We started with a Think-Pair-Share question, “What IS college reading anyway?” We’ve been “doing it” for 13 weeks now… The discussion was pretty good – capturing the complexity, more challenging vocab, meaning-making, connecting to their own experiences, need to work harder at comprehension, “higher level”..and need to chunk it over time…
From there we did a text comparison, using:
- a snippet from the BiSc textbook on the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima
- a news summary of the same event from Science Digest – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130828092312.htm
- the actual research article from which the Science Digest summary came –
Vincent Rossi, Erik Van Sebille, Alexander Sen Gupta, Véronique Garçon, Matthew H. England. Multi-decadal projections of surface and interior pathways of the Fukushima Cesium-137 radioactive plume. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 2013; 80: 37 DOI: 10.1016/j.dsr.2013.05.015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2013.05.015
For each text, they had to pull three important facts – we discussed the changing levels of complexity as well as similarities between each.
Much of this felt like a wrestling match… and during questioning for comprehension, people visibly wanted to just give up… Frustration and frowns were all around… “‘I don’t know’ is not an acceptable answer in college” I always tell them… “Try at least!!!”
Surprising in the discussion was a return to the fact (they talked about this on day one back in August) that in high school, they didn’t have to read much at all – “We were always given the important points along with questions and answers to study by. In some classes we had a lot of books to read, but we always ran out of time and simply watched the movie.”
We always come back to this idea of what they are willing to change in order to be successful in college. The notion of the marathon runner – he/she couldn’t run 23 miles the first time out… practice and doing the hard work of trying to run (think for them) is what helps them (you) eventually to be able to do it… Building endurance and their own willingness to do it are important.. My pleading to “Come with me. Don’t give up. Stay in the game…” Does it make a difference? My thesis for this paper is coming together… stay tuned…
We shifted gears from the science example to begin working through the article on Metacognition and student self-testing (our rationale for using LearnSmart this term) more deeply using the Guide to Reading Academic Articles framework referenced below.
Jeffrey D. Karpicke, Andrew C. Butler, Henry L. Roediger III, Metacognitive strategies in student learning: Do students practice retrieval when they study on their own? Memory, Volume 17, Issue 4, Pages 471-479, DOI:10.1080/09658210802647009.
Guide to Reading Academic Articles –http://ycdl4.yukoncollege.yk.ca/~agraham//guides/guidec.shtml
Article Analysis Sheet – http://ycdl4.yukoncollege.yk.ca/~agraham//guides/asheet.htm
Article Analysis Sheet explanation – http://ycdl4.yukoncollege.yk.ca/~agraham//guides/aguide.htm
How-to – http://faculty.washington.edu/davidgs/ReadArticle.html
We ran out of time, but we’ll continue to use the process as we continue to use more scholarly articles in the next few lessons.
ELLI: Critical Curiosity Part II
How did it feel last week to do those “performance” exercises and try them in front of the group? Was it anxiety-provoking? Who wanted to jump in and try it? Who was afraid? Today we continued to talk about curiosity and how it impacts academic performance and quality of life.
We used two articles (referenced below) and questions/activities on this curiosity handout to drive the activity, reflection, and discussion about critical curiosity which included:
- Drawing a picture of a house where the roof is “academic success” What supports the roof?
- Using the abstract only from the Hungry Mind article – identify the main ideas of the study – based on this modify the drawing
- Series of intro reflection questions about their own curiosity levels in school and out (as well as ELLI scores)
- Students take the CEI-II curiosity survey and reflect on the 2 aspects of stretching and embracing – how have their curiosity levels impacted their lives?
- Final summarizing ANGEL reflection questions
Todd B. Kashdan, Matthew W. Gallagher, Paul J. Silvia, Beate P. Winterstein, William E. Breen, Daniel Terhar, Michael F. Steger, The curiosity and exploration inventory-II: Development, factor structure, and psychometrics, Journal of Research in Personality, Volume 43, Issue 6, December 2009, Pages 987-998, ISSN 0092-6566, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.04.011.(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656609001275)
Sophie von Stumm, Benedikt Hell and Tomas Shamorro-Premuzic, The hungry mind: Intellectual curiosity is the third pillar of academic performance, Perspectives on Psychological Science November 2011 Volume 6, Issue 6, November 2011, Pages 574-588, doi: 10.1177/1745691611421204.