discussion on each experiment. While she goes around the room, she expects most of the

class to be able to answer her when she asks what kind of change each one was. Like clockwork,

when she hears a lack of confidence in the answer, she will spend time explaining why that

answer is correct for that test. In other words, if a student did not know what a change was after

reading in a book and practicing it hands-on, they have the benefit of explanation from their

instructors to help grab a complete grasp on what it is.

I have inadvertently found myself to be a teacher of reading during my AVID tutoring

lessons. Nine times out of ten, all of my students have questions that involve math. In the process

of reviewing a TRF (Tutor Referral Form), the students and myself aide the tutor student on how

to interpret the problem they are having with an equation. Rather than giving them the tools they

need to go to the next step, we are helping him/her find them by asking questions which will help

push them on the right path. In Susan Ernsts class, one of the key ideas we root upon is that

writing mirrors thinking. Writing helps practice the ideas and concepts that come through

reading. Students can explore, clarify and think deeply about these concepts that are collected

from reading, even if it simply comes from the task of visually seeing what you are trying to

comprehend. (Pearson 17) Trevor became a subject of this during a lesson while he was having
problems with an algebraic problem. He was left with 3X=25 and decided that subtracting three

from both sides was the best route. I know that somewhere in his math class, he could only pay

so much attention and did not interpret this step of the problem correctly. The students and I had

the opportunity to re-wire his brain to recognize that when a number is next to a variable without

any signs in between it, it stood for multiplication. To do this, I asked him to write down two

different equations: 3X=3 and 3-X=3. Quickly realizing that these were two different problems,

he asked what the right move was. Rather than answering him, I wrote another problem on the

board: 9X=9. Immediately, he shouted that it was multiplication and X must equal one. In his

original problem, he found that X equaled 8 with a remainder of one. While he was standing and

explaining the problem to us, Trevor clearly had some form of stage fright or embarrassment at

the fact that he did not know how to solve his problem. This served as a filter when he tried to

conduct the steps and processes. Whether or not he knew what to do, he fell back in his

presentation because he felt concerned that the students were judging him for it. This is a form of

interpretation; before he reads the problem, he knows he is going to have trouble with it. It

clouds his mind which prevents him from deducing it properly. When I asked him to present

first, I made the assumption that he would give off an attitude of not caring what the problem

was. In this sense, I read him incorrectly. I believe that Trevors teachers, along with all teachers,

have the opportunity to teach their students to read with a sense of pride or self-confidence. No

matter how hard it can be, students should know that they have the power to properly read and

answer a problem or interpret a piece of research. This is a basic sense of skillsets; students need

to know that they have access or abilities to practice these tools to read before they even read.

Trevor is a prime example of a student who has fear that he is not able to use those skills.
 As a history teacher, I feel that a large part of my job consists of making history attention-

grabbing. In Judy Willis research, she encourages educators to be memory enhancers and to

minimize rote memory tactics. In other words, the old school ways of teaching that required

students to regurgitate facts and vocabulary hardly promote memory or further analysis. (Willis

23) Beyond exciting lecture and colorful language that I must practice, there are some key

applications that I have learned through our recitation that I plan on using to their fullest extent.

One of my favorite strategies is the RAFT essay. After a unit of studying and memorizing places,

facts, and people, I want this essay to act as a review and a big assignment before the unit test.

Giving my students the option of writing as a letter or story, one of the sections I plan on using

RAFT for is in World War I. I will split my class in half in order to have one side represent the

Allied powers and the other the Central powers. I will ask them individually to write a letter of

discontent to the other side pertaining to anything specific to the war. For example, someone on

the Allied side who would resemble France could send a message to the Germans about the

health and sanitation concerns of trench warfare and ask for a settlement or another proposition

of fighting the war. Although this would never happen, it opens the potential for some individual

imagination and keeps it fun while sticking to the content. These can be considered level two and

three questions on the content.

