At the beginning of chapter 6 “Instructional Practices for
Working Complex Text”, Buehl talked about how he developed the competence to work
a complex chemistry text independently when he was in high school. This story reminded
me of my experience as a high school student in Jordan. Keeping in mind that
the education system in Jordan is different from the education system in the
U.S, I can say that most teachers in Jordan are not prepared or professionally
trained, and they lack the knowledge of many teaching methods and strategies that
I had the chance to learn here. I can say that most teachers there are basically
lecturing their lessons to students, and students are only passive learners. The
teachers often tell the students what they need to know, and if the students didn’t
understand the lecture, they would need to work the text by themselves to pass
the class. Since I wasn’t an excellent listener, I didn’t learn too much from
lectures, and I often had to work many complex texts in many disciplines independently.
I used many strategies and study skills to work such complex texts. For
example, I recited, I summarized, and I created concept maps. I used underlining,
annotating, and I talked to the texts. Actually, none of my teachers have taught
me these study skills. I think my internal drive to excel and my persistence to
learn the materials had motivated me to do whatever to comprehend such texts
and excel my classes. I wish that my teachers at least had introduced some of these
study skills and learning strategies in their disciplines. That would really save
me a lot of the struggle that I had been through working such complex texts
alone.
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ReplyDeleteI understand the struggle you had considering I know many teachers who did not teach their students how to properly understand texts or teach them how to break material down to understand and apply the knowledge. I definitely agree that we as teachers must show our students these study skills in order to help them succeed. On page 231 Buehl discusses note-taking he states, "...obviously, Note-taking needs to transcend the act of merely writing stuff down." (Buehl, 2011). I think this goes along with what you said about teaching students the proper skills they need to succeed. Like you said, we should model these strategies and then scaffold interactions with complex texts in order to give students the practice they need to know what important information they need to take away from a text as a lifelong skill.
ReplyDeleteHello Hadeel,
ReplyDeleteWhen I was reading your post about the complex texts, it reminded me of the similar experience of education in China. The most teachers implemented the lessons facing the board, and students were busy with taking notes of what the teachers said and wrote on the board. And after classes, teachers passed out the practice exams or exercise books and told us that doing a lot of practices could make us proficient at the concepts. Also, some students would take part in the after-school programs to improve the problem solving skills. Someone will say that Chinese education system is to produce problem solving machines. Unlike you, I did not have complex texts since the only text for me is the exercise books. Thus, when I came to US, I found that the complex texts benefit students to consider a problem from different perspectives, which can increase their thinking ability. Teaching students by using complex texts seems a challenge to me since I have been doing practices for most of my student life, but I will try my best to use this strategy to implement the lesson because I do not want my student to be a problem solving machine.
Hello, Shu and Hadeel
DeleteI was excited to see a reply from one student from outside the U.S. to another. Shu, I am interested to see that you find complex texts in the United States to be prevalent and creative because from my (perhaps spoiled) perspective, I felt like the texts used in my schooling were often bland. I am particularly referring to math. There were often concepts that were provided as an over-arching understanding to learn, but then the chapters always felt like they got right to procedural problem solving. I would be interested to see how your exercise books look compared to the textbooks we used in high school.
Hadeel, how did you possibly learn to make sense of complex texts on your own in school? Your drive to excel, as you said, must be phenomenal. Did you have any non-teachers whom you could call on for help? Were there siblings or relatives or neighbors who could help you with chemistry or mathematics outside of school?
Also, I am curious: how many of the students you went to school with had the same drive as you did and how many fell behind, in large part because teachers were not trained in the art of teaching? Are there any benefits to this style of education that requires so much of students?
Max
Max,
DeleteI really didn’t have anyone to call on for help, and I didn’t have any other choices except working the text on my own. First, my parents were poorly educated, and I am the eldest of my siblings. Moreover, I wasn’t able to call for help from relatives or neighbors since I used to see them occasionally only. My parents were not able to afford tutoring, so I didn’t have any other options.
