Wednesday Meeting-Early Release

James Joyce
Our group of three met today to proceed with our study.

First, we brainstormed some ideas for our Physical Exercise Strategy. Patria located some more positive research and suggestions on the Web at Focus2learn. This site was essentially designed for students younger than ours, but it did present further successful research in this area. We would like to prepare a routine of manageable movement to stimulate reading responses in class - but nothing too wild. Tom suggested simple yoga stretches that could be done while seated. Jim suggested some adaptation of Tai C'hi. We thought that perhaps we could adapt some of the exercises shown at this site, Everyday Yoga.

We also shared our efforts to provide a more uniform course of study across our classes. We told of activities and works that had been received well by our students. Tom offered to provide some materials on Joyce's "The Dead" using Think Aloud. He also informed us that he will soon begin class work on Joyce's story "Araby". Finally, we discussed ways that we could make our Exit Projects more successful by requiring similar goals from our Seniors.

At the end of the school day, Mr. Bucich added an entry to our school's Wikispace that explained how to access this blog.Go to English IV.

Update: We've already received some spam comments from what is apparently a Portugese gambling site, so we'll start up Word Verification on our Comments. This means that to comment, one must type in a few nonsense letters as shown in order to post. Don't let that stop any comments - we'd love to get some more feedback.
Everyday Yoga

Best Practices Proposal

Test Tips (Click the kid)
Our group is Patria Alcantara, Tom Corwin, and Jim Hudson.

For our study, we will explore the effectiveness of three types of reading strategies.These are Think Aloud, Criss Strategies and Physical Exercise. Our group has done some research on the scientific basis for each type of activity as shown in previous posts on our blog, Best Practices. Since we are all using similar techniques, we assume that instruction given to our Seniors will be more fairly uniform.We will use a pretest-reading activity- post test model to assess improvements in comprehension.

We have begun our investigation by giving a pretest on Poe's "The Black Cat", then conducting a careful reading of the story in class-while stopping to employ Think Aloud methods. Next, we will follow with assessment items we have included in our Midterm Tests.We hope to see generalized improvements in our follow up testing on Think Aloud stories, more so than teaching done with other methods.

In the coming weeks, we will focus on appropriate Criss Strategies using such stories as "The Dead" by James Joyce. We will also devise an experiment with physical movement or mild exercise to see if that heightens interest and understanding.

Today's Meeting

CLICK
Tom, Patria, and I met after school today. We wanted to work out what we would say in our written proposal for our study. We decided to keep it to a simple paragraph or three explaining our intentions (and hopes) for our three areas of concentration, Think Aloud, CRISS Strategies, and Physical Reading Exercises.

We also noted similarities in our upcoming Midterm Tests, especially on the Think Aloud methods we all used on Poe's "The Black Cat." We had all used a pretest devised by Tom. Now we will test our student's comprehension on next week's test.We expect that they will perform better on this story than on other test items.

Ms. Alcantara has been searching for studies that show that a small amount of physical exercise before class, or in class, can improve outcomes. I found two web items that encourage this:

BPS Research

The Innovation Unit

It appears that we're a ittle late with a written proposal, but we'll surely turn it in this week.

CRISS Strategies

CRISS stands for Creating Independence through Student-owned Strategies, and is drawn from cognitive psychology. These methods do three things: (1)they use effective self monitoring, (2)they integrate new information with prior knowledge, and (3) they invite active involvement through discussion, writing, and organizing. From Project CRISS.

Other links on CRISS:

CRISS Forms

Reading Strategies for Special Populations

Ms. Wheatley's Class

Links to Think Aloud Sites

Click this picture
The Think Aloud Protocol comes from cognitive psychology. It is a method of examining any kind of complex activity by breaking it down into manageable steps that can be noted and expressed aloud at various stages of the process for greater understanding. Of course, this can be done during the process of reading a novel, story, poem, or even difficult technical materials. Typically, the Think Aloud method involves Previewing, Predicting, Visualizing, Inferring, and Paraphrasing. These sites are just a few that show examples:

1) Think Aloud Protocol

2) Building Reading Comprehension

3) Think Aloud Lesson

4) In the Classroom

Think Aloud methods are widely used, even if the teacher doesn't realize this is their strategy.