Module 2

Module 2 : Brainstorming, Summer setbacks, and Declarative Knowledge

Concept 1: Brainstorming

Summary

In chapter 4, page 137, Woolfolk cites Osborn’s definition of brainstorming saying “The basic tenet of brainstorming is to separate the process of creating ideas from the process of evaluating them because evaluation often inhibits creativity.” When brainstorming, students should be free to blurt out ideas without anyone’s “evaluation, discussion, and criticism” until after all the ideas have been collected. Woolfolk also pulls in Alene Starko’s rules for brainstorming. These rules even ban “eye-rolling or laughing” by any student when another student throws out on idea, so no one will feel inhibited by throwing out a “crazy” idea. She also encourages collecting many different ideas, and even allowing students to expand and creating new thoughts off of what others have to say. Even “wild ideas” can trigger others to think of using the same concept in a more “workable” way.

Reflection

Brainstorming is definitely not a new concept, but the way it was defined and the “rules” that were outlined in the text made the idea so much more than I had ever thought of it being before. I never really looked at the process of brainstorming to be creative or a time where a group would work together in a non-judgmental way with the freedom to share any idea, no matter how outrageous it might be. Setting the parameters as Starko outlines, and then enforcing them, shows how brainstorming can allow for creativity, especially in a classroom among peers. Without knowing these parameters, true creativity can be withheld by the fear of being judged and being embarrassed. This also sets the group up for sparking ideas off of each other’s ideas, which can lead to even more new creative ideas.

Woolfork also shared how she used brainstorming to make a list of all her ideas and then she set the list aside and come back to it as she was writing her book. I had always thought of brainstorming as a group event and never thought of it as an individual exercise. Now looking back, I realize I am practicing individual brainstorming every time I make a list of my ideas and then narrow the list down to come to a topic for an assignment or paper. As I do this in the future, I am going to impose Starko’s four rules on myself because I think that will help me to be more creative too. Even though it is just with myself, I think I stop myself from letting the ideas out of my head and writing them on the paper because I think they are too “wild” of an idea. If I allow myself to write any and every thought I have onto the paper, then step away like Woolfork suggests, I can come back and tone down or expand on my own ideas just like you would do in a group brainstorming. It helps to step away and come back with a different perspective. This concept of individual brainstorming is one that I will definitely use when I am planning activities and lessons for my future classes too.

In my field placement, my cooperating teacher used brainstorming to help the students come up with ideas for a debate they were going to have in class the next day. He split the class into groups and had them pick one person in each of the groups to be a note taker, but he did not set any ground rules. Both he and I walked around the room while the groups were meeting. I listened in on several of the groups and I noticed that in each group there was a very dominant person who was throwing out most of the suggestions. When some of the other kids tried to offer a suggestion, some kids in the group laughed, then the person who had made the suggestion that was laughed at would shut down for the rest of the time. I could tell too that after the laughter from the one person’s idea, all the ideas slowed down because students were afraid to share their idea because they too didn’t want others laughing at them. I wish I would have read this section of Woolfolk’s book prior to this class day so that I could have shared the four rules with my cooperating teacher and the class. I definitely agree, especially among peers, that having these rules in place, will help to open the channels of the students’ creativity as they are given freedom to share, without the fear of being laughed at or judged by their ideas.

Brainstorming is a very worthwhile activity with groups of students. It not only teaches students to work in groups, but it also teaches them to open up and share their ideas and learn from other’s ideas. Especially in middle school social studies classes where we will do a lot of interactive projects, I will use the concept of brainstorming in my classroom like my cooperating teacher did, but I will make sure that I set Starko’s ground rules with the students before we begin to make sure that all the students understand the purpose and the parameters. Hopefully this will help them to be more creative and to feel more comfortable sharing their ideas.

