Responding to Chapters One and Two

            The whole time I was reading the first two chapters of Subject Matters by Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman all I could think about was the Common Core. Being an English content teacher candidate, the Common Core isn’t exactly my exciting upcoming friend; it’s more like a messy loud roommate that leaves its hair in the drain of the shower. However, the first two chapters really got me thinking about the transition from fiction based text to nonfiction based texts in a whole new light.

            The scenario of the cross subject project and study of the fast food and our culture inspired by the students at Best Practices High School reading of Fast Food Nation got me really excited. It was interesting to see all the ways the teachers covered the topic in their carefully selected readings and projects. Here I can really see the integration of scholarly articles, text, and examination of real life events coming together to create a smooth, complete lesson. It got me excited, and really started to open my eyes to the possibilities of staying within what the Common Core standards dictate and what literature my students will have/should read.

            What I also found powerful in these chapters is the idea of schemas and having students build off of their background knowledge to scaffold into higher learning on a subject. As I’ve heard in many textbooks and education classes, no student comes to a class a blank slate. As teachers, we build off of the footing they have and go onward to more things. Before a student can understand a piece of reading in a book about anything they need that footing. This got me thinking of Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and to what the panel of students at CF told us. One student said something along the lines of “Teachers need to be able to explain things in different ways so that students can understand it.” That means that every student should be exposed to information in different ways.

So if a student is learning about frogs then the teacher should show them pictures of frogs, some short clips so students can see how they move, what they sound like. Maybe if the opportunity was there, bring in a frog for students to touch or go to a zoo and observe frogs. Have open discussions about experiences they’ve had with frogs, fill out a KWL chart to brainstorm and gather their thoughts. Just reading about a frog and having never seen one is difficult and unreasonable.