Thursday, November 1, 2018


Buehl talks about study skills and how they are a part of a personal system. He also reminds us that teachers should not assume what their students know on page 234. It would be hard to think that students would not use the skills they are taught but it needs to be made meaningful. This meaning has to be more than the student needs to learn it for a grade. For example, in my English classes we were given instruction on how to approach a text or write a paper. I did those many different outlines because I wanted full points but later on, when I was given free range to write a paper, I did not use those skills I was taught. I did not see a how much they could help me and therefore got lower grades than I could have. Like we have talked about with curriculum, it isn’t enough to just teach. We need to make the ideas we want to get across to students meaningful to them.

I had trouble enjoying my English classes because I always saw myself as a math student. I saw things as being right or wrong and English classes for me had too much room for interpretation for me to think I could do well in. It was very interesting to read about how Buehl did well in his science class. He said, “here I was, a history guy masquerading as a science insider, and I was now getting my A” (Buehl, 229). His choice of the word “masquerading is powerful because he didn’t change his identity, he still thinks like a historian but can take on another set of skills to help him understand something out of his discipline. It was a different mask, or lens, to look at something to gain a more meaningful knowledge from what is given to him.
                                       Image result for masquerade masks
These two points, showing that skills are more meaningful than a grade and creating masks to put on when needed for better understanding, are great and need standards that reflect the same goal of teaching. A lot of concepts in math build upon previous knowledge and standards given to teachers may not allow them to make sure that past knowledge is set in stone to learn the new stuff. In the common core state standards for math, it is written that, “These standards endeavor to follow such a design, not only stressing conceptual understanding of key ideas, but also by continually returning to organizing principles such as place value or the properties of operations to structure those ideas” (ccss math). It is not enough to learn and complete the questions by answering with the set of skills taught. The students need to understand the concepts on a deep level to see their meaning and see how it is connected to past knowledge.


                                   Image result for building on  knowledge

12 comments:

  1. Thank you for your post. A lot of what you say makes a lot of sense. In high school I found myself going from class to class getting exhausted as the day went on because to me I was changing mentalities and acting like a historian, mathematician, writer, and scientist. To me, changing for every class was mentally draining. If I had known ways to go into my classes with the same mentality and still succeed, I would have learned to do it instantly. Also building on past knowledge isn't only a school skill, it needs to be done in everything in life. We do it constantly with ease outside of school, but inside of school it becomes more difficult without the structure that teachers implement.

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  2. Thanks for your post!

    The part you included about Buehl and how he was able to put on a different mask to do well in science as a history enthusiast is important in that it shows the significance of teaching discipline-specific literacy skills to ALL students in ALL classes. You don't have to be a scientist to think like a scientist, nor do you have to be a historian to think like a historian. And if a discipline / subject isn't exactly your favorite, you can always "remove that mask" when doing work that doesn't require you to think like someone in that discipline.

    While there are disciplinary skills that are shared among different disciplines, there are also skills that definitely conflict, just like you mentioned with your experience in science as a math-oriented student. In math, there is usually one concrete answer while, in English, there can be infinitely many answers depending on one's interpretation. Again, this is why this concept of "putting on masks" is so important, and necessitates and understanding of how one within a discipline thinks, and how this thinking can be applied and cannot be applied to other areas.

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  3. Thank you for your post. I like when you mentioned how Buehl talked about mastering another subject other than his favorite. If more people saw this as a possibility, they would subconsciously stop limiting themselves in other areas.

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  4. I loved this post and found it very meaningful. I can relate to Buehl when he said that he is a history guy masquerading as a scientist in his science class. However, in high school when I felt that I was in a class that did not cater to my strengths, I would completely check out mentally and only attempt to meet the bare minimum requirements. This changed in college when my mindset to learning changed, however, I think that many high school students do not try in classes that they feel they are not good at. I agree that students need to see the meaning in every class, but I feel this will be an incredibly difficult task especially with larger classes which make individual attention much harder.

