Week Twelve

Just when I feel like I really have the hang of things at school, something happens that makes me rethink.

In ELA this week, my students have been learning about alphabetical order, dictionaries, and glossaries.  My CT had one activity planned in which students looked up four words on www.dictionary.com to find pronunciation, part of speech, and a definition.  I asked her if I could copy pages out of a children’s dictionary instead, and she agreed to let me try the activity that way.  This was an eye-opening experience for me.  Most of the children seemed baffled by the dictionary.  I think that most of them had never used one before.  The two students who didn’t struggle terribly with the activity worked at a much slower pace than I had anticipated.  As I observed the class struggling to do the assignment, I wanted to kick myself.  I should have anticipated that they would have had trouble with this.  I stopped them all, and we looked up the first word together to model for a second time.  (I had modeled an example at the beginning of the lesson, but it was with a word that was not from their worksheet.)

I am irritated with myself for not anticipating the difficulties of this activity.  First, the students are children of the electronic age.  Dictionary websites have taken place of hard copies.  Information is available in an instant by googling it.  Why would they seek out a book when the same information can be searched on a family member’s phone? 

Second, it occurs to me that the house I grew up in was probably different than a lot of people’s.  At home, we had an encyclopedia set, dictionary, thesaurus, and plenty of other books.  If my brothers and I looked up something in the dictionary or encyclopedia, it often led to further exploration of these reference materials.  It was fun and interesting to do this.  My parents were not nuts about pushing academics, but we were expected to work hard and do well.  Books were always available and we went to the library.  (We also watched TV, goofed around, played games and sports, and got into trouble like  normal kids.)  Because I grew up in a house like this and that is what I know, that is the kind of environment we have in my home now for my own children.  I got a used encyclopedia set from the library about two years ago.  It’s only about ten years old.  We have a children’s dictionary, and a regular dictionary and thesaurus.  We also have a ton of fiction and non-fiction books.  I can’t seem to resist kids’ books at garage sales and library sales when they cost 10 or 25 cents.  I think maybe 5% of the books that we have were bought new.  My kids love to read and love going to the library.  

Anyway, I guess I am a Luddite at heart.  (There’s a word for you to look up in the dictionary!  Click here and see the second definition.)  But more than that, I think there is value in the process of looking words up in the dictionary and encyclopedia.  Looking up one word in the dictionary leads to looking up more and more words.  Looking up a topic in the encyclopedia leads to flipping the pages to see what else can be found in that particular volume.  It’s an unstructured educational activity.  There’s also something about touching and flipping the physical pages of the books.  I think there are tangible and intangible things that are lost by the reduction in number of physical books at homes, schools, and libraries.  Maybe I’m just old-fashioned. I have been accused (justly) of being a nerd.  I just like books and so do my kids.

I have to remember that I am teaching MY CLASS.  I need to use what I know about MY students and THEIR life experiences to create meaningful lessons for them.  I cannot compare their knowledge and experiences to my own 2nd grade son's knowledge and experiences because they have and have had very different lives, despite the commonalities they share as being seven-year-olds.  At all times, I must strive to fulfill to fulfill Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 1L, which states, "The competent teacher uses information about students’ individual experiences, families, cultures, and communities to create meaningful learning opportunities and enrich instruction for all students."  Had I more carefully considered my students' experiences before this dictionary lesson, I would have realized that they did not have a lot of experience (if any) using a dictionary, and I would have approached the lesson differently.  (I would have still exposed them to a hard copy of a dictionary, but I would have done this over the course of several days.  I would have started with a lot of support and slowly transferred responsibility to the students.)

My goal this week is to not lose steam or momentum now that the end of student teaching is less than a month away!