As I mentioned before, the education system in Jordan is different. I went to a public high school where there were more than 45 students in the classroom. Classrooms were bare. There were rows of chairs for students, disk for the teacher in front, and a board. Textbooks are the same for all schools in Jordan. The grading system was in percentage, and competition was very high. To be admitted into postsecondary institutions, students must pass the General Secondary School Certificate Examination or GSSCE. In this exam, students are tested on all subject areas such as Arabic, biology, chemistry, computer science, earth science, English, math, physics, social science, and Islamic studies (unless Christian). Students’ scores on this exam actually determine everything such as which university or college they will be admitted to and their majors.
Since textbooks are the same for all schools in Jordan, textbooks are the main resource of content knowledge that teachers and students use. I believe there were many students who are not good listeners like me and had been through the same experience I had, and they had to work texts by themselves to pass classes. It all depend on students’ motivation and persistence. Since competition was very high, and there were limited seats on public universities especially for medical and engineering colleges which I really wanted to be admitted to, I worked very hard to comprehend complex texts independently. It was time and efforts consuming, but I had a goal that I wanted to achieve strongly, and I didn’t have any other choices.
I think the benefits of such education system is students who has persistence learn how to work any complex texts independently which could benefit them in their college years. However, students who don’t have the motivation and persistence, they end up dropping out from schools.
Hadeel
Hadeel thank you, your response is awesome (classical definition). So depending on how you do on GSSCE, your major is decided? if someone does very well all the way around, can they choose any major?
DeleteDid you have to take the GSSCE even though you came to USA for postsecondary?
Thanks Hadeel
It depends on their average scores on the GSSCE. The higher the score, the more likely they will get into the major they wanted. When students apply for public postsecondary institutions, they have to fill a form where they list the names of the institutions they would like to attend and the majors they would like to get into in order of their preference. There are limited seats in public postsecondary institutions and competition is very high, so if a student was not able to get into the major they listed on the top of their list, they may get into the second major in the list and so on....
DeleteYes, I took the GSSCE before I came to USA, and I used my GSSCE transcript to apply for college after it was evaluated by a credential evaluation service.
Hello Hadeel,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post. I definitely agree with you and believe that it is essential for us as educators to teach students study skills and learning strategies. This is due to the fact that if we do not teach our students these skills, there is no guarantee that they will learn them by themselves. Thus, certain children might not be able to understand the material and fall behind academically. Something that you mentioned that was very important was the fact that students need to learn how to transfer the learning strategies that they learn in all discipline areas. I believe this is crucial in order for students to be able to understand different materials regardless of the discipline. If we take the time to teach our students study skills and learning strategies related to our dicipline we will be providing them with essential tools needed for their academic success.
Hadeel:
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a high school student more than 30 years ago, many of these literacy skills were not taught. When I began to attend UIC as an undergraduate, I found that while I was a good reader, I was a terrible writer and had difficulty devising critical thinking ideas from the text I read and "seeing the forest and not just the trees." This prompted me to take one of two options: continue to struggle and not earn good grades or take action to correct these weaknesses. I chose the latter, but the work of finding out what I could do to help me improve my writing and thinking skills fell solely on me. So, I purchased a "How to" writing book and plodded through it, I went to writing centers to have my work reviewed, and spent many hours in my professors' offices getting help. Slowly, my writing and critical thinking skills improved. But it was not until I began teaching that I started learning about these literacy skills and how they can be used. I had only wished that I learned about these skills earlier on in high school and how they would have greatly aided me.
It had compelled me to teach these skills to my students, however, the biggest impediments to successfully reaching out to all of my students are: 1) time (there is never enough in a school year to teach and practice these skills); 2) student self-motivation to exercise these skills constantly (most students just want to get the work done, and as long as the grade is passing, many are satisfied).
I wish all of my students were as self-motivated as you and I. We can teach them all of the necessary disciplinary literacy strategies and skills, but we can't always ensure that they practice them all of the time. But teaching the skills is, at least, a step in the right direction. They will have the skills for future use.
Christopher,
DeleteI agree with you that time is a big concern for all teachers that they need to take into consideration when planning their lessons. Last week, I had the chance to observe a class where the teacher uses the flipped classroom strategy. He basically records the lecture and let the students watch it online before the class, and in the class he practices with the students working through it. I think this strategy would solve the time issue many teachers face, so the teachers can devote more time in class to teach students learning strategies and literacy practices.
