Book Review "You Gotta BE the Book" By Jeffrey D. WIlhelm

This book really breaks down the process highly engaged readers go through as they are reading, and he encourages readers to become engaged by creating assignments that put them in the books. He wants them to think like the characters, or fill in the gaps that authors leave in a book so you can jump to your own conclusions. Jeffrey Wilhelm transferred from teaching high school English to middle school English, and in his new class load were three sessions of remedial eighth grade English. He tried everything he could think of to get these students to read, but the just gave up stating that they hated reading. At nights he would go home and read to his daughter, his niece and a neighbor boy. While reading with them he realised that they employ reading techniques that older students seem to lose along the way, such as connecting the text to their lives, acting out the text, and visualizing.

Wilhelm started his classes for four years with a reading inventory, asking if the students liked reading, and what they liked to read. He found that half of his students didn’t read outside of class. He also found that students who are not strong readers don’t enjoy surprises while reading. They feel that the author is trying to trip them up.

When Wilhelm started his year of research with his classes, he chose three highly engaged students to study. One was a male and the other two were female. He interviewed these students and recorded their reading habits and strategies. He found that while these students are all engaged, they still go about reading in slightly different ways. The male student would be sucked into the world of the book he was reading. He would essentially become one of the characters and temporarily “live” in the book world, meshing his world with it.  The girls were not quite so literal in their reading. When he first asked his students how they read, they replied that teachers don’t usually care about how a student reads. I think this information should be very important to teachers. Without knowing how your students read how can you teach them literature? Wilhelm persisted and eventually created opportunities for the students to show him how they read. He had the students participate in Symbolic Story Representations (SRI) . For SRIs the students recreated scenes from the book they are reading with cutouts. They would have a cutout to represent themselves and they would show where they were in the story while they were reading. Some students become a friend of the character, or they are invisible and can just see everything that is going on. I think this would be interesting to do, but it might be difficult to get students to take this seriously. I think I could get a similar result if I have students draw a scene and have them represent themselves in the scene. This would not take nearly as much time as the SRI. Wilhelm came to think of student responses to literature as in 10 different dimensions. He then divided these dimensions into three different categories, Evocative, Connective, and Reflective. By indicating the different dimensions, not only can we see how engaged the student is, we can also see that there are different purposes and ways of reading, Just because a student is reading a text one way doesn't mean it is the right or wrong way, they just might be trying to get something else out of the reading than what you intended.

Wilhelm discovered that to be engaged in the reading the reader has to see what is going on. In a conversation with a reader who said he didn’t experience anything while he was reading a story, the reader told him that he “can’t think about it, talk about it, do anything about it,” if he couldn't see it. With other readers he discovered that when they did describe a character it was not always consistent with the descriptions of the character, one boy describing a retired teacher by comparing her to his young athletic science teacher, even though he knows how old people are when they retire. Later Wilhelm realized that some of these students enjoyed and “got” comic books that have “sophisticated humor,” leading him to believe that the images along with the text helped them to understand the text. He brought in a number of illustrated texts, like comic books, graphic novels, and stories with illustrations. The reluctant readers ambushed the texts, while the engaged readers mostly ignored them. Later he has students draw what they read. He found that some students have sketchy ideas of what characters and settings look like before they draw, but when they draw they need to fill in the sketches, and this allows them to have a more complete image of what they are reading. Wilhelm also states that having students visualize the text in various ways helps students remember what they read. This is something I should have tried with one of my students last semester. He couldn't remember anything he read. He also had a hard time finding the words to describe something we had just read together. If he was able to draw things as they happen it is possible that he would have an easier time remembering. We say that we need to experience what we learn with as many senses as possible: we read it (see), we say it (feel), and we hear it (hear). Drawing is just a new way to experience what we read.

What are subs expected to do in terms of discipline? and a cool review idea, March 23

Today I subbed for a math class at one of the Junior highs, and I learned a new way to review for a test. The teacher called it review bingo, but it was different from bingo. The students were given a score card to write down the answers to the math questions on, like bingo, but then instead of doing the math questions one by one as a class, the students worked through the math problems as fast as possible, holding up their white boards as they found the answer to each question. As the teacher, I was to verify the correct answers. Let me tell you this is hard to do. Not only do you have 10 or so students with boards but in the air wanting to to tell them if they are right. You have answers to 5 different questions to check, and the students are racing so they want you to get to them first. It was a lot of fun for the students, and they were motivated because they were racing against each other, and any student that got a bingo got a piece of candy. I think it would be fun do do this in an English class, like as review for a test as an alternative to the jeopardy style review, but it would have to be tweaked. What makes it better than jeopardy is that every student is answering every question, so every student is accountable for all of the information.

