Subjects Matter Chapter 8 (and aforementioned of Chapter 5)

In the ELA curriculum it is very important that we give our students time and space to independently explore their texts. Through this activity the students must work through their reading—often time they are also encouraged to research outside their text—and come to a deeper than usual understanding of their materials before working it into in-class discusses. All the same, the student and teacher must be able to read through the lines and develop their own skills in which to utilize and retain information from their texts and other materials. The teacher, as the oldest student in the room, is responsible for teaching and passing on the knowledge in grasping important and relevant key concepts to their younger students and learners. (Often we refer to this as “Learning how to take notes.”) From that, our students are then responsible for honing in on their preferred methods and must fine tune their knowledge base, reading skills, and note taking skills on their own. Gradually. Independently.

Subjects Matter really pushes on this quintessential idea and skill that students must eventually become their own teachers and learners at the end of the day. Before, during, and after Independent Reading activities, the teacher plays the role of the facilitator who decides when, who, and where to hone or fine tune research and critical analysis skills. Perfectly demonstrating this is a section from our reading:

Eight Benefits of Independent Reading Workshop

1. Workshop signals that reading and studying a subject is important enough to give students class time for it.
2. Workshop offers students a wide variety of real-world reading in any subject.
3. It can be run in short chunks of time, and does not have to involve extensive assessment.
4. Workshop allows the teacher to directly teacher learning strategies or course content through shot minilessons, with students immediately applying what is taught while it’s fresh in their minds.
5. It enables the teacher to easily observe students’ understanding or difficulty with a concept through one-on-one conferences that take place during reading time.
6. Through a workshop structure, the teacher can provide students with individualized support.
7. Workshop promotes students buy-in because it introduces individual choice into the instructional mix.
8. Workshop enables the teacher to employ interactive student involvement as a significant element of instruction—through immediate application after a minilesson, through dialogue with the teacher during conferences, and through sharing time at the end of the workshop session.

In the ELA network I would think that it rather easy to take time in class to teach and implement this type of student centered learning and teacher. One of ELA’s main focuses is the deep analysis and “fleshing out” of intricate and complex literature in order to study, understand, and apply scholarly forms of the written word when conveying and arguing our points and opinions as both individuals and as members of a greater working society. That was a mouth full. But it is true, one of the devices that I had to learn, and keep learning, and am still learning to do in my English literature classes is how to take any text or material I am given and find ways to tease information out in order to better understand and otherwise learn from it.  And it is in my collegiate work that I, more often than not, have to give thanks to my independent reading time in secondary school as it has developed mine own ability to deeply analyze my material.

But I do understand that not all subject areas are allotted the time in class to sit and stick to solely learning how to better take notes and have their students in turn be able to learn how to analyze, learn, and teach themselves through their materials. So in the same fashion that Daniels and Zemelman have strongest advocated towards, there should be at least a few sessions dedicated to (what my school called it) Silent Study. In the same fashion as the independent reading sessions, Silent Study allows the students to take class time to unstress, unload, refocus, and turn all their attention towards reading and learning how to read their material. My ELA classes spent time most every class to do this, but as other subject areas aren’t graced with this gift. So, I think, to combat the lack of time and space to spread the independent reading sessions, other content subject area educators could allot entire class days per week or bi-weekly to assess their students. It could also be time where the educator teaches the different methods to note taking (Chapter 5) or specific means of extracting ideas and information from those subject areas when reading.

Overall, the students are how learn so it might just be a good idea to let them take time during class to teach themselves.