Change

Four Perfect Pebbles chp9 "America at Last"

This final chapter in the book was more informative than narrative compared to the other chapters. I didn't feel as much of Marion or Ruth in this chapter as I have in the other chapters. I was still disheartened by the fact that things were still so hard for the Blumenthal family. I so wanted there to be a happy ending to the story, though there was a happy ending I wished it would be more immediate and easy for the family. After everything they experience and all the almost it seems only fair that they get a chance at something easy, but nothing was easy they worked very hard for everything they earned. The ember of the fruitfully happy ending that I read was how Albert and Mario were able to succeed in life, work and education. Especially Marion being able jump to her proper grade. Also to see her find love, unexpectedly albeit, warmed my spirit. What warmed my spirit even more was hearing the kind of emotion that Marion had when speaking about all her experiences and then the glowing smile that she had when she talked about her husband, her love, and her family. To be able to have that much joy in her life now compared to her childhood was the happy ending I was looking for, it just took a little longer to get there.

Keene chp7 Nothing Changes as Certain as Change

This chapter is all about change and allowing the world to mold and change our actions. As educators we need to be able to change our teaching to meet the needs of the students we also need to be able to change the direction of a lesson based on the insights that children come up with. The mentor portion of this text was the most interest portion to read next the to the figures at the end of the chapter on text structures and deciphering those structures. Otherwise the chapter kept referring to the new teacher "Tracy" and hypothetical meetings and analogies that I felt were not helping the theme of change in the text.

I also liked how Keene described the infrastructure of texts how it is understood and how students can use the infrastructure to make prediction of what might happen next in the book. Being able to read the "contours" of the text was an interesting concept that I have never thought of in those terms.

Freedom

Four Perfect Pebbles:

Freedom and Sorrow chp7/ Holland Again chp8: Finally the family is free they have experienced their liberation they are no longer trapped by the Germans. But they are emotionally, and physically shadows of their former selves. While reading this I recalled how I have heard stories of liberated captives eating themselves to death or being fed to death. The liberated people's stomachs were shrunk but the stomach that resided in their hearts and their brain. However I have never heard such an account of watching people eat themselves to death it was so depression., And on top of that for typhus to take Marion's father now after all they have been through was devastating news. The only good part was that there was the prospect that the remaining family could find salvation in continuing the initial plans that they wanted to accomplish prior to their capture. The hardship that Ruth must have gone through to live apart from her children to insure a better future was a heart touching task.

Keene chp 6 Renaissance of Understanding:

This was my favorite chapter of Keene's thus far, the ideal that we need to encourage a more Renaissance feel in our classrooms is something that I connect with immediately. Giving students a chance to be more independent inquiry based learners is something I try to instill in all of my lessons. I feel that students learn much better when they have freedom. How Keene was able to attach that sense of freedom and exploration into how students read and their literacy skills was seamless. I really connected with the idea of using varied genres and text to accomplish different tasks. This idea reminded of how we had discussions about mentor texts a few classes ago.

Escape and struggle

Keene chp5 To Savor the Struggle

The quote at the start of the dimension section of the chapter sums up the swimmingly “We struggle for insight; we savor and learn from the struggle itself; we venture into new learning territory and fight debilitating influence of judgment”. Being able to understand that the ideas and concepts that are the most important to our life are the ones we have to work to understand and struggle to grasp fully. Students now-a-days are not geared and prepared to struggle there are lots of items in life that come rather easy so instilling the values of struggle is a task that as educators we need to take care of.

Struggle is often most associated in the earlier years with literacy, learning to read is a rather intense task for many students. Struggle is full of frustration and misunderstandings and trials upon trials. The best of way to make the struggle and frustration easier is break it into more manageable pieces or to give the students a variety of decoding methods.

Four Perfect Pebbles Chp5 The Greatest Disappointment and Chp 6 The Death Train

Chapter 5 was indeed the greatest disappointment the family was so sad almost as soon as they leave the camp it is liberated. The continual traveling by the Blumenthals seemed like they kept missing the liberation. They were escaping liberation with each growing day reaming trapped in the death train watching people drop by the wayside one after the other. I just continually felt bad that the family every time they chose to move or were moved their situation got worse.

When I started this reading I thought the death train was titled the death train not because of how many souls were lost to do typhus and other disease but because I thought they figured the train was heading to Auschwitz. Though the captive son the train did think they were heading that way. When the train did stop to clear the dead there was so much freedom that the soldiers allowed that the captives were initially hesitant to take. To be honest who wouldn’t be, especially with the tricks and lies the Germans told to get their captives into the gas chambers taking things at face value certainly meant death.

Dwelling

To Understand, Keene, Dwelling in ideas:

This chapter focuses a rather large amount on vignette rather than practical use of the process in the classroom. At the same time I also enjoyed reading about the concept of using silence and listen deeply: "dwell in ideas, listen to our own teaching". The idea of listen to yourself and realizing what is important to your teaching based on self reflection and epitomizing who you are as an educator. When it comes to educating, teaching, and learning it is important to know how to reflect on your experiences to really own the information gathered from the experience. When this is done students and teachers alike begin to realize how capable the students are, more often then know the intellectual ability of the children in under estimated. When students are challenged based on their actual intellectual abilities instead of their perceived abilities they become eager and joyful while learning.

