> Bonita, > I know what you mean about standards. It is where I start teaching. But try > to develop a letter grade on some standards and the holistic nature of > reading strategies starts causing issues. > > Okay, say we want kids to find the main idea...or to determine importance. > What do we expect a first grader to be able to do? a 4th grader? a 9th > grader? > How does it look at each of those levels and who decides? >... We are grading thinking here and that gets really fuzzy.
Exactly. I wonder why we do grades at the elementary level at all, in any subject. It does not feel real to me. It has an arbitrariness to it that gets my goat. I would rather use narratives to report to parents and maybe specific measurements and what they might mean, not grades for an entire subject. How is someone an "A" in reading? Really? I feel so disingenuous every time I do report cards. It is like a need a shower afterwards. It also makes me think about Ellin's line in chapter five, "...the debilitating influence of judgment..." BAM. She nails it again. I am chewing on that line and it may be the inspiration for my one posting for chapter 5. > I wonder if there is something of a developmental continuum based on the > sophistication of strategy use which has more to do with the nature of > understanding and the ability to use language more than the level of actual > thinking. Yes. I think I shared on this list before that I remember being about four-years-old and thinking about the nature of changing over time, and how adults do not really remember what it is to be four-years-old. Did I think those words? I doubt I had those words. But I remember the thought because at four I decided to commit it to memory, the moment, where I was standing, what I was thinking. I remember thinking at the time that my commitment to memory would be like a portal that would reveal to my adult-self what it is to be a child. (I don't think my brain is nearly as intellectual now as it was at that precise moment.) I will spend the rest of my life trying to be that open to thoughts and ideas. > Inferring is a thinking process that, perhaps, is used throughout our > lives, in math, reading, social relationships, etc... The sophistication of > our > thinking might depend on our experiences, what we have read before, our > brain > growth and development, our motivation, engagement and perhaps especially > upon the development of the language needed to share our thinking. Yes. I am sure Piaget has something to say on the developmental level, but add to that the differences in environment, individual brains, etc. I have certainly met some children as young as three who grapple with some big ideas. > Maybe the level of thinking depends more upon what our kids know about what > it means to understand...the depth to which they know they should throw > ourselves into the learning, the willingness to wrestle with ideas, to be > uncomfortable for a while, to dwell in ideas. Yes. So how do we promote the intellectual self? Allowing the grappling of ideas, respecting thought. Okay. But how do I fight the culture that does not value these things. If infiltrates my classroom from the outside in (TV, parent ideas, prior classroom experiences) and makes me sad. > The same might be said of teacher learning...if our teachers are not > actively seeking to deepen their understanding of what it means to teach > effectively, then it doesn't matter what the quality of the curriculum is. If > they don't > understand the content in depth, they miss opportunities to explain what it > means to understand math, science etc. Maybe we could develop some sort of intellectual litmus test and not allow teachers in if they do not pass? He-he. Wonder if I would pass? Depends whose defining it, I suppose. Thanks, Jennifer, for sharing the conversation. It is so much nicer to grapple with these ideas with company. :)Bonita _______________________________________________ Understand mailing list [email protected] http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/listinfo/understand_literacyworkshop.org
