Farewell 28daysofwriting!

I have not been very good in my second round of 28daysofwriting at keeping up with things.  Now that I am on the Easter half term break and heading off to Taipei, there is even less likelihood that I will.  However, when I come back I will have plenty of tales to tell of my travels!  Best wishes to all for a good and restful break.

Post 15 Round 2 of #28daysofwriting: Note taking and summarising: The Continuing Saga!

I don't know if this post really counts in 28 days of writing since I have been working on it for days, it seems.  Certainly I will have spent more than 28 minutes on it once I have finished!

Note taking and summarising: The Continuing Saga!

Having come to the conclusion that we must somehow (somewhere, sometime) start to teach summary skills, the obvious place to start would be in the English classroom.  However, we would also have opportunities to hone these skills in various other curriculum areas where students are required to read non-fiction texts and take notes for research.  At my school, I would suggest that humanities and science would be ideal subject areas in which to start.  Students do a lot of research projects in both these subjects.  The trick now is to come up with activities which teachers will not find too time consuming (i.e. which take time away from their subject matter)  and which appear beneficial, in a timely fashion.  If it takes a school year before students are showing progress, I think that would discourage teachers.

The first article I looked at is a pdf entitled, Summarizing Strategies, and is well work downloading. In 24 pages, it offers background information, strategies, teaching activities and a good bibliography. I haven't 'digested' it all yet but will and hope to comment further at a later date.

On the first page, the article mentions a site for teachers of history (any humanities subject really) to assist them in helping students with reading comprehension in such a content and reading heavy subject.  The information appears to be secondary school related though I am sure that some of it could be adapted.  I will definitely be suggesting this site to my humanities department.  Again, a further analysis of the site will come at a later date.

And finally (for today anyway), though written in 1988, Teaching Students to Summarize offers a good explanation of summary skills, the importance of developing these skills, how they develop, what teachers can do, and the importance of starting early.

The more I read, the more I am convinced that summary skills are overlooked in the curriculum of my school and that they are vitally important to help students understand the texts they are reading and take notes from them.

Post 14 of Round 2 of #28daysofwriting: Magazines, journals and newspapers

I have spent part of this evening exploring the International Literacy Association's website to which I now have access to as part of my membership.  I have been changing priorities in my periodical collections and am starting to spend less of my budget on recreational reading and more on professional magazines and journals for teachers.  I used to have an avid readership of my magazines and newspapers but I am finding that students are less and less inclined to read them.  I got rid of a few this year and I will do the same when subscriptions run out over the next few months.  It saddens me but even the teachers aren't reading magazines such as National Geographic, New Scientist, the Economist and even Wired and Focus.  All this is to say, that I decided to buy a membership in the ILA and have access for teachers to their journals on reading and reading research.  What better place for me to look for articles on summarising and précis writing, a topic I have been boring you with over the last few posts!

I have just started to research the back issues of the journal Reading Teacher and hope to find some useful articles but there it will have to remain for tonight since I have become far too tired to carry on with reading the articles once I have found them.  They do require that you are alert!  I shall keep yu posted on my reading in future blogs.  Good Night!

Post 13 (Notice I'm behind!) of Round 2 of #28daysofwriting Importance of summarising skills

So sick, so a holiday must be coming soon!  Here's hoping I get over this cold before it starts!  I really don't want to spend my holiday in Taipei sick.

Red Nose Day events followed by my cold have slowed me down considerably.  I've reverted to doing admin work, in particular getting caught up on cataloguing and processing books.  I've just placed a large order which should start to come in next week so I will have a lot to catalogue after the break.  I also have 18 books to read for the Battle of the Books.  I may try and take a few of those with me to Taiwan.

Back to Exploring the Question of Note Taking and Research

It is so frustrating when something is blindingly obvious but you keep missing it.  Thank heavens, I finally realised that the problem of students not taking notes when they researched was not because they lacked a format but because they probably didn't know how to summarise or précis.  I'm not sure when it was last week that I realised this but I'm so glad that I did.

As far as I can see at this point, there is nowhere in our curriculum where we teach students how to summarise.  I'm not even sure how you go about teaching it though I could hazard a guess.  Luckily, the Internet is there with all sorts of resources to explore on the subject.

My first stop was Reading Rockets .  Below is taken directly from the site and explains the reason for teaching summarizing:

Why use summarizing?

