TE 843 Reading, Writing and Reasoning in Secondary School Subjects

Summer, 1996

(PLEASE NOTE THAT THE DATES LISTED APPLIED TO SUMMER, 1996. THEY ARE LISTED HERE ONLY TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA OF THE CHALLENGES OF THE COURSE. AN UPDATED SYLLABUS WILL BE POSTED SOON.)

Course Description

TE 843 is a course for teachers of secondary school subjects. It provides teachers with an opportunity to focus directly on issues of literacy--access to subject matter. What counts as acting literate in art, in English, in mathematics or in P. E.? Where are these subject matters encoded? What reading, writing and speaking norms operate within the discipline? What would school students need to be able to do in order to become increasingly independent users of and contributors to the discipline?

Course Requirements

Because we will be exploring these questions together through conversation and in-class exercises, it is imperative that you attend each class session. The readings alone will not offer you the substance of this course. Please note as well that we're operating on a condensed time line this summer. Each session represents a week's worth of TE 843.

Readings

I have selected readings and put them into a course pack available at Michigan Documents on the corner of Hagadorn and Grand River. I also ordered one book, Insult To Intelligence, available at the MSU bookstore. You may also find copies in the library.

Written Assignments

One paper and one project are assigned written work for this course. A description of each is attached. Assignments are due as indicated. You should plan to complete written assignments on the dates due.

*Note: If you have a suggestion for a change in either assignment to make it more personally relevant or helpful, please see me. I'll be delighted to help you tailor requirements so that the work is useful and worthwhile for you.

Signing On

I urge you to look carefully at the syllabus. Most sessions require preparation. Taking this course means agreeing to engage in this preparation. Signing our Norms and Expectations Contract at the end of our session today means that you agree to participate fully and constitutes a commitment to the work, preparation and persons associated with this course. If signing on requires a broader commitment than you feel you can honor this summer, I suggest you plan to take TE 843 in its Fall time slot.

SYLLABUS

Part One:

What Should Kids Be Doing In Schools?

Part Two:

What's My Role?

ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION

Essay #1

Due by 5:00 June 28

Rationale

The first sessions of our course involve intensive reading around the questions of what schools should be about and what kids should be doing in schools. The ways in which you think about those questions serve as parameters for decisions you'll make about how reading and writing facilitate reasoning and learning in your subject area. While I have supplied a thinking worksheet for each reading, these really only serve to focus your reading for class discussion. You deserve an opportunity to synthesize what you're reading and to personalize it to the teaching/learning context in which you work.

The Task

Imagine that you must make a set of arguments to your department--or to your entire faculty--about the mission of your school, your department. What have you read that stands out to you as something you wish others in your building or district could read or understand? What could you say to your colleagues that would suggest ways your school or department could clarify its ideas about students and their learning? How might you synthesize our reading and discussion so that the most significant ideas for your school/department would make sense to your colleagues?

Write a document--think of it as an essay or monograph or even as the text of a speech--you would feel comfortable giving to your colleagues. Make your ideas, theories and recommendations as context-specific as you can.

Publish your work. Make six copies, one for me, five for class members. Bring these to class on Thursday, June 27 or to my office by 5:00 on Friday, June 28.

Pick up your set of five papers to read. These will be ready for you on Monday, July 1, at 9:00 outside 329 EH. Read them before class time on July 11. On July 11, we will discuss the papers you read and return comments to their authors.

ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION

Project

Due by 5:00 July 18

Rationale

The second half of our course focuses on practical strategies teachers might employ to help students access texts--both written and oral. Not all strategies are appropriate for your subject area. Others may seem absolutely inappropriate for your students. Evaluating these as new ideas or reminders of ideas you've seen/used before seems like the real work of these last two weeks. Your project should allow you to make your evaluations concrete.

The Task

Part One:

Select a unit you have taught, one that seems not to work with students as you hope it will. Analyze that unit. Present your analysis in an essay form or as a narrative if that's comfortable for you. Or, present it as a dialog between you and either an intern/student teacher or you and a helpful colleague. In either format, be sure to:

• explain your instructional goals

• analyze these goals as to their significance--is this material worth teaching? What makes it worthwhile?

• offer several ways of understanding how this unit has worked less than well in the past--this has been a case of - - - . Thoughtfully pursue several possible explanations.

• focus in on the one or two explanations that seem to offer you the best suggestions for improving this unit--what makes this way of understanding your previous teaching more helpful?

Then, revise the unit. You may do this by re-drafting lesson plans. Or, you may describe the revisions in an essay format or as a revised narrative. Or, you may use a dialog format. Regardless, include relevant artifacts--mediations guides, lecture guides, purpose-setting assignments or activities, schema activation/development materials, etc. Actually generate the materials you'll need when you teach this material again next school year.

Type or word process all of Part One.

Part Two:

You can think of part two as optional. If you decide not to prepare a part two, 3.5 will be the highest grade possible on your project. With a part two, a 4.0 is possible. If you decide to attempt the full project, include a notebook-like or scrapbook-like series of pages which preserve ideas that seem useful to you but are not relevant to this particular unit.

Put only one idea on a page.

(This will aid in filing and retrieving your ideas later)

The easiest way to generate these pages is to make class notes--descriptions of activities we do in class that you might use with your students--or special reading notes as you proceed through the reading for the course (particularly from items 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 in the course pack). Waiting until the end of the course seems to me to be the most difficult way to do this!

On July 11, you'll need to prepare "gold" to bring class to share with others. This might be a good time to bring these scrapbook or notebook pages. Be sure to record enough of what we did or what you read to help you recall the details later. However, modifications to make the activity or idea actually useful in your subject area or setting are especially valuable.

Imaginary Entry

What We Did

In class, we created a class contract. We did this on the very first class session.

Description of Activity

• First, Diane asked us to - - - .

• Then, we gathered to - - - .

• Finally, we created the contract. Ours was on several large pieces of paper that we taped together. It looked like - - - . After everyone had an opportunity to edit it, we signed the contract.

• The whole thing took XX minutes.

Adaptations

For the kids I teach, I think I'd - - - .

Pages will be more accessible later if you type them now; however, these pages are really for you. If you elect to keep them in your own handwriting, that's a choice I respect. There is no need to make pages for activities that you cannot see as helpful in your classroom! Scrapbooks/notebooks are for saving things you value.