Subjects Matter Chapter 11 was interesting to me in many ways. First of all, the example at the beginning was eye-opening to me, explaining how the student was unable to solve the physics problem not because of his science knowledge, but because of his lack of understanding of the basic world problem. The most important part of creating a solvable problem is the ability to paint a picture in your own head, and many students fail to do this because they can't break the problem down. I thought that this was an interesting way to look at the problem and identify it, mostly because making pictures in my head is the only way I could solve science or math problems--as someone who doesn't enjoy solving either.
The next standout piece of text, to me, was the sentence where the authors made sure to emphasize that "not every teacher gets to work in the kind of supportive professional culture that Downers Grove South has achieved," in reference to Downers Grove South's improvement program focused around supporting cross-curricular reading. I think that, as a future teacher, it is important to realize that resources may be scarce depending on where you are, and you need to utilize these resources whenever possible in order to help your students learn.
This chapter provided some neat insights on how to make sure my students understand the material at hand because of their substantial understanding of how to read the material.
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Hey Mike! I completely agree with you about the example concerning the student that was unable to solve the problem. With math being my main content area I realize how important it is for students to be able to read a problem and start to create pictures of the content in their minds. I think reading this chapter and talking about these topics in class has opened my eyes to the fact that all content areas rely very heavily on the literacy of students. Because of this, it is so important that we, as educators, have tools and the understanding to help out our students. I found that this chapter was really helpful for realizing some of those tools too.
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