Concept 2: Summer Setbacks

Summary

In chapter 6, page 227, Woolfolk talks about the growth that students loose over summer breaks from school, and how this loss has contributed to the reading gaps between students in poverty and students from middle-class homes. She reports “students in poverty begin school about 6 months behind in reading skills” and by the time these students reach 6^th grade, the gap is almost 3 years and has been continuing to increase since the 1970s. Her explanation for this increasing gap in reading is the break from reading many lower income households, especially ones where English is not the first language, take during the summer months. She argues that since the lower income group does not have as much access to books and are not encouraged at home to read over the summer, “every summer vacation creates about a 3-month reading achievement gap between poor and advantaged kids.” Because studies show that the more students read, the better readers they will become, if students are not reading over the summer, they have the potential to fall behind students who are reading and moving forward with their reading skills. She suggests the solution is to provide summer reading programs for low-income communities to try to close the reading gap by helping the students to grow rather than lose ground with their reading over the summer.

Reflection

I remember every year being so excited to have a break from school in the summer. However, even though we didn’t have to go to school in the summer, we still did schoolwork at home each weekday. My mom would give us one full week off from school, and then the second week of summer, she would take us to the book store and let my sister and I each pick out a summer workbook to help us prepare for the next year of school. My sister loved to do this, and she would always ask my mom if she could even get two workbooks. I was never as excited as my sister, and I would have been completely fine with getting none, but that was not an option. The workbook would contain school work for the grade we would be entering in the fall. Each morning, before we got to do anything fun for the day, we would spend a half hour going over a lesson in our workbook with our mom. After our workbook time, we would get a 15-minute break, and then we spent a half hour reading from a book that we got from the library. Our local library would have a reading program each summer. Once we signed up for the program, we would get a reading log. When we reached certain goals on the log, we would bring our log back to the library for prizes. We did this every summer from preschool through middle school. Even though somedays I really didn’t like that we did this, looking back now I see it helped us to keep on track and keep our minds growing over the summer months. I am grateful for the time my mom allotted for us to do this each day. I remember too my teachers always telling us at the end of the school year to be sure to read over the summer.

Although my mom was really disciplined with this practice, not many of my friends or classmate’s moms made this a daily practice. Woolfolk mentions that she feels this lack of summer reading causes students to lose gains they made in the prior year and may be a factor contributing to children who live in poverty falling even further behind. I think the lack of summer learning affects both students from the middle-class and poverty, but I do agree that the middle class students are given more opportunities to read, but they may just not take advantage of them. I would think that in poverty areas there are still public libraries that could offer reading programs to the students, but Woolfolk points out that since the parents may not speak English, they may not know about the program and may not take their children to the libraries to get books. It would be very helpful for schools to inform parents about the need to read, and the availability of local free summer reading programs.

As my sister is a 2^nd grade teacher in Milwaukee, she is planning to set-up a summer reading program for her students to give them several opportunities to keep their reading progress going over the summer. First, she is putting together reading bags that she is going to give to each student on the last day of class before summer break that will contain two books, a bookmark, and a reading log. The students will be asked to read their book each day and log their time on the sheet. Her school gives her a budget to buy books for her class. She (and I frequently go with her) goes to every library used book sale and resale shop to buy as many books as she can to have to give to her students. For Christmas and Easter, she wrapped up books and gave one to each of the kids. The kids are so thrilled to get their very own books that they get to keep. She writes a personal note on the front cover of each book to help foster a love for reading in her students. She is also planning to hold a biweekly book club that her students can attend to check in with her with their reading log. She also intends to have additional books available for them to borrow from her “library” of books. She is hoping this will be incentive for her students to want to keep reading, and growing their skills, over the summer. Many of her students first language is not English, so she will also be sending a note to the parents in English and Spanish letting them know the importance of encouraging their children to keep up their reading over the summer.

It is good experience and practice for me to learn these ideas from my sister, so that I can practice them when I become a teacher too. Her class is 2^nd grade, so we are always on the lookout for Junie B. Jones and Geronimo Stilton books at all the book sales. Now when we are at the sales, I am going to start looking for history books so that I can begin to grow my “library” of books that I will be able to offer to my students to read over the summer to keep them interested in reading and help to keep the gap closed on “summer setbacks.”

