Learning Processes Entry #4 (Second Official Submission)

I've been in test mode today, as I've spent the majority of the day preparing for my final midterm of my undergraduate career!!! Because of this and our need this week to look at how we can take our learning strategies and apply them towards helping students use them, I've chosen to attempt to outline my study habits, both throughout a unit and in preparation for an examination on that unit.

Two different processes occur as I prepare throughout a given period of time to prepare for an exam - those that I partake in as I complete readings and assignments for the class and then those that I partake in as I prepare for the exam itself.

Process One: During the Duration of the Class
Many of these processes include those that I have outlined in previous entires, which I'll summarize and add to here:
1. As I'm reading through assignments for the class, especially those that I find more challenging, I tend to use the following method in order to highlight the most important parts of the reading:

• Read the topic sentence in order to preview the paragraph.
• Read the topic sentence again, along with the rest of the paragraph, and highlight the crux of the material.
• Reread the paragraph sentence by sentence, determine its importance, and highlight it if necessary.
• The highlights then serve as a way to quickly refer back to important parts of the reading, whether during class discussions or while studying.

2. If I find that students are having difficulty in paying attention to their reading or their work, I will encourage them to take frequent, but brief breaks. I can incorporate this into my class lessons but not allowing activities to go on for too long without letting students take a "mental" break from thinking about the class material, whether this is through transitions or some other productive use of class time.

3. Because History papers are structured much differently around sources than other subject area papers are, I will emphasize outlining skills to my students. For the first paper assignment for the class I can walk students through a mock outline in order to exhibit for them one way in which they might approach the assignment.

4. During lectures, I will determine the best way in which my students are able to retain the most material. Although my classroom may not have the technological capability to do so, my preference will be to use PowerPoint to supplement my lectures. If I find that my students are able to best understand the material and take notes on it using outlines of the slides, then I will provide them with a hard copy of it. If I find that my students prefer to have fill in the blank or short answer questions to go along with the lecture then I will provide them with that. Because PowerPoint will offer me a lot of flexibility in giving my lectures, I will be able to provide a lot of flexibility for students in order to assist them with their note taking.

Process Two: Preparing for the Exam
In preparing for the exam, I will emphasize the importance of good study skills and how they need to look back at all of the materials for the class, not just the notes that they have taken from the lectures. They need to look back through all of their readings, especially the areas that they highlighted. Just like they should throughout the rest of the class, they will not be able to review all of the material in one sitting. Not only should they not wait until the last minute to begin preparing for the exam, but they should also give themselves frequent mental breaks so that they can process the information that they are reviewing. They should look back at their paper assignments and analyze their conclusions, and reflect on how those contribute to the themes and objectives of the unit. Finally, they should use their notes as an outline from which they should add the other information to.

If my students follow these two processes just as I do now, then they should have no problem in succeeding in my class.

Takaki - Chapter 7

This is the second week in a row that I've become extremely frustrated with Takaki. I understand that his objective is to present the "other" view on American history; however, he is as much an instigator in failing to tell the entire story as textbook writers are in telling the "white man's history." In this chapter, Takaki fails to lay out why Americans sought to expand west. Instead, he only focused on Mexican reaction to the desired expansion.

If it were my choice, I would not use Takaki's book in its entirety in my classroom. Although I have found that certain chapters do a good job of explaining the other point of view and would nicely complement a classroom textbook, the past two chapters have not done so. And although I was encouraged to revise my post from last week, I think the explanation here should suffice for that.

If I were forced to use this particular chapter of Takaki in a high school US History class, I would definitely have students read both the classroom textbook chapter(s) on the US landscape prior to the Civil War and chapter 7 from Takaki. For example, my classroom textbook for next semester's student teaching, America: Pathways to the Present, does a phenomenal job of outlining the underlying reasons why the United States sought to expand west. I would have students read both the chapters from the textbook and Takaki, and make a chart showing the causes and effects of events involved in the Mexican-American War. One column would be a major event that occurred during the war, and another column would be the result of effect of that event. For example, at the end of the table the end result listed for the Mexican-American War was that the United States gained Texas, New Mexico, and California. This table would then assist students in their preparation for an exam.