• It helps students learn to determine essential ideas and consolidate important details that support them.
• It enables students to focus on key words and phrases of an assigned text that are worth noting and remembering.
• It teaches students how to take a large selection of text and reduce it to the main points for more concise understanding.

Next there is a simple lesson plan that could be used in subject area:

How to use summarizing

1. Begin by reading OR have students listen to the text selection.
2. Ask students the following framework questions:
   1. What are the main ideas?
   2. What are the crucial details necessary for supporting the ideas?
   3. What information is irrelevant or unnecessary?
3. Have them use key words or phrases to identify the main points from the text.

Though step one suggest that the teacher read or have the students listen to a text selection, I wonder if you could simply have the students read it themselves.  I wonder what the advantage is to reading it to them.

There are several good handouts which could be used as they are or edited for use with students.  I will ponder this question of teacher reading the passage versus students reading to themselves and return to this another day.

Post 12 Round 2 Reading my way across the states!

Red Nose behind me, I have been overtaken by the lurgi again!  This really is unfair since I was hoping to have a relaxing and enjoyable weekend.  Instead, I am trapped by aches and pains in my bed.  At the moment I want to lie down but I've been in bed for 12 hours and ache so much I can't so here I am writing.  What will come of this writing lark, I have no idea!

I shall return to my summer trip rather than writing about education.  It takes far less thought.  This is a warning then, if you only want to read about educational matters, move on to another blog!

I have finally booked nearly all the sections of my train trip across the states.  I have the train booked from Detroit to Reno, via Ann Arbor, Chicago, Kansas City and Reno and the air flight from the UK to Canada return and a flight from San Francisco back to Toronto.  Now it's just the little bits and I will do those shortly because I can see myself just forgetting about them otherwise.

Being a librarian, I have decided to read books which are set in the areas I am passing through, books which have a strong sense of place.  I mentioned this on Facebook and have already had some suggestions.  I must admit that I'm not sure which states I will be travelling through so I suppose I had better get that sorted out first.  I imagine that this will be one of those few occasions where I will be reading on a mobile device since I don't want to take too much luggage!  I really haven't enjoyed the experience of reading on a Kindle or my i-Pad but who knows, it may grow on me.

One of my favorite writers about books is Nancy Pearl, and I've had a look at her book Book Lust on the Go.  Unfortunately for this trip, she hasn't written much about places I am visiting in the US. YALSA puts out something on YA books taking place in various states but I would rather avoid young adult books for my summer reading.

So, I will start with something set in Detroit, either one of Loren Estleman's mysteries or The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides.  This was his debut novel and apparently, his second Middlesex, won the Pulitzer Prize.  Perhaps that's the one I should start with!  There is also a book called The Art Student's War, which comes highly recommended.  We shall see!

Post 11 Round 2 of #28daysofwriting: A bit more multitaking

This was the first day of our Red Nose Day activities.  We had a baking competition and I was surprised at the number of cakes, cup cakes and cookies, which came in.  The judging was based on the theme Make Em Laugh and not on how they taste.  Good thing really since one grade 2's entry had quite obviously had the burnt bits taken off  the outside but still smelt of burnt cake as we took off the wrapper.  A little investigation suggests that we will have a hard time getting a knife through it tomorrow when the cakes are sold off in our bake sale.

Today was really multi tasking nightmare part two but I think I was in a better state to cope with it. When I arrived in the library, I realised that I hadn't set the tables up yet for the competition and did that.  As school started the baked goodies started to flow in to the library, along with the tutor group that meets there and various students from various grades trying to print before classes.  I photographed each cake/cookies and the entry form, reorganised my library budget for next year, submitted it to my line manager, received late entries to the competition, fended off grade 8 boys who wanted to eat the cakes, taught a grade 8 science class, judged the competition, did a book order, sold Red Noses to lower school students and their parents, covered the cakes for the night and went home!

I took this photograph of my desk just before I left:

Post 10 Round 2: The night off!

On my way home tonight I was planning what I was going to write about tonight.  I was going to continue discussing note taking.  However, two things happened between then and now.  The pain killers I was taking after an hour long visit to the dentist began to wear off, and I received an email from the hospital saying that yet again, they were unable to share with me the report that has been written about the treatment of my husband leading up to his death 5 months ago.  In fact it was exactly 5 months yesterday.  So what with the physical pain and the emotional pain, note taking seems a little inconsequential.  :)

Instead I think I'll just wallow in self pity. Well, no, not really!  But I will take this as my second 'get out of jail free' card and take the night off writing!