After lunch there was a small incident. A couple of the students were horsing around in the hallway and a teacher caught them. She brought them to my class and told me to give them a detention. Well first of all, subs are not told the procedure for detentions. Is there a form that needs to be filled out/ Who do they serve the detention with? At the high school students serve detention with the teachers that gave them the detention. If this is the procedure at the junior high, do they expect subs to stay after school to supervise the detention. This is highly doubtful, but I have never been told what to do. Second of all, why couldn’t the teacher have given them the detention when she witnessed the behavior. I didn’t see what happened and the students were well behaved in class, so I left a note for the teacher to deal with the issue as she pleased. If schools want subs to dole out punishment, then they need to inform the subs of the proper procedures  for doing so. 

A day as a para, March 22

Today I was a para at one of the senior highs. I often wonder what the point of having a para sub is. Usually they only have subs for one on one paras, and this works because you are with one student the whole day and you have a purpose. But when you are a para to multiple students, it is difficult to know what to do, and usually I am just recording what the student’s homework assignment so the para knows what the student is supposed to do. Part of the problem is the student won’t talk to you to ask a question because no one introduces you to the student that you are working with. I kind of think that there should be a resource hour at the beginning of the day so the para and students can check in with each other. This could help the student get prepared for the day. I think the middle and junior highs do this durring SSR which is the first period of the day. I really think that all students could benefit from 20 mins or so to prepare for school, like a homeroom class.  

The first class I sat in on was world history and they were studying world war I. As the students came in, REM’s “Its the end of the world as we know it” was playing (was that significant to the lesson? or just a song that the student teacher liked. And if it was significant, why didn’t the he discuss it with the class?) and there was a question of the day on the board. After some time he turned off the music and asked for some students to volunteer their answers. He had two students give an answer, then he restated the answer. Next the students played a game called war. The students were divided into “countries” and each country had a ruler, an ambassador, and some subjects. when they went to war any of the subjects could be captured and taken to a new country if they were not able to answer a question related to what the class was studying. The students had fun and the information they were accountable for grew day to day.

After the game he passed out the new worksheet and the students found the answers in their book, there was no instruction that I saw, though he may have presented the information previously.

            Later in the day, I sat in on a science class. The teacher had a quote of the day on the board, though it didn’t seem to have anything to do with science or what they were studying. The students seemed to understand this as they didn’t really pay any attention to it. The teacher did discuss the quote, but once again it had little to do with class. This was a special education class, so I think it is slower than the other science classes but by the time he talked about the quote and explained an extra credit opportunity, the class was over. I was a little confused about what his goal for the day was, did he accomplish what he planed to teach?

First time sending a student to the office, Subbing history, March 14 & 15

For the last two days, I have subbed for a history teacher at one of the junior highs. He left a very interesting lesson plan. The students were studying the cold war, so he had selected you tube videos that showed various aspects of the cold war. There was a video about the atomic bomb testing and how it effected the citizens of the island were they conducted the testing. There was a video that they showed in schools about what to do if we were attacked with atomic bombs. there was a video that showed the images of the soviet army marching with some menacing music. Last, there was a video that showed the stages a missile goes through after it is launched. After the students watched the video they were to answer some questions that were provided, then the class was to discuss the questions. This was interesting  because the students got a good view of what the cold war was like through an assortment of videos from youtube, and the students were very interested in what they were watching. It wasn’t a documentary that went on and on with information that the students couldn’t care less about. Instead of telling the students what the cold war was like, he showed them, and let them come to their own conclusions with leading questions. I think that I will keep this in mind when I do Of Mice and Men again, or really with any unit that involves a historical context.
    It was also during the last two days that I sent my first student to the office. The students were not allowed to talk during the videos, but I had one student that just kept talking, I asked him a few times if I needed to move him, and he said, no, that he could be quiet. The next time I caught him talking I told him to move, then gave him some time to move. He didn’t, so I told him to move again, and when he said he wouldn’t, I said you can either move to a different seat or move to the office. He chose the office, and had a few choice words to say as he left. I don’t like sending students to the office. But I have finally found that sometimes its necessary. He didn’t have the right to distract other students from learning.

