Week 9 Notes

Lang and Lit students got a break from vocabulary work this week. This is because this work has been particularly troublesome for many students in this class, and I needed to take a step back, determine whether my expectations are appropriate, and discuss with the class why they think they are having difficulty. I discovered that the quizzes that I give are, in fact, exactly the type of questions that students are asked in their freshman year, and that the dictionary work and sentence construction work are assignments that students should be able to accomplish. In the class discussion, many students shared their viewpoints, and, frankly, from this information I think the bottom line is that students simply need to accept the necessity of learning words if they have designs on being successful in reading and at school.

For my part, I have made some adjustments to how we will approach vocabulary work by giving fewer words at a time, but for the next few weeks it will be on the students to demonstrate that they are making the necessary effort to complete their homework and prepare themselves for the quizzes that are part of this class.

We also spent time this week moving through how to take reading notes, as students have also shown a reluctance and/or inability to complete this assignment adequately. I am requiring students to read NOT JUST for superficial information, but for the ideas and themes within the information they gather directly AND indirectly from reading. This type of reading reflects a significant shift in the perspective of the reader. This is not always an easy shift to make, but it is the necessary shift that marks the mature reader from the less mature reader.

Ah, growing up is hard to do! I say that with a sigh and a smile because although this class is a beginning, a gate to the exciting reading and ideas of the adult world to come, it is also an ending of sorts too.

I really think that much of the sluggishness, reluctance, and resistance towards the work of this class, towards the vocabulary and the ideas it represents, towards the reading and the issues it raises, towards the duty of performing tasks that aren't always playful, is all actually a matter of the realization we all encounter as we move from the simpler world of childhood into the sophistication and complexity of adulthood.