Christie's Readings Notes #2

Lang introduces reading allowed as useful way to learn the material more deeply (pg. 87). This has been something that I have found really helpful and I would never have been aware of it if it hadn’t been for my English professor in my undergraduate degree. He had us download some type of software that allowed you to input your papers and it would read them allowed. It was very helpful to hear how your paper sounded to someone else and allow you to make revision’s prior to handing it in. It was a truly great tool for making my papers better but it also made me discover a new way to learn. Even though I might sound crazy to my roommate’s I often read aloud from the text that I have been assigned because I find it helpful for synthesizing the material. Not only do I find it helpful when I myself read material but I have had professors who ask students to read certain passages and I also have found that valuable as a student. I wanted to highlight this because I have not seen it used in classrooms very often and since I find it so helpful I wanted to highlight it as a way to potentially help the students we are all going to encounter.

As idealistic as this may seem I love the idea of teachers being the guides through the material mentioned in Lang (88). In coaching we talk a lot about asking guiding questions to the players to make sure they understand the points we are trying to get across and also so that they feel they have some ownership in arriving at the correct answer. This can be tricky because what if even with your guidance they are still not getting the points correctly, it can be somewhat of an awkward moment for you and for them. Even though these moments occur I still do believe that if the students feel some type of ownership in their learning then they can get excited about the material and see the benefits in what you are trying to teach. Like Lang says (89) students are human beings and that even if something doesn’t work and we fail for that day, it does not mean an idea is simply scrapped and never tried again. I think it’s very important for a teacher to realize that not everything they try is going to work and that is okay as much as it might feel awful at the time.

I know we already discussed participation points on the first day of class but I am curious to your thoughts on how to grade participation. Davis mentions keeping notes on participation after each class which in theory is a great idea but if you are running to teach another class it might not be as feasible to take notes. What do you think about the students grading each other in relation to participation? I am also curious what everyone’s thoughts would be about grading the participation in relation to the content that a student provides or do you just reward them for participating at all?