Whats so specially about gifted students? Subbing Gifted Math and Science, March 11

Today was one of the best subbing experiences I have ever had. It was for a PEAK (gifted) science and math class. The students were so well behaved. They had a test in the math classes, and they were watching Bill Nye the Science Guy in the science class as well as doing work sheets. I have noticed that PEAK kids are usually better behaved than regular classes. I have tried to think about why this might be. First I think gifted students are given more responsibility for their education. They are given more choices and they are given more interesting assignments. As a whole we expect the gifted students to behave better, and we expect the regular students to misbehave. What if we hold all of our students to the same standards. What if we take the more interesting ways that we teach the gifted students and teach it to the regular students. Of course the gifted students are going to do well on an assignment that involves creativity, so would our regular students, yet I don’t see this in practice very much. I know that gifted students have needs that aren’t met by the regular classroom, but why is it just gifted students that we worry about. I think all of our students have needs that are not met by the regular classroom. What students need is authentic learning, yet more and more when I go into regular classrooms they are working on boring worksheets. Why is that?

The Importance of Keeping promises and Leaving accurate sub notes- Subbing History- March 10

Today while subbing I learned the importance of keeping your promises and leaving accurate sub notes. I was subbing for a history teacher who, of course, left me a test to administer. (I understand that it is easy to leave a test for subs, as there is no teaching involved, but if there is a problem that comes up, the sub has little to no authority to make decisions regarding the test. This was a test over World War II. Towards the beginning of class a couple of students asked if they would be allowed to use their time-lines. The teacher had not left any indication that the students would be able to use any materials on this test, but the class insisted that he told them they could use it.

Up until now I would have trusted the class and allowed them to use it, but I recalled a conversation I had had with Deana about a sub that allowed the class to play cards because the class told the sub that their teacher allowed them to do it. Deana was very unhappy with the sub and asked why the sub would believe the students. I then decided that I would ask someone, the para who is usually in the room, but as her student was absent she decided to work in the resource room. She said that the students were not allowed to use the time-lines.    

At this point I am feeling a little confused. I informed the students that they would not be able use their time-lines. Let me tell you, there was a tidal wave of hate headed my way. Many students indicated that they were going to fail this test now, and it was all my fault because I decided that they could not use their time-lines. I tried to tell them that their teacher did not let me know about the time lines and that its safer for me to just say no. They were not happy with that answer. I emailed one of the paras that I know is in his class to ask if they knew if the students were allowed to use the time line on the test. The para said no, but the students were so insistent, I told them I would leave a note letting their teacher know about the discussion, which made them feel better, but they still seemed very upset, so I emailed their teacher. He emailed me back, thank goodness, and said that they were allowed to use it in the test. He felt really bad about not leaving me a note, but it still put me in a bad position. Students either don’t like subs or use them as an excuse to behave badly, why do teachers make subs jobs harder on them then it has to be?

I had probably one of the worst classes I have ever experienced. It was a class full of boys with only two girls. There were only like 4 students in the whole class that did their work quietly on their own. After the test the students had some worksheets to work on. They needed the books to work on them and they were supposed to work alone. They also needed to be quiet because other students were still working on their tests. This was a problem because the students felt that they should be able to work in pairs. They wouldn’t understand, and they kept making noise. I separated the students that were in the wrong seats, (I think from now on I will take attendance from the seating charts asking the students to raise their hand when they are called so I know who they are and that they are in the right seats)and that helped some, but then some students opened the classroom door, combat-rolled into the room, then left very quickly. I decided not to make a big deal out of it, hoping the students would follow my lead, but that was too much to ask for. During the passing period, the teacher next door, who was showing a movie very loudly, apologized for the class stating that it was impossible to control them, It would have been nice for the teacher to have left a note of warning. I guess what I am taking away from this experience is that as a teacher you need to leave detailed sub plans, because without them you are just making your sub’s job harder.

Subbing- Physical Education March 8th

Today I subbed for a physical education teacher at one of the junior high schools. They were taking their boating licence course so I mainly just watched the students as a highway patrol, water patrol officer taught the class. I wonder why we teach this and not other things, like CPR. I know that in order to drive a boat you need to have a licence now, but its not like we take time out of gym to get your drivers licence, a lot more of those students will be driving a car than driving a boat.

I also taught adaptive PE, a class for special education students. This was interesting because it was different from any PE class I ever had in middle and high school. The students worked the first half of the class on the treadmill or the elliptical, then they switched and worked on weights. The students were so supportive of each other while they were doing the weights, encouraging their peers to finish their reps. We need to find ways for students to encourage each other in mental tasks as well as physical tasks. Why is it that students only encourage their peers when they are running or lifting weights, when students need just as much encouragement to finish a chapter or write a personal narrative. I think that the journals Nancy Atwell talks about in “In the Middle” might be a way to do this. This is a way for students to encourage each other to read. If a student mentions that they are having a hard time getting into a book, maybe another student can encourage them to keep at it.