The Significance of Grouping Students Accordingly

Looking back at the Unit Plan from ED 605, I would need to consider the academic abilities of my students when determining how to group them. I had not considered this when I was initially working on the unit plan, but I see the importance of the collaboration between and among students of varying abilities. Previously, I had always believed that homogeneous grouping of students was most beneficial, and in some cases, it is. However, I now realize that sometimes it is just as important to pair stronger students with developing students, including English learners, struggling readers, and special needs students so that the progressing students can have a model of either the language or a different way of thinking and approaching a problem or discussion. In my classroom, I would purposefully vary the types of groups that I assemble over the course of the unit so that everyone got a chance to work with different types of students, as opposed to making the groupings permanent for the school year. (McLaughlin, 2015). At certain points, I would deliberately make homogenous groups so that students of similar academic levels could work together and get the most from the groupings. In addition, the homogeneous groupings discourage the weaker group members from getting accustomed to relying solely on the work of a stronger group member. During the homogenous groupings, I would walk around the room and check on the groups, paying the most attention to the weakest groups because they might not have anyone in their group who catches on to certain points that other groups might find obvious. (Timson, 2014) Then, at other points during the lesson, I would group the students in a homogenous manner so that the weaker group members do not get tempted to rely solely on the work of another group member.

            I would need to consider each student’s reading and writing skills when deciding on the groupings because if the class contains a large disparity between student reading levels, then I would want to have the students work in small groups of threes and/or pairs. Within each pair or small group, I would combine a struggling reader with a student who is stronger in reading or has more knowledge on the topic of solving systems of equations.

            Some potential problems that might arise from poorly thought out groupings would include the weaker students getting frustrated easily and feeling discouraged. For instance, in the case of a Jeopardy game or a competitive academic event, if the strongest students always won, the weaker students might begin to feel defeated and hopeless. Thus, in this case, it would be best to use heterogeneous groupings. Also, if there are a large number of “high-level thinkers” in the class, they might grow bored of whole-group activities that go on for too long. For this reason, it is a good idea to first teach a new concept to the whole class and then use small homogenous groups to allow the students to practice the concept or extend to a more challenging application of the concept. Finally, if the groups are heterogeneous for too long, the weaker students might not get enough time to fully grasp a concept because either they were too afraid to ask their questions in front of their peers or they hide behind the stronger students and I would have no way of knowing how much they really know about the topic. For all of these reasons, it is a good idea to thoroughly consider the purpose of the activity and the types of learners in the classroom at all points during the lesson.

References

Buehl, D. (2014). Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning (4th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

Timson, K. (2014). The Importance of Homogeneous Grouping. Retrieved from Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/73426089 

Framing Our Reading - Part 4

Vocabulary and Concept Development

by Juanita Burch

I will use the structural analysis graphic organizer to teach the students about the three chosen content-area words: chemoreceptor, oxidation, and repel. Each word is chosen from one of the articles from a previous module. I chose the structural analysis approach to the graphic organizer because I appreciate the significance of word roots and affixes and I want my students to value their importance as well. McLaughlin mentions the fact that 70% of English words contain Latin or Greek roots, prefixes or suffixes. (McLaughlin, 2015) I think it is essential to emphasize this fact with the students so that they can take a new approach to learning words and begin analyzing word structures, if they do not do so already. The word roots have a major impact on learning in the scientific fields, such as chemistry, biology, medicine and physics. In fact, biology students probably learn more word roots than someone learning a foreign language. Word roots remain a considerable part of the content area, not just in science, but also when studying English literature, in History class and many others. In addition, by highlighting the word roots, prefixes, and suffixes with the students, we are promoting general literacy, not just in the content area. The word roots and affixes are applicable to words they find when reading the newspaper for pleasure, reading comic books, or reading a recipe. I will explain this concept to my students by comparing it to having ten basic pieces in your wardrobe that one can mix and match to create 25 different outfits. Learning the building blocks of words makes it easier to construct a stronger, wider, and richer vocabulary.