Four Perfect Pebbles: Escape to Holland and Get Dressed and Come with Us

These two chapters were full of fantastic images, some more upsetting than others but the words paint a dramatic picture. The night of broken glass really got me confused, because if they had all these people in captivity why did they let them go? Did they only let go those who had papers? I didn't see what the ultimate point was, unless it merely to put even more finical and social stress on the Jewish people. The entire process of taking personal belongings imprisoning, releasing, and then separating reminded me of what the military does to new recruits. They essentially are broken in order to insure compliance to order and regulations.

From all of that torment the escape to Holland didn't get much better the prospect of receiving the visa's finally and then not sure about being able to get to the proper departure point due to an attack on the port. The time lines that are drawn out in the start of this chapter are mind blowing I was surprised that other countries didn't intervene in Germany's actions to Czech but the moment the attack shifts to someone more friendly intervention is immediate. I was upset at lack of reaction by outsiders, and I was even more upset at the idea that these people had no control over their fate. Of course the Jewish people would have no control but the thought of lack of control was upsetting.

Driven to Understand

Keene chp. 3 Driven to Understand

This chapter went into developing a classroom culture of "Rigor, Inquiry and Intimacy" along with creating a balance between them. Creating a classroom where environment fervent learning occurs is quite the task. Personally I find passion in learning and when the learning is so intense to be labeled as fervent I get excited. This chapter helped to illuminate different ways to foster an environment where students are driven to learn and driven learn and apply that knowledge to the classroom.

I agree with Keene when she mentions the fact that all children are capable of learning fervency, it's just a matter of pulling the passion out of students. The structure of the classroom and the roles of the people in the classroom need to adjusted. Once a restructuring occurs students have a better chance of finding the passion and being enthusiastic about learning.

Four Perfect Pebbles chp. 2

A small town in Germany puts the transition into Nazi Germany into the perspective of those living in Germany at the time. I was surprised that at how slow the transition was from political crock-pot to German ruler and also not afraid people were of Hitler. The slow migration to safety was painful to read about, all I wanted to do was to jump into the book and tell them to leave. Reading that the family just sat and stayed in harms way because they were connected to the town and were too emotionally attached to depart. Then once they finally decided to leave there was an impossible task of getting the right paper work to leave the country or to enter a new country.

This chapter was frustrating to read, because I new all the parts of the story. None of the parts were particularly happy and seeing how people lived and chose to stay in some cases killed me.

Four Perfect Pebbles and the second chapter of To Understand

Four Perfect Pebbles

Four Perfect Pebbles by Lila Perl and Mrion Blumenthal Lazan is great introductory text towards more graphic informational texts. The perspective of the text was unexpected, from the introduction it seemed like the book would be more first person based but instead it was written from an observers perspective. The book would be an interesting resource to use in sixth grade. This would be a good book to start introducing materials that are non-fictional and historically based. At this age students are mature enough to be exposed to material that is a little more raw and has drastic imagery. This book would be a fantastic stepping stone in the learning process of students, a first step to more adult resources that are more graphic in their depiction of history and events.

To Understand

The second chapter of the Keene text introduced the literacy studio, which reminded me of The Daily Five. I preferred the descriptions that Keene used instead of the original titles. crafting instead of writing, composing instead of independent reading and writing, invitation group instead of small group reading or writing, and reflection instead of sharing. These terms are for more evocative and interest me and are for more inspiring when it comes to utilizing the literacy program.

Understanding?

Often times there will be a wonderful external trigger that will spark a complete and unabashed understanding of something that you have been struggling with. Those sparks are relished, to finally be able to grasp an idea that you have been reaching at is a relief. Although not all sparks lead to understanding, some lead to the question that drives you to understand. That is the kind of spark that intrigued Ellin Oliver Keene to investigate the concept of understanding; culminating in her book titled To Understand New Horizons in Reading Comprehension. Keene acted on the spark she received from a bodacious 7 year old named Jamkia, who dared to ask what does it mean to make sense?

While reading I attempted to answer the same question and came up with all the short falls of Keene, yes i can explain comprehension in 12dollar words and long sentences full of commas and semi-colons. But how to do explain understand/make sense/comprehend to a seven year old so they can grasp that idea they longingly desire to know. It is a task that took Keene several years to complete. Along her journey she stated that she felt worried about the books use to other educators. Worry marks a concern and passion for the topic at hand, when you worry you care about what you are doing. You want to do it justice.

"...how rewarding is it to teach children to think rather than to recall, retell, and answer endless comprehension questions." This excerpt from the prelude explains, rather succinctly, the overall aim of the text. This aim is one I wish to accomplish in my own teaching as well. Through the reading it seems as if there are many people saying: we barely have time to teach what we do teach and now you want us to add this too. Personally I don't see the shift to teaching comprehension instead of testing comprehension as taking up more time. I see it as a rewording of what is already said. Give the children a chance to show us how much they can and do understand before we go question their ability. I think the students will show us how resilient and knowledgeable they really are.

Children are like sponges they absorb and absorb and if given the chance they will willing share their contents. As a child I was always part of the adult conversations at the table, unlike Keene, I was encouraged to share my opinions on the world happens as I knew them. My opinions and ideas were seen as equals at the table; this respect gave my intellect a chance to flourish under the supervision of my family. Teachers should foster so intellectual discussions at school too. There is no reason that they should be excluded form the happenings on that are all around them. Perhaps more open respectful discussions in schools will lead to a better sense of knowing for the students.