Thought competitions

Hi everyone,

I was surprised by this article from the Wall Street Journal. It tells how some schools discourage or do not allow students to compete in academic competitions such as science fairs or creative writing contests. I was shocked because my interest in creative writing spurs from competitions and writing fairs that I remember from my elementary and especially my high school years. Contests and publication were always a major motivation for me. I think the same goes for many students. It seems that some of the reading we have done in 541 and 505 encourage such positive purposes for writing. What does everyone else think?

Allison

Beers Ch. 15

Donna and I are scheduled to fascilitate the Beers Ch. 15 discussion in class, and I know Donna has a lot to say about the topic of flow during this discussion.  Just in case we do not have time to touch upon this chapter in our last class on Tuesday, I want to call out some pieces of the chapter that I found most resonating:

• This chapter by Wilhelm and Smith addresses the study done on adolescent male readers entitled “Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys.”  Catchy title, isn’t it? 
• The meat of this article comes from a quote by a boy in this Chevy study named Buda.  Buda says, “School teaches you how you are dumb, not how you are smart.”  After reading this, I was struck by how well this chapter discusses expanded notions of text, competence, and the celebration of knowledge.  More importantly, I was struck by how well this article combats the idea that kids should feel “dumb” and dwell on what they don’t know. 
• Next, I realized how this idea of expanding our whole notion of what to teach and how to teach it is a recap of the Understanding by Design template, isn’t it?  In fact, the entire chapter here in Beers is a confirmation of all that we have learned about the UbD model.  Start with a question and work that question instead of fitting a question to pre-selected texts. 
• Another example of the UbD model at work in this chapter comes around page 239, where Wilhem discusses his daughter’s lack of interest in history after receiving a mere B in Social Studies Class.  Wilhem writes, “What might happen instead if Fiona’s teacher recast his job as helping develop skills a historian needs rather than as providing her with historical information?”  I find that the best way to meet this challenge is through the overarching understandings of the UbD model.  This way, kids walk away with the big picture instead of little sentences of information on a narrow topic, don’t they? 

I was so happy to read in this chapter that kids should select some of their own texts, that pictures count as real texts, too, and that great learning comes from reading things NOT taught in school.  All of these points have been stressed throughout our semester in 541, and here they come full circle in Beers.  I think this was an excellent choice for an end-of-semester reading assignment, especially because it captures the last three months into one neatly presented essay. 

Sofia