Table 1: Structural Analysis Chart (Word Root/Prefix/Suffix)

Taken from Article	Word	Prefix	Root	Suffix	Meaning	Example
Artificial Sweeteners (Marr, 2012)	chemoreceptor	chemo-			relating to chemicals	chemotherapy
		re-			again	reappear
			cept		take, hold	intercept
				-tor	the agent or doer of an action	auditor
Rewritable paper (Kowalski, 2015)	oxidation		oxid		combining with oxygen	oxide
				-ation	expressing an action, process, state, or result	separation
Metals blast in water (Ornes, 2015)	repel	re-			again	reappear
			pel		drive; driven; force	dispel

I chose the words chemoreceptor, oxidation, and repel because they are significant to the content area of chemistry/science. A chemoreceptor is a sensory nerve cell or sense organ, as of smell or taste, which responds to chemical stimuli. (The Encyclopedia Britannica Company, 2015) For example, taste buds are chemoreceptors. Understanding the prefixes, root, and suffix will clarify the meaning of the word. The prefix “chemo-” means relating to chemicals, as in chemotherapy. The second prefix “re-” means again. The root “cept-” means to take or hold and the suffix “-tor” means the agent or doer of an action. The word chemoreceptor is not necessarily a word that the students will use frequently, but it was imperative to understand the meaning of the word to fully comprehend the article in which it appeared. (Marr, 2012) Also the concept of receptors will be useful to know because there are other types of receptors in related scientific disciplines, such as biology.

Oxidation used to be described as a process by which an object interacts with oxygen, but recently has been more specifically defined as the process when an atom loses electrons. Oxidation is one half of a very important set of reactions that occur frequently in chemistry. Reduction and oxidation reactions, or “redox” reactions for short, are a major part of one of the units in the Common Core curriculum for eighth grade science. Many everyday household items undergo oxidation, such as apples turning brown in the presence of air (oxygen), metals rusting, and copper pennies turning green. Oxidation is a very common word in chemistry that the students will see frequently from middle school through college; thus it is important for them to fully understand the meaning of the word. By breaking the word down into its root (oxid) and suffix (-ation), the students can easily determine the word’s meaning. The word root “oxid” means to combine with oxygen, such as an oxide. The suffix “-ation” means to express an action, process, state, or result, as in the word “separation.” Thus, oxidation means the act of combining with oxygen. If there is time in the lesson, I may even have a few visuals to help drive home the concept of oxidation for the students (such as cutting an apple and letting it sit out or using vinegar to speed up the reaction of a copper penny turning green). In the reading, McLaughlin mentioned collaborating with other content-area teachers to see if the vocabulary words might relate to the units that they are currently teaching. (McLaughlin, 2015) This would work well if the U.S. History teacher is teaching about the Statue of Liberty because the students could learn why the Statue of Liberty turned green.

I chose the word “repel” from the last article because it is an important concept for the students to learn and it is a word that they will see frequently in chemistry and other sciences, especially physics. Just as opposites attract, like charges repel. This repelling is what causes the metal to cause a large explosion when it interacts with water, which Ornes explains in great detail in his article. (Ornes, 2015) The prefix “re-” means again, as in “reappear” and the root “pel” means drive, driven, or force, as in “dispel.” Thus, the students can clearly grasp that the “repel” means to force something to move away or apart. (The Encyclopedia Britannica Company, 2015)  In the case of Ornes’ article, the students can actually use context clues to determine the meaning of the word “repel” if they do not already know it, but learning the word roots will solidify their understanding as well as help them with other words they may encounter.

The main challenge that I faced when selecting the vocabulary words was that I did not know which words an eighth grader would find challenging. That determination depends on multiple factors and every student is different, coming to the classroom with his own unique background knowledge. Through this process, I confirmed what I learned from this week’s reading which is that the most efficient way to have students learn vocabulary words is to allow them select the words themselves. That way the students will pick words that they find significant instead of the teacher handing down a list of words that the students may already know.