Concept 3: Long lasting declarative knowledge: making meaningful connections

Summary

In chapter 8, page 324, Woolfolk discusses that the way you learn information helps you to recall that information again later. She states that “one important requirement for building lasting knowledge is that you integrate new information with your prior knowledge” in order to build a deeper, lasting understanding.  The way to achieve this, as she states, is through “elaboration, organization, imagery, context, desirable difficulty and effective practice.” Building on prior knowledge is a great way to learn new topics, and this is what is referred to as elaboration (324). Taking new ideas and making them your own will help you recall them later. Also, making sure all information is organized, when presented to students, will make it easier for them to learn and remember (325). Forming an image of an object in your mind helps with recall (326). Remembering the context when you learned something, either physically or emotional, can help with recall of information (327). Desirable difficulty is defined by the more effort that is originally put into learning something, the greater the recall will be when you go back to the same activity or object (327). Struggling and taking time to figure something out creates a stronger memory than just being told information. The last practice she refers to is the retrieval process that she defines as “repeated recall” which help consolidate memories in the brain and “strengthens the neural pathways so the knowledge is easier to find later” (327). As these different methods of making connections to prior knowledge are used, learning and remembering skills will increase.

Reflection

In one of the social studies classrooms that I observed at the beginning of this school year, after the teacher would teach a new concept, he would say, “ok, now turn to the person on your right and explain the concept I just explained in your own words to them.” Reading Woolfolk’s definition of elaboration, I realized that this teacher was using a form of elaboration to teach the students to retell the information he had just taught. This process would help the students to see if they actually understood what had just been taught to them well enough to explain it to someone else. Also, saying it in their own words would help the information to stay in their memories better too. He would then ask the person on the left if what the person on the right said to them was an accurate explanation of the concept he had just taught. This was a way to make sure that both the student telling the explanation, and the person hearing the explanation were understanding the concept correctly. If there were any misconceptions, the teacher would correct them to be certain that everyone was learning the concepts correctly.

I remember when I was in elementary school, the pastor of our church would encourage the kids in the congregation to take notes like their parents during the sermon. He suggested, if it would be easier for us to remember concepts with pictures, that we should draw rather than try to write words. He would put a principal from the sermon up on the screen, and then ask the students to illustrate what this principal meant to them. He would break the sermon down into “small bites” to help the students focus on that one section and then tell us to draw what would help us to remember the concept. I was not a great drawer, but I was able to draw simple pictures that would help me remember the mini principals  better than if I just wrote the words from the screen. Reading Woolfork’s details on imagery on pages 325-326, I see where the pastor used this method of imagery to help us learn mini-principals from his sermons. Often the pastor would show pictures that students had drawn from the prior week to the congregation as an example of how the students were learning the concepts from the lecture through their illustrations. It was a great way for younger kids to learn and remember one “small bite” of the sermon rather than try to grasp the whole sermon by being distracted with trying to listen and write words on the paper. This was a great way for kids to learn how to start taking valuable notes that they could relate to and remember.

There are a lot of great techniques and ideas in this chapter to help students learn and recall information that I will definitely put into practice in my future classroom. I especially like the idea of mneomics to help with recall. I often try to find acronyms with information I need to learn to help me recall and keep the ideas in my memory for long term. I know from my own experience that actually relating a concept to prior knowledge or creating an acronym will help me to remember concepts much more long term than memorizing items. When I memorize items, the may stay in my mind for the test, but then they quickly leave my memory. I have learned that in order to commit items to memory for long term, I need to use one of these other methods. I want to be sure to share these different ideas for long term memory storage with my students and find ways to implement them in my classroom like I saw my observation teach do with the practice of having the students retell the concept just learned to another student in the classroom.