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Wk 11 Writing to Learn: Reader Response + ELLI: Strategic Awareness

Today we continued the conversation about using writing in the learning process, and I chose the Reader Response strategy excerpted from U Texas El Paso handout online

I shared with students one of my favorite passages from We Make the Road by Walking where Paolo Freire is telling Myles Horton  that we do students a disservice when we tell them that writing is easy (or formulaic) – That getting to true insight is like giving birth – a hard process – but worth the journey!

My a-ha this week as a teacher is all about inspiration… inspiring them (attempting to) through stories and examples to want to do the type of academic work – thinking – writing – creating – learning that we expect from them. Getting them to feel the satisfaction of working hard – having breakthroughs and tasting success bred of sweat and time! To build their endurance and to coax them into the world of college work.

These Tuesday sessions have become about strategies that help them review the BiSc and integrate a new reading/learning strategy. A criticism last year was that I swerved away with these critical thinking exercises from the content of the paired content course – it was the first attempt, and I didn’t know the content well enough myself to keep up with making these concrete connections. This year, being more familiar with the reading content and the BiSc content, I was able to do this better! So I am able to help them use the strategies while they are reviewing sections of Bisc – MUCH more effective and satisfying! It also then stays with the original intention of the paired course – that we do just that! Here is the Reader Response in-Class Activity. Again homework had them do Cornell Notes for the entire chapter and Reader Response for one section.

ELLI – Strategic Awareness

I wanted students to think about how far they have come since August and to review the ELLI process so far. So I had them watch the Ruth Deakin Crick video for the Carnegie Foundation to hear the background of the project and tool once more.

As our intro activity for Strategic Awareness, I wanted them to pull together all the many things they have been learning along these lines.. So I had them in pairs create a brochure for new first-year students, describing how to be successful in Dr. Blay’s BiSc course. A second question then was for them to imagine what they would say to a student who comes to them mid-term and says they are struggling with the course… What advice would they give the students?

The final activity was to interview another first year student (not in our class) using interview questions I gave them around the ELLI dimensions we have been working with so far. When they came back to class with the interviews, we had a debrief discussion about similarities and differences noted between the students they interviewed and their own strategic awareness. This wasn’t as great as I thought it would be – too many questions perhaps… or I should have had them write in their journals something about noticing the differences/similarities between themselves and their peers in terms of academic work/success… I’m not sure about this one…. I was trying to pep them up, build confidence and awareness of their own growth which I see, but they are getting tired! And their endurance is low… so lots of conversations now about not giving up – lots of 1-on-1’s and checking in… what’s happening, why did you miss class, etc etc… still time to get your homework in… it’s like one step forward, 2 steps back… I know though that lst year, this was  critical juncture… Their exam scores started to fall off, and they continued to tumble to the end, so I am making them aware of this phenomenon and trying to get them to not let themselves slip right now…

Finished the class with the exam score debrief…we have been tracking our group against the rest of the class in terms of exam and quiz scores… and getting them to stop missing out on key opportunities – like why are they NOT acing the quizzes – which are open book – they are hard, but if they spend the time, they do well and it is 40% of the class – which also supports them when the exam scores aren’t so good.. so strategic awareness means to take advantage of this and do well on the quizzes – no excuses! This week, quiz scores are back up in the low 90 range… The highlight was the Calvin Borel video which was pretty thrilling as the exam score averages were revealed… Us versus them… like Calvin Borel coming up on the inside rail, they have started to close the 10 point gap between the rest of the BiSc class – ever so slightly, but we’ll take it!!! So let’s see what they can do on the last 2 exams and the post-test…If they don’t decline, I count that as miles ahead of last year…. It was awesome and dramatic!!!

 

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