I'm sitting here writing my lesson plans and decided to vent my frustrations to anyone out there who cares to read further. 

Our theme for 6 weeks (begun last week) is Astronomy. We read a selection from Pioneer Astronomers by Navin Sullivan about Galileo. It was very dense with information that I found fascinating. There were several paragraphs I had to reread at least twice to understand. Needless to say it was very difficult for my students to understand. They lack prior knowledge as well as motivation. Prior knowledge they needed had to do with Greek mythology, the Catholic Church in the 17th century, astronomy in general, in particular how astronomers study the skies, and Copernicus. 

This week we are supposed to read a selection about telescopes from The Way Things Work by David Macaulay. In four short pages we are to learn about refracting telescopes, reflecting telescopes, radio telescopes and the Hubble space telescope. Again it is dense with information that I have had to read several times to understand and though I can regurgitate what I have read I'm not confident that I really understand some parts. 

On day one after all the decoding and spelling and oral language work that is mostly unrelated to the selection, we are to read the four pages round robin, stopping for me to model monitoring and adjusting speed, monitoring and clarifying and asking questions. Then they are to have a pre-test on 20 spelling words based on the long e (none related to the selection or theme). Next I am to introduce "writing form ... to show students how they can get their thoughts on paper using a graphic organizer." The workbook pages are titled "Writing a Response to Nonfiction" and I am to model writing "my feelings when I use a telescope to observe objects in space." The students are to volunteer words to use, tell why they chose particular words and then write some of the words and ideas in their writer's notebook. 

I am frustrated. The directions above seem to me to be contradictory. Am I writing a response to the non-fiction I just read or a description of how I feel when I'm doing something? Having never looked through a telescope to observe objects in space I am at a loss to write about it and I am sure my students will have nothing to offer to this discussion. I can imagine them responding to the piece with comments about not understanding, being too difficult, wonderings about what one might see, etc. which isn't a bad way to respond but it is not what I am supposed to model. And they are not to respond to the piece yet. 

On the second day, after a second "reading" (students listen to it on tape so they can hear what fluency sounds like) and a lesson on the Greek root -tele, I am to continue modeling writing a response to non-fiction using a worksheet checklist for pre writing. The list includes identifying your audience, and purpose for writing. The choices for purpose are to tell someone what you thought of a piece of writing, to question something you read, to show how you would respond in the situation you read about, to show a strong reaction to something you read, and other. Students are then to fill in their own worksheet. 

But on the third day this is followed up with another worksheet which is the graphic organizer. On this worksheet they are supposed to compare and contrast two of the telescopes described in the selection we read. I am to model first by developing a Venn diagram on the board. Then the students are to fill in the graphic organizer. The graphic has a space across the top for "topic" and below it two columns each headed "subtopic" with three numbered lines beneath each for details followed by two more subtopics and detail lines and finally a large box for a conclusion. The directions then say, "Drafting. Write your response on a sheet of paper. Use the subtopics and details from your graphic organizer to guide you through your response." To me this is not a response to reading. It may be a good way to take notes on what was read, to understand the selection better and to write a report on what was read. 

On the fourth day they are supposed to revise their work after I model changing sentence structure to help a paragraph flow more smoothly. Finally they have another checklist for revising to fill out as they revise. The list includes the subtopics Ideas, Organization, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency and Voice. The only thing to check under the subtopic of Voice is "Do your words show that you feel a certain way about the nonfiction selection (for example, excited or interested)?" Here I get confused again as to the purpose of this writing. 

And on the fifth day they are to edit/proofread and publish—with another checklist. And again this checklist mentions "your response" several times. 

Am I being dense? Oppositional? Does this make sense to anyone else?

Response:  You know what else doesn't make sense? Even if kids could look in a TELEscope and see the stars and even if they could write in thoughtful ways about their experience, in the northern hemisphere, way up where we live, November is the cloudiest month in a normal year. People doing the moon journals and people trying to see the constellations at night have a far worse chance of seeing a blame thing in November. Perfect timing for Open Court to even introduce such an experience. Because, you know, when you study astronomy, the kids might glance up on their own time in the evenings. I can't believe all the preparation YOU have to do to understand the directions and to accomplish some activity decided by whom?

PS I know this from a moon journal project a couple of years ago.

Response:  The science department recognizes this problem. Fifth grade science has a unit on astronomy but it does not coincide with Open Court's timing of it. I have intended to do moon journals, have been looking forward to it for quite a while, but now I'm not sure when or how to fit it in.

Response:  What if you did moon journals now, during this unit? If it's cloudy, students would write that down. Then when the unit is over, students could write to the authors of Open Court to tell them they didn't learn anything.  

Response:  Moon journals would be a deviation from Open Court. I would have to list  that in my lesson plans as part of science or art.

Response:  No, you are not dense at all. This is Open Court's way to say, "See, we use the writing workshop too!!!!!!!!!" They have the steps written down someplace and then give the kids specific assignments that, sort of, follow the steps as written. What you have described just cements, for me anyway, that the authors haven't a clue about writing. Writing doesn't work the way they have set it up, not to mention the contradictory instructions that you have been given that are certain to confuse not only the teacher, but the kids as to what good writing is and how it happens. (long sentence....not good writing...sorry!) Frustrating is not enough to describe this sort of scripted instruction that merely apes a process that it doesn't reflect in reality. YIKES!!!!!!!!!!

November 2002