There will be always students like me and you who really are self-motivated, but they lack the tools to succeed. Therefore, at least introducing such strategies and practicing them in class would really benefit such students. For those students who are not self-motivated, at least we can introduce such strategies for them even though we can’t ensure that they would use it. Hopefully one day they would use them in the future.
Hadeel
Hadeel,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your blog post and ideas. I would have to greatly agree with you when it comes to the study skills that is necessary for all disciplines that students will interact in. I feel like as the teachers we really do need to teach how to implement these study skills more often, especially when the students are younger. For me in elementary school i never really studied because i seemed to just get the material, however this was also a negative for me later on because i never knew how to study when the time to do so. I think it is important to practice these skills but i would have to agree with Chris when it comes to reaching out. Sometimes time just seems to slip away and the motivation of the student is really important, which is why i feel that we should atleast practice with students on how and what to study, scaffold in a way how they can study on their own. I know i will attempt to do just that in my own class in the future and hope that i can only improve for the better of my students.
Hadeel,
ReplyDeleteI saw myself agreeing with almost everything you wrote in your blog post. My high school also fell into the ritual of straight lecturing, where many students often tuned out. Considering I went to a very low-performing public high school in one of the least educated cities in America, many students in my school just gave up, while only a few had the self-discipline to independently teach themselves the material.
I often think about how, even though I am very determined to educate my students effectively -- I wonder if that with be enough. I think there is an inner self-determination to succeed that cannot be learned or taught. But, giving students the tools are resources they need, can be the first step to success.
Hadeel,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post because I can see that happening. Unlike many people, most of my high school education was actually quite interactive and skills based but that's it was only when I arrived at UIC that I notice the education is actually more like what you mentioned. In classes that were even maximum 30 students, professors simply lectured on and on about topics that I found I could barely listen to. I think the same goes with classes that a lot of my friends who are in pre-med or something math related are taking. I think this goes back to thinking about how teachers could take the practices they learned in these education classes and implement them in their science and math courses because those classes are often seen as the most difficult in unpacking complex texts. It was fortunate that you had the intrinsic motivation to succeed and learn the complex texts independently but not all students have that or are even working towards that so yes, I agree, the first step would be to teach and model different learning strategies to students in each discipline but ultimately it's up the student to take those learning strategies and apply them to different texts on their own.
Hey Hadeel,
ReplyDeleteI replied to both you and Shu on Shu's post. Just wanted to make sure you would see.
Cheers
Max
Hadeel,
ReplyDeleteI very much enjoyed your post. I agree with you in regard to the importance of teaching students about learning strategies in a way that allows for them to be able to apply them across different content areas. Not only is it far more useful to be able to employ a learning strategy within multiple disciplines, as opposed to just one, but the level of understanding that is necessary for this sort of use requires students to become truly comfortable with the idea. I, myself, have benefited greatly after beginning to utilize both the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that Buehl outlines, and so I'm very inclined to relay things of this sort to my future students when possible.
Hadeel,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post because you brought to light the fact that it is not enough to teach students how to read words or sentences, and that we have to teach our students how to understand and analyze texts. I myself had to teach myself how to understand whole paragraphs and texts instead of just sentences because my teachers did not teach us actual literacy techniques and instead taught us how to remember what a text said because they thought that would have been enough for us to get by. I wanted to not just get by,I wanted to thrive,and so I began to be my own teacher from age 5. I used many different techniques but funny enough I did not think of a concept map because I'm not much of an artist. We need to take the best tools that we have and can continuously develop so that we can ensure the next generation of scholars.
I like your point at the beginning of your write up about teachers not having the proper training to teach different methods of learning to their students. Quite honestly, I hear about this a lot from younger friends still in high school and my own family members. It seems that the comment I most frequently hear from them is that "the teacher doesn't know how to teach". I never really know how to respond to that. Is it maybe that the person saying the teacher cant teach is struggling to keep up in class, or is it really maybe the teachers are not prepared? I feel like I have never experienced a teacher that did not know "how to teach" per se. I will certainly keep comments like these in mind in order to give my future students the best possible experience in school. However, I do feel that teachers should be more prepared to teach in different ways. I have had multiple teachers give out worksheets in high school and call it a day. In my opinion that does not add to any sort of literacy skills required of students in later stages of their educational career.
ReplyDelete