When using the strategy, I discovered that sometimes breaking the words into parts, especially if there are more than three parts to the word, may get too confusing to clearly define the word. Students may still have to use a dictionary to find the ultimate meaning of the word in question. They will nevertheless see the patterns of the roots and affixes if they use the strategy frequently. In a few cases (for words such as cascade and maneuvering), finding the word root proved difficult. I was confused about which part of the word contained the actual root because two different sources provided conflicting information. This was an instance where partner collaboration proved beneficial.

My teammate Amanda Slonaker used the vocabulary self-collection strategy to teach her students the same words http://amandasteachingjourney.blogspot.com/2015/02/rewritable-paper-prints-with-light-not.html and my other teammate, Christine Betley, used the semantic map to teach the words. http://chesapeaceful.com/2015/02/15/framing-our-reading-part-1-engagement/. We found that discussing with each other helped to make certain points more clear and we were able to assist each other with road blocks that occurred. 

References

Buehl, D. (2014). Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning (4th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Kowalski, K. (2015, January 15). Rewritable paper: Prints with light, not ink. Retrieved from Society for Science & the Public- Student Science: https://student.societyforscience.org/article/rewritable-paper-prints-light-not-ink?mode=topic&context=104

Marr, I. (2012, February 1). Artificial Sweeteners: Friends or Foes? Retrieved from Thinkcera.com: https://learn.thinkcerca.com/student_assignments/1715015/lesson_steps/1

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

Ornes, S. (2015, February 18). Why metals have a blast in water. Retrieved from Society for Science & the Public - Student Science: https://student.societyforscience.org/article/why-metals-have-blast-water?mode=topic&context=6

The Encyclopedia Britannica Company. (2015). Definitions. Retrieved from Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ 

Framing Our Reading - Part 3 - Extending Thinking

ED 620 Module 5 

Article: Why metals have a blast in water

	Text Citation or Link	Rationale for Choosing	Text Frame(s)	Strategies Used and Resource
Engagement Example	Why metals have a blast in water	Appropriate for scientific informational text. The strategy forces students to think about what they have read through asking themselves questions from the text. Promotes research because students must find a second source to corroborate the answers to their questions from the original text. Gives students practice with writing and summarizing. Springboard for PowerPoint presentation summarizing the topic.	Cause/Effect Compare/Contrast	Questions Into Paragraphs (QuIP) (McLaughlin, p. 93-95)

My teammate, Amanda, chose the article this week. The article, “Why Metals Have a Blast in Water,” (Ornes, 2015) is a great article for secondary students to read because students like excitement. The article describes and seeks to explain one of the most exciting experiments that teachers can use to ignite student interest in chemistry, because of the explosive nature of the reaction between alkali metals and water. The teacher could easily assign the article as reading after doing a live, in-class demonstration of the experiment referenced in the article. Or the teacher could assign the reading as homework the day before doing the live experiment in class and then have the students read the article again using the extending thinking strategy in class. Either way, the article has lots of possibilities for sparking learning in the classroom. After doing the demonstration and the reading strategy exercise, the teacher could easily assess the students with a three- to five-slide PowerPoint or Prezi presentation. At that point, the presentation should prove easy for the students to create since they will have spent a couple of days getting familiar with the material. The summary paragraph at the end would help them process and organize their thoughts. The topic lends itself to using great visuals, such as images and videos in their presentation. For all of these reasons, the article is an excellent choice to use to model an extended reading strategy with secondary students.

It appears that there are fewer extended reading strategies than the other types of strategies. The rationale for choosing the Questions Into Paragraphs (QuIP) extending reading strategy is that it is one of the few extended reading strategies that are appropriate for scientific informational text. The strategy forces students to think about what they have read by asking themselves questions that can be answered from reading the text. In addition, they must do research and find a second source to compare the answers to their questions from the original text. Lastly, students must combine information found from both sources to confirm their findings and summarize the major points from both texts.