This kind of table as opposed to an outline would be preferable for two reasons. First, there were so many events that occurred in such a small amount of time that students may have difficulty in trying to get so many events into the time line. Also, this table would allow for details about the events to be organized as opposed to being squished into a box within a very narrow window of space on a timeline. Unless students completed the timeline on the computer, it would be near impossible for them to effectively organize the information by hand. An organized table could be completed by hand or on the computer.

Learning Processes Entry #4

In reading this chapter from Takaki, I found myself thinking about one of my other classes that I'm in this semester. Its kind of ironic that we just had a lesson on the Irish Potato Famine in my Human Geography class. However, this was a nice timing of events since I found that Takaki focused so strongly on the Irish adaptation to America and the comparison of themselves to the slaves that he neglected to tell the full story of how the Irish Potato Famine originated. Because of this, I found myself referring back to my notes for my Human Geography class in order to better understand Takaki's conclusions.

Takaki - Chapter 6

I think that Takaki does a good job of laying out how life was difficult for the Irish both before and after their immigration to America. However, I think that some underlying statistics about the number of people who were affected by this is clearly missing from Takaki's story, and I think these statistics would help students in better understanding just how dramatic this event was for the Irish.

First, I would divide students in small groups, probably no more than 4 people, and ask that they do some research on the Internet about the number of people who died in Ireland as a result of the famine, how many people left for America, and how many people remained in Ireland despite their struggle to survive. By taking the research into their own hands, students would be able to discover for themselves their own statistics as opposed to just having them handed to them. This would allow for them to develop their research skills.

Next, I would have the groups come up with a way to visually represent their information, with the expectation that they would present this information to the class. They would have the option as to how they would do this. Some ideas that they may come up with could be a representation through acting it out in front of the class, making a graph, or making a poster with different symbols for each group of people.

Lastly, they would present their findings to the class. In the end, this lesson would incorporate all three types of learning.

Learning Processes Entry #3

I spent a good part of the weekend working on a primary source paper on circuses and the changing role of gender during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for my History of Popular Culture class. While working on this paper, I realized that I tend to write history papers differently than papers for other classes. With other papers, I find that I do not have a need to make an outline, and that so long as I know where my paper is headed to, I am able to write a sufficient paper. However, due to the amount of material that has to be cited in history papers, I tend to find that making an outline for these papers allows me to write more fluent and flowing papers. I put all of my evidence into my outlines, including paraphrased and direct quotations. Then, I find that my outlines write the papers themselves. The funny thing is that I've tried to do this for papers for other subject area classes, and the writing of the outlines does not seem to help my writing process at all.

Takaki - Chapter 5

This chapter focuses a lot on the lives of northern and southern blacks during the mid 1800s. In order to begin a lesson on this chapter, I would have students make a Venn Diagram, comparing the lives of northern and southern blacks. For this task, I would emphasize to students that they need to only cite examples presented in this chapter and forget about any prior knowledge. After students complete their individual Venn Diagrams, we would then make one as a class. I would then use the class Venn Diagram to start a group discussion on whether Takaki's chapter was similar to their previous lessons on black lives prior to the Civil War. Students would be divided up into groups of 4 or 5 for these discussions so as to encourage all students to partake in the discussion.

Takaki - Chapter 4

This chapter focuses a lot of the Indian reaction to western and southern expansion in the United States and Takaki's goal in this chapter is for the reader to better understand the expansion from the Indian standpoint. In teaching a lesson on this chapter it will be essential for students to be able to place themselves in the shoes of the Indians. As an assignment coinciding with the reading of this chapter, I would ask that students write a one page reaction to how they would feel if they were an Indian in the early 1800s. They would have the option to speak as though they were a Choctaw Indian, a Cherokee Indian, or a Plains Indian, as each tribe underwent different government tensions and had different experiences as a result of the different treaties, or lack thereof. Although I'm still uncertain as to whether or not I'm going to offer my students opportunities for extra credit, if I wind up doing so I would allow students to write three different one page reactions, one for each of the tribes. However, each of the papers would have to demonstrate that they had read the chapter and understood the different circumstances that each of the tribes was reacting to.

This assignment not only allows for creative thinking, but it will also allow students to work on their writing skills. I would talk to the English teacher(s) that my students have and figure out what writing skills they were currently working on and emphasize those skills when discussing the assignment.