Our Student's Lenses- Chapter 4

Where should we go to find text if we agree textbooks are not the answer? Starting with the lense of a student, we will want to find text that fits into the context and fits into schema the students are familiar with. We will want to provide opportunity to stretch their mind and development by starting where they are comfortable. “What kids read in school should hold up a mirror to them, by including their story, their culture, their experience” (Subjects Matter, 59). As educators, our students deserve to know their individual cultures, experiences, and lives matter. We can place value in their experiences through readings that correlate with their lives. This shows we recognize the things they have experienced. The author goes on to discuss the importance of not only reading through the students cultural lenses, but also through the cultural lenses of other groups. Incorporating reading that also brings in varying viewpoints, lifestyles, and opinions can further our students development by preparing them to be informed, open minded citizens once they leave the school.

The author also suggests we select text of various difficulties and lengths- a wide range of materials for students to access is best to fit the needs of your students. Keeping a teaching library of books across all genres, lengths, and difficulties, allows for each individual student to be accommodated to their level. In school systems, we like to pretend each child is at a similar level to the other students in their grade. The fact of the matter is, every single child is different. Every child learns differently and is at a different point, because each child has had a different experience. Our job is to level the playing field, and help each child succeed in the way we determine is best for their betterment.
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Our Student's Lenses

Where should we go to find text if we agree textbooks are not the answer? Starting with the lense of a student, we will want to find text that fits into the context and fits into schema the students are familiar with. We will want to provide opportunity to stretch their mind and development by starting where they are comfortable. “What kids read in school should hold up a mirror to them, by including their story, their culture, their experience” (Subjects Matter, 59). As educators, our students deserve to know their individual cultures, experiences, and lives matter. We can place value in their experiences through readings that correlate with their lives. This shows we recognize the things they have experienced. The author goes on to discuss the importance of not only reading through the students cultural lenses, but also through the cultural lenses of other groups. Incorporating reading that also brings in varying viewpoints, lifestyles, and opinions can further our students development by preparing them to be informed, open minded citizens once they leave the school.

The author also suggests we select text of various difficulties and lengths- a wide range of materials for students to access is best to fit the needs of your students. Keeping a teaching library of books across all genres, lengths, and difficulties, allows for each individual student to be accommodated to their level. In school systems, we like to pretend each child is at a similar level to the other students in their grade. The fact of the matter is, every single child is different. Every child learns differently and is at a different point, because each child has had a different experience. Our job is to level the playing field, and help each child succeed in the way we determine is best for their betterment.
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Chapter 3

Reading the third chapter of this book is like reading something very familiar, but something you read so long ago the details are just now reemerging from memory. Whether it’s because I chose to block out memories of middle and high school textbooks or because I just forgot, I’m unsure. But the fact of the matter is that I forgot how much I hated textbooks. Lugging them around, never using them in class or in homework, constantly asking the teacher if we actually had to bring them to class the next day. I don’t wish to say that textbooks are useless, because, at the college level, I have found them profoundly helpful, particularly in my “hard” science courses. They are often hard to get through, but “clunking” through the arduous language eventually led to greater success in classes such as chemistry.

College students are very different than middle schoolers. While we recognize we’re paying for the struggles of our education, these students may not see the value in their education or may not even want to be in school. Textbooks that are thick, heavy, and potentially harmful to their health do not help in convincing a student to stay in school. Instead, tailoring text to fit the class’s individual needs may be the key to ensuring our students get what they need out of their readings. Though this is more work, if we are installing the love of learning in our students, isn’t that worth the extra effort? That is for the individual to decide.
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The Columbus Key

         The second chapter of this text, much like the first, begins with a hook. The author gives the reader an odd, out of character passage to read, with content largely unfamiliar to the target audience of the text. After some confusion and multiple rereads, I learned this section was written about the game of cricket. Being not so familiar with cricket, I did not understand and tried to fit the knowledge into other games I was familiar with, into my own personal schema.

         In educational psychology, I was placed with a struggling first grade student to assist in developing reading skills. For the spring semester, I worked almost exclusively with this student. When we came across a new idea or word, she would often do the same thing I did in reading the text about cricket; she would try to place the information in a schema she was familiar with. Words that she was unfamiliar with but looked similar to words she knew were often read as the known word. Now obviously as a first grader, she was not conscious of this aspect of her reading comprehension. But as educators, we have to be conscious of this occurrence and ensure we provide the background knowledge, the "Columbus keys" to allow our students to understand not only the content of the discussion, but the background and "why". As content area teachers, this background will be even more crucial as our texts will focus primarily on content, and much of the content will be largely unfamiliar to the students.
Word Count: 257

Subjects Matter Chapter 1

Subjects Matter. As an educator, we all like to believe that our subject, our class, our assignments reign supreme. In the first chapter of Subjects Matter, we learn that reading is a subject that is important across all fields and all disciplines.

As we discussed in class, reading ability can affect a person’s success throughout life. Reading can determine if you are able to get a good job, support your family, and be independent. As a teacher, we can make or break a student’s attitude toward reading. Subjects Matter ties our knowledge of this to real life examples in chapter one of the book.

In the first chapter of Subjects Matter, there are two anecdotes of teaching strategies employed by different teachers. In one, the students find a subject they are passionate about and incorporate what they learn in reading into a creative expression project. In this way, students are developing independence, creativity, and critical thinking skills. Rather than being told what to read and how they should interpret the information, they are encouraged to look outside of their lens of the world around them and expand their horizons. As a gifted student in school, I was encouraged to learn in this manner. My gifted classes were structured by the students, and we were encouraged to pursue individual interests and ideas. We selected projects of interest, pursued them in our own unique ways, and shared what we had learned with each other. For example, in third grade my gifted project involved research into the cultural life of ancient egyptians. I read from various sources, interpreted what I learned, and created an inclusive look at life as in ancient Egypt. In this I learned, that when independence is involved, the passion can drive something far greater than a reading assignment. This is the teaching strategy we see in the first story in Subjects Matter.

In the second example however, we see a very different picture of reading and learning. The students are merely assigned reading and are not encouraged to think critically about the subject. In these two different pictures of learning, we see very different results as well. The students in the second teaching method felt apathetic about their learning, and did not feel encouraged to think independently. As a science and social studies teacher, I can (and should) choose to incorporate reading into my lessons. It is important that students develop their abilities across the board. That is why cross-cutting curriculum standards exist.