I used a close reading strategy while reading the original article. I quickly and thoroughly read through the article at first. I then re-read the article a second time, making annotations in the margins, signaling ideas that I knew, thought were interesting or that I did not know. I found that while doing so, I also needed to draw illustrations of what the authors described in the article, because of the complex nature of the chemical reactions. (Probably the best extending reading strategy to use for this particular article is the ‘Sketch to Stretch’ strategy, but my teammate, Amanda, had already chosen that strategy.) All of this helped when I reached the end of the article and I needed to use the Questions Into Paragraphs extending reading strategy.

One of the best features about the QuIP strategy is the requirement that the reader selects a second article for comparison. In my case, I chose the second article, “Why Sodium and Potassium Really Explode in Water” from the Chemical & Engineering News online magazine. (Jacoby, 2015) This second article answered a lot of my remaining questions that the first article did not answer or did not explain as clearly.

The text frames for the QuIP extending reading strategy are cause/effect and compare/contrast. Because the strategy requires the reader to ask himself questions about what he read, the reader must determine the relationship between what causes the events mentioned in the text and the effects of those events in the text. This process promotes higher-level critical thinking. Also, by forcing the reader to read from two different sources about the same topic and summarize at the end, the strategy influences the reader to compare and contrast the various points the authors of both texts make. In formulating these comparisons, the reader must familiarize himself with the text even more and again use critical thinking skills. Finally, the part of the strategy where the student takes the major points from the texts and builds them into a summary paragraph for the conclusion supports a solid understanding of the reading.

                                                                                                                             

QuIP – Questions Into Paragraphs
Question	Source A “Why metals have a blast in water” - Science News for Students (Ornes, 2015) https://student.societyforscience.org/article/why-metals-have-blast-water?mode=topic&context=6	Source B “Why Sodium and Potassium Really Explode in Water” – Chemical & Engineering News (Jacoby, 2015) http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/web/2015/01/Sodium-Potassium-Really-Explode-Water.html
What causes metals to explode when they interact with water? (original textbook answer)	When water hits the metal, the metal releases electrons which generate heat when they leave the metal. In the process, the electrons break apart the water molecule releasing hydrogen atoms, which are explosive. The presence of heat causes the loud eruption.	Science used to think that tossing a piece of an alkali metal in water causes an explosion because the metal dissolves, generating an extreme amount of heat and transferring electrons to the water. The dissolution step also generates steam and forms hydroxide ions and hydrogen, which can be ignited, making the process even more energetic.
Do all metals explode in the presence of water?	Only elements that are alkali metals and have a +1 charge provide such an explosive reaction in the presence of water.	Science enthusiasts have long marveled over the famously energetic way sodium and potassium explode on contact with water. (alludes to the fact that not all metals react this way)
What is the new theory that chemists use to explain why metals interact with water so explosively?	When the water hits the metal, it releases electrons. After the electrons flee, positively charges atom remain behind. Because like charges repel, the positive atoms push away from each other, creating metal spikes. The process exposes new electrons to the water. These electrons are from atoms inside the metal. When the electrons escape from the atoms, they leave behind more positively charged atoms and cause more spikes. The process continues until enough heat builds up to ignite the hydrogen.	Within a fraction of a millisecond of making contact with water, the Na/K droplets form numerous spikes that protrude into the water. Molecular dynamics analysis indicated that nearly instantaneous transfer of electrons from the spikes to the water rapidly generates positively charged alkali ions, which vigorously repel and cause a so-called Coulomb explosion. It is the speedy manner in which that process propagates and generates reactive metal surfaces that triggers the overall explosion. The researchers have figured out many of the key aspects that enable this highly exothermic reaction to become explosive, rather than self-quench.
What led chemists to question the old textbook explanation of why metals interact with water?	Chemist Philip Mason did not think the old textbook explanation covered the whole story. He thought that the steam that the electron heat created should have acted like a blanket over the electrons, preventing the hydrogen blast, instead of causing a large explosion like it did.	Some researchers have puzzled over how the process can occur so quickly. They recognized that the steam and hydrogen generated early on in the reaction should form a buffer layer over the metal surface and impede water from continuing to react.
What tools did the scientists use to find their new theory?	Scientists set up a reaction with a lithium/ mixture and used a high-speed camera to observe what actually happens in the reaction.	Chemists studied the process with ultrafast photography and computational techniques. A number of factors, including sample surface cleanliness and temperature, can prevent chunks of alkali metals from exploding on contact with water. The team eliminated those variables and others by using a sodium-potassium alloy that remains liquid at room temperature and a droplet delivery system featuring a calibrated syringe.
Summary: Scientists used to think that the reason why alkali metals like sodium and potassium caused a big explosion when they interacted with water was because the metals dissolved in the water, leading to the emission of heat. The buildup of heat fueled the explosion. However, a team of chemists’ insights caused them to question this long-standing explanation. Pavel Jungwirth and Philip Mason believed that if that were truly happening, the steam from the water would create a blanket effect and dampen or prevent the explosion altogether. To look more closely into the reaction at the subatomic level, Jungwirth and his team used high-speed cameras in a set up to monitor the reaction of a drop of a sodium/potassium mixture, which is liquid at room temperature, and water. What they found is that the metal forms spikes immediately prior to the reaction. When the water comes in contact with these spikes, it releases electrons. Upon the electrons’ departure, positively charged atoms stay behind. Since like charges repel, the positive atoms push away from each other creating spikes. As the process repeats itself and more spikes form, enough heat builds up to ignite the hydrogen, before the steam can suppress the explosion. The scientific process that Jungwirth’s team of chemists used to investigate their inquiries proves that one should never stop questioning and thus never stop learning.

