Week 5: Making it Real

I feel like I read the Deeper Reading chapters such a long time ago! I am still getting over being confused from the whole ice storm problem. Anyway, the Deeper Reading book is helpful, but not nearly as helpful as the Christenbury book. I like the way that this text reads more like a novel than a text book, but I still catch myself being bored. The section about using metaphor for reflection was interesting to me though. I like the way she used a list of tangible and intangible items to create metaphors, but was even more impressed by the way her students put them together. This use of metaphors will strengthen their writing abilities and even their thinking abilities, especially on standardized tests. You and I both know that the MAP, Praxis, and CBASE love to use metaphors to relate things, and this is a great introduction for those relations. Also, metaphors are a part of everyday language and students can relate these comparison in their real life, not just on tests.

As always, I have a couple points that I thought were important and here is another. I also enjoyed the part in chapter three about the anticipatory set. The use of potato chips was imaginative and creative and really got the students interested. Because I am preparing for my upcoming in-class lesson, I was particularly interested in this part when creating my anticipatory set. I wanted to create a way to get you guys interested in my topic and am still have problems finding that. But reading this blurb about making the information “real” to the students was helpful and sparked an idea. Hopefully you all will think it is interesting one Monday!