One of the things I tend to sit on more than most is personal reflection. When I was

introduced to text-to-self and text-to-world strategies, I jumped on the opportunity to use these.

In Judy Willis book, one of the strategies she offers to help enhance memory and learning is

personal meaning. Showing students that information is important by connecting it to a personal

experience or story shows my interest in the matter which promotes the class to listen more

intently. While I intend to use that avidly, I want to turn the tables around and allow the students
to tell each other what a subject means to them and why they find it important. When I get a

chance to teach government and politics, I plan to use this during our discussion of the No Child

Left Behind Act. Students can talk about the increasing number of programs they have seen that

have been built into the school system and in their own schools to help every type of student.

Some students have been directly affected by this either because of their own time with helping

programs or siblings and family members that have gone through programs similar to IS in

Wellington Middle School. It is my hope that this will show the affect that this Act has on their

own world as well as the people around them and how important it is depending on the students

experiences.

One of the trending ideas in our class and in our books was to promote group settings

whenever possible as long as they are productive. These next two strategies reflect this idea well

and I intend to use them at least once every unit or more as needed. The verbal/visual model has

one of my personal favorite physical setups of the models discussed because it has the visual

representation tab. These can be a quick exercise, taking no more than five to ten minutes to

construct. Once they are made, students can share with each other what they chose to use and

how they set theirs up. In the early 20th century America, for example, there were a handful of

Jim Crow laws that took decades to force out of the system. I want my students to pick which

one they believe is either the most interesting or most important to use for their verbal/visual

model. As part of healthy competition and incentive to work a little harder, I would offer some

extra credit points to whoever could make the best or most accurate visual representation and

personal association. While students are sharing their terms, I will also hand out Give One, Get

One sheets for them to fill out. As part of the assignment, each student must have a minimum

number of terms written down depending on the size of the class. In recitation, our summary
question stated Why do teachers need to develop vocab in their content area? When I was in

school, I loved those hot words that helped associate a section of content into a simple term. It

not only connected ideas but allowed me to use those places, events, and people in class to help

connect my ideas to my explanations in homework, discussion, and other assignments.

While I feel that Character Maps may hold a more useful spot in English content areas,

one of the ideas we have had engraved into our techniques over the past semester is that every

teacher is a teacher of reading across all content areas. One of the things I love about Character

Maps is that they give the opportunity for a psychology focus on a character and make room for

some third-level questioning for particular sections. I have always wanted to use these when

looking at the three leaders of the Axis powers during World War II. After all of the information

is given and the test has come and gone, I will give the students the option to choose Hitler,

Mussolini, or Hirohito and ask them to fill out their own map. Some sections are more

predictable than others, and I want to see how creative my students can get when it comes to the

what they smell and what they taste sections. This will lead the way for a deeper

understanding of what the general attitude about war, life, and politics were in these nations

through their leaders.

Every teacher is a teacher of reading, and I hope that I am as successful at accomplishing

this as some of the teachers at Wellington. I have been very fortunate in witnessing these

strategies and grabbing an understanding of them and how to implement them. As you can tell, I

am very excited to put these in my classroom. History is a content area full of so many different

facts and wonder all at the same time; it can be intimidating when it all comes at once. I believe

that these strategies will not only help students read better, but it will show them a complete view

through something that they understand rather than the way the book wants them to comprehend.
 Works Cited

Ernst, Susan. Education 340 Lecture. Fort Collins, CO: Colorado State University, 2016. Speech.

Orswell, Nicole. Wellington Recitation. Wellington, CO: Wellington Middle School, 2016.

Pearson Custom Education Educ 340: Literacy and the Learner. London, England: Pearson,

2010. Print.

Ritchhart, Ron, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison. Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote

Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners. San Francisco, CA:

Jossey-Bass, 2011. Print.

Willis, Judy. Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist

and Classroom Teacher. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum

Development, 2006. Print.