In her book, Maureen McLaughlin describes the QuIP strategy as a tiered approach in the classroom: explain, demonstrate, guide, practice, and reflect. She suggests that the teacher emphasize with the students the importance of summarizing after reading to extend thinking about the text. Then she recommends explaining QuIP as a format for questioning, researching, and summarizing that centers on creating three questions and responding to those questions from two distinct sources. (McLaughlin, 2015) Following this, the teacher will show the students how the process works by sharing the graphic organizer with them and modeling the procedure for generating higher-level questions. Upon completing their graphic organizers, the students will pair up and work together while the teacher guides them to create two additional questions. The students will then work independently to draft their summary paragraphs, which gives them practice with technical writing. Finally, the teacher will encourage the students to reflect on how the QuIP extending reading strategy helped them to gain a more solid understanding of the texts and how they could apply the same strategy in other ways. (McLaughlin, 2015)

References

Buehl, D. (2014). Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning (4th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Jacoby, M. (2015, January 17). Why Sodium And Potassium Really Explode In Water. Retrieved from Chemical & Engineering News: http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/web/2015/01/Sodium-Potassium-Really-Explode-Water.html

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Upper Saddle River: Pearson.

Ornes, S. (2015, February 18). Why metals have a blast in water. Retrieved from Society for Science & the Public - Student Science: https://student.societyforscience.org/article/why-metals-have-blast-water?mode=topic&context=6

San Bernadino City Unified School District. (2014, September 16). Close Reading of Informational Science Text. Retrieved from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_7MY8khBag

                                                                                                                                       

My teammate Amanda Slonaker read the same article using the "Sketch to Stretch" Technique. http://amandasteachingjourney.blogspot.com/. While my other teammate, Christine Betley, read the same article using the "Magnet Summaries" strategy. http://chesapeaceful.com/