For my primary research, I interviewed three teachers, an English teacher, a Math teacher, and a Science teacher to ask them about teaching across the curriculum. My English and Math teacher were not able to meet up and so they have emailed me answers to some questions and I'll be following up with them later. On Tuesday I should be interviewing my Science teacher face to face.
My English teacher told me that it's obvious that we should be teaching reading and writing across the curriculum due to the fact that if we want students to become good at something, they need to practice it a lot (as in more than just a lot in English class). She told me that teaching across the curriculum could be achieved simply through focus, meaning the teachers and the administration has to take time to focus on incorporating reading and writing into non-English classrooms. She told me that the Common Core does have actions in place to increase reading and writing across the curriculum, but she thinks that we still need to increase the amount of reading and writing in math ans science classrooms.
My math teacher told me that his students rarely write, and when they do, it's not much more than a couple of sentences. The amount of reading that his students does varies based on their level; the more advanced the students are, the less reading they do. He goes on to say that he believes that writing can help in the classroom because if a student can write about the topic, then they fully understand the topic. He believes that reading and writing should be increased in the math classroom, but he's not sure how to do it; he says that he feels he needs a trainer to show him how to better incorporate reading and writing in the math classroom.
Some follow up questions that I want to ask the math teacher is: what are some ways that you think you could possibly increase reading and writing into the classroom? Why do the students on a less-advanced level read more? How does it help them? A question that I have for my English teacher is: how do you feel about Obama's new STEM program, that focuses heavily on Science, Technology, Eningeering, and Math? I may ask this question of my math and science teachers as well.
I love the math teacher comment. It's so true. Of course everyone should be doing it, of course it'll benefit them....but the reality, very few people are trained like English teachers.I'm interested in the comment about the level reading less or more. Did he say why? And why would there be different expectations? Did they mention what common core was actually doing to increase these things? Maybe Brianna will know!
ReplyDeletePaige,
ReplyDeleteIt seems like you are getting some pretty good feedback from your interviews. I like how you are interviewing different teachers from all different disciplines; this will definitely benefit your paper, as it's appropriate for your topic. In regards to the math teacher, and not knowing how to incorporate writing, you should ask him if composing math word problems could be something he can use? Overall, good job! I look forward to see where this goes.
Paige,
ReplyDeleteNice work so far. I agree with both the math teacher and Gwen "Of course everyone should be doing it, of course it'll benefit them, but....." There are so many reasons for hesitation, the subject teacher, not feeling it is their job, they may not know how to incorporate writing (as your interviewee stated), not knowing how to correctly assign and grade writing (the last thing we want to do is give students incorrect information when it comes to writing!!), and so many more reasons. I'm looking forward to more of your research, like I said, we are on a similar journey! I like that you were able to come up with some follow up question to the information you've received so far, your ISearch seems to be moving along great.