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  5. Thank you for sharing! Indeed, study skills are vitally important for learning because it could help students better understand the disciplinary texts. I totally agree with you that, “it is not enough to learn and complete the questions by answering with the set of skills taught.” I think the students need to build connections between their prior knowledge and the complex texts so that they can understand the concepts on a deeper level. In addition, as for educators, we suppose to focus more on the skills rather than limited focus on students’ grades. According to this, I personally think teachers should know more about our students, figure out what are the weaknesses of the students in their learning process, and finally develop the appropriate skills aimed at the students' needs.

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  6. Thank you for your post. I like Buehl's example that a historian masqueraded as a science insider you mentioned in the post. I think students need to transform their lens in different disciplines. In that, what teachers ought to do is to help students know how to do that. Besides, I agree with you that it is not enough for students to just use the skills they learn to answer the questions. If they cannot apply the skills to solve their practical problems by themselves or do not know when to use them except for answering teachers' questions, then the skills are meaningless to them.

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  7. Great post!

    I can totally see what you are trying to say when you were in your English class. I had a similar experience, mainly when it came to the poetry unit in my class. I feel like there is too much ambiguity adn open endedness in English, and so it was my preferred subject.

    However, I think your experience can tie back with what we have discussed earlier in class. This whole idea of thinking like a historian vs. thinking historically, and this is sort of seen in Buehl's case. Some skills appear to be more difficult to apply for others, and this may have been the case for you. Perhaps looking back at it now, you may be able to do this! One way I can see is in both subjects, the skill of explanation is very important. Even if the final answer/product is wrong, if perfect explanation is there, then it means that you at least know what you are doing, which is crucial since both subjects require analyzation skills!

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  8. Thanks for the post. I really liked how you shared your experience in high school about viewing yourself as a math student trapped in an English class. For me, it was being a history student trapped in a math or English class. Obviously, as teachers we will have students who are in the exact same situation we were in however many years ago. I suppose the best thing for us to do is to provide students with material that makes students engaged in the content, (especially for students who aren't interested in the subject), not just providing them with notes or outlines to help them. Looking back on what we've read this semester, student engagement has been a theme that keeps on popping up. No doubt, then, that this should be a key issue for us as teachers.

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  9. Good post. I agree with that deep concepts underneath the skills are what's important to acquire. It's what makes those skills transferrable to novel situations. Also understanding why things are done is helpful, like how you described that you did many outlines for papers when it was incentivised but you didn't after that point, you probably didn't fully understand why that practice was taught, you didn't believe it it for your own sake. The why can be a hard thing to teach, but for teachers is probably worth the effort to try more often.

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  10. I think you summed up very well that we need students to see the importance of understanding a skill as opposed to trying to make the grade. One thing that I have heard of is competency based grading. It is essentially changing assessments that are given and giving students the time to master the skill. I think I may have mentioned it before in these discussions. Here is a link that explains the basics of it and the difference between competency and standard based grading. https://www.competencyworks.org/analysis/what-is-the-difference-between-standards-based-grading/

    -Kiley

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  11. Thanks for posting and sharing your experience! I thought it was interesting in his section on Outlining that Buehl emphasized how teachers should never assign outlines as busywork but should instead consider what students will do with the completed outline. Do you think your teachers would have convinced you of the usefulness of that strategy if they'd given you time to reflect on how it affected the paper itself (maybe a quick-write, maybe some autonomy in whether you would make an outline)? I don't see outlining happening in schools as much now, but there are always lots of graphic organizers. I think there will be the same disconnect with their use unless teachers guide students in determining what they think is important to include on the organizers and in reflecting on how the organizers enhanced learning.

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  12. Thank you for the post! I thought that your comment about a mask was really provocative. I am struggling with it only because there is a sense of deceit involved in wearing a mask...I do agree that we need to recognize that not all of our students want to envision themselves as member of our discipline - maybe if we focus on the utility of the skill set that we are developing in our classroom - instead of wearing masks, we are providing our students with a new tool belt, to be use yes, within our discipline, but ALSO to be used in other disciplines. That is how we make strategies useful - by demonstrating their utility in a variety of contexts.

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