Late for the party

Hey sports fans, having started this blog assignment 6 days late has put me on a 1,000 word per day jag. Binge? Penance? Or, as the Masonic Brotherhood might proclaim...."the Great Architect has me building magnificent (at least in this writer's very tired mind) blogs twice per day." Actually, my mentor teacher compared teaching mid-school science to throwing five parties per day. No matter how hard you try or plan you never know what is going to happen. So, on with the show.

You've probably figured out by now that the book I chose for this assignment is a scholarly written "how to" about writing for content areas.  The "how to" format for opening up theories and concepts resonates with me.  During my first semester in the ALP STEM program my cohort and I were introduced to the "how to" theory of teaching science via the UNM COE MSET 589 class. One of  our classmates, an in-practice teacher, said that our job is to teach our students how to learn how to learn.

The authors of my book extend learning how to learn to writing to learn in school. They offer several tricks (as they put it) of the thinking trade as tools for helping students "delve into" any subject area. Yes, the WTLs (writing to learn methods) I talked about in the previous post are not the same as the public writing tasks I have been taught to assign to my science students. To help neophyte teachers they provide a quick T-Account; oops sorry, I meant T-Chart that compares WTLs to public writing. I have reproduced that chart below because it is a simple way to get a handle on the differences between WTLs and public writing. My classmate will tell you, that I have a good grasp of the obvious. It's tools like this that help me fine tune that skill.

Writing to Learn                        AVIDs/Cornell Notes                   Public Writing    

short                                                                                                  not short, substantial
spontaneous                                                                                      planned
exploratory                                                                                       authoratative
informal                                                                                            conventional
personal                                                                                            audience centered
one draft                                                                                           drafted (more than one)
unedited                                                                                            edited
upgraded                                                                                           accessible

I've inserted the AVID program's Cornell Notes as a bridge between WTLs and Public Writing. I did this because although the authors portray note taking as uncritical copying down of words as they fly by,  Cornell notes can be a bridge between the WTLs and Public Writing. This is because they provide a simple methodology for acting upon the information contained in the WTL. Confusius said: I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand. This saying is undated. But, the connection to WTL is clear - students can't transition from private thought about a subject easily to public writing without the ability to grapple with ideas, transform them and put them into their own words (the authors words).

I would argue that the jump from WTL to Public Writing can benefit from Cornell Notes as a scaffolding device.

More on AVID and Cornell notes can be found at the APS website.

In the next post I'll give a glimpse of the author's view of the elements of the T-Chart.