I'm not a math person. In fact, I sat down to do some budgeting last night and after two attempts at trying to re-do my Christmas budget, I had a $1300 discrepancy between the two figures I calculated for Christmas cash. No joke! Luckily, my husband looked at my figures and found my mistake. Everything was fine and there was actually double the amount I projected.
It led my husband and I to talk about the discrepancy between our understanding of mathematics. While I got As, he definitely didn't. And yet as an adult, he can compute faster and more accurately than I can; I still struggle with math. I learned math by following steps, doing formulas, drilling a step-by-step method. I learned the how to do the problems, but not what they meant. My husband, on the other hand, can conceptualize, estimate, and apply to find an accurate solution to novel situations (not to mention our Christmas budget!). He learned math by conceptualizing it and connecting it to real situations; I learned math by following the teacher's directions.
According to Wikipedia, "In mathematics, connectedness is used to refer to various properties meaning, in some sense, "all one piece"." I think I may have talked about this in a college-level math class called "Dots, Coin Flips, and Probability" in regards to social networking and the 6-degrees of Kevin Bacon, but I'm not sure. But applying the idea of "all one piece" to education seems pretty important to me. It probably would have changed my concept of mathematics (not to mention my Christmas budget potential blunder!).
Connectedness in education isn't really a new idea. Thematic teaching, Teaching by Design, and Integrated Curriculum have all made their way into our education jargon in the last few decades. Schema theory is based on the idea we learn best this way, too.
While my role as reading specialist in my school is not really for me to perform as a typical literacy coach, one of my goals is to spark as much reflection as possible in the teachers I work with. Recently, many teachers have approached me with the struggle of planning curriculum to achieve balanced literacy while still meeting the demands of the district's requirements (and fitting in the umpteen assessments we have to give each month....). Connectedness has been my answer.
I believe in the need for connectedness in our teaching. As we plan our instruction, we need to begin with connecting reading and writing and move to connecting reading/writing with other content areas. Teaching thematically and/or with essential questions can help us to do this. But as a start, we can first examine how each aspect of our literacy block connects.
If we teach reading how I learned math, our kids will continue to be able to define what a metaphor is but not understand how to interpret it in reading, explain its significance to a particular piece of text, why it is important in a greater economic/social/political context, and then apply it aptly in their own reading and writing. Knowing what a metaphor is isn't the point. Being able to read, write, and use rhetoric deftly and purposefully is.
As teachers, we need to find opportunities to connect our curriculum to make it meaningful for our students. Not only will it help them to become better readers and writers, but it will enable us to "get it all in" as we balance district requirements with individual student needs (and still try to have a little fun!).
This morning, the e-newsletter for Choice Literacy was in my inbox and featured these two articles by Franki Sibberson:
- Similes, Metaphors, Homophones and Synonyms: Children's Books to Teach the Language of Word
- Reflecting on the First Six Weeks of Word Study
