Those of you that talk to me on any kind of a regular basis know about my love for Wired Magazine. I love every issue that comes out, and I thank my engineer friend for getting me a subscription. It's online as well, but I truly enjoy the hard copy each month. Of course it isn't a perfect magazine (what??? impossible!), but I'm accepting of a periodical's growth areas.
I have narrowed down my Wired love-fest to four Mentor-Text-Monday-worthy reasons: Titles, Academic Language, Whole Text Structure and Text Complexity.
Titles
The article titles themselves serve as mentor texts for writing headers, titles, and punctuation for effect. Check out these intriguing titles:
Wired Magazine does not shy away from academic language. Using a super-cool tool called WordSift (thank youKenji Hakuta and Greg Wientjes of Stanford University and the SDAWP Fellow that shared this with me), I was able to sift through the text for various kinds of academic lanaguge.
Whole Text Strucutres
There are also some fascinating mentors for whole text structures:
The text in Wired Magazine is of a high level. I took one text--the body of a short article accompanying a graphic--and ran it through some text analyzers. This text, Science Graphic of the Week: 5.3 Million Years of Sea Level Change on One Cliff Face, was especially high. There is a variety, but expect to find texts that push the limits for your students.
So there you have it. four excellent reasons to go online and spend some time reading Wired Magazine articles. You'll learn at leas tone interesting thing, I promise!
I am taking part in the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers. For this challenge I will be attempting to write a "Slice of Life" post each day in the month of March and each Tuesday after that. Part of my new-found love for math centers around it's elegance and ineffability. Last weekend at the 69th Annual ASCD Conference, Sir Ken Robinson mentioned that a doctoral study in "Pure Math" would include work that is both innovative and elegant. That struck me and I've been stewing on it ever since. I like elegant things. I respect simple beauty. I'm impressed with the elegance of nature and even more impressed with mathematical concepts found in nature.
Image Citation
I also have a deep respect for ineffability. Ideas of concepts that can not, or should not, be expressed in words. What a gorgeous idea. An idea that ought not be said aloud. A Lord Voldemort of philosophy. I would love to have an idea so inexplicably elegant that I can't even say it out loud. What a hallmark of genius that would be! If math is both elegant and ineffable, then I may have found something to love--a way in. Here is a list of 11 Beautiful Math Equations from LiveScience.com:
General Relativity
Standard Model
Calculus
Pythagorean Theorem
1=0.99999999....
Special Relativity
Euler's Equation
Euler–Lagrange Equations and Noether's Theorem
Callan-Symanzik Equation
Minimal Surface Equation
The Euler Line
Here are my first thoughts--from the lens of a newbie mathematician...
This Euler fellow seems to know a thing or two.
I like that there is a general relativity and a special relativity.
My mind is shattering at the idea that 1=0.99999..., but since I remember Calculus also shattering my mind, I'm not surprised.
How about you, what are your first thoughts about these 11 elegant-but-not-quite-ineffable ideas?
Wear the Cape proudly welcomes our first guest blogger! Jeni Cass is caped teacher from a charter school in San Diego. Jeni truly does wear her cape each day in her kinder classroom. Enjoy this amazing mentor text form Jeni!
As a kinder teacher the thought of doing a mentor text in
the beginning of the year seems pretty daunting. I tend to stick more with illustration and
author studies (see Katie Wood Ray's work for more information onm those). But I
haven't given my kids the credit they deserve as learners.This
summer I searched for texts that have concepts and writing that my kids could
do. I found the perfect one to start
with. It's super simple but the students
really got into it. Here is what I did
to help them be successful:
First we read the book...a couple times. We talked about the concepts, the
illustrations and just generally enjoyed what it had to show us.
Next, we discussed what the author was doing, taking two
items and adding them together to make something new. Then as a class we talked about possible
combinations of things. Here is where I
really had to help them out. I gave them
at least 10.
Then I started with giving
them just one thing and they had to tell their neighbor (knee to knee) what
they would add to it. Finally it was
their turn to orally tell their neighbor an entire phrase.
Together as a class we listed them on a chart paper so
everyone had a chance to share out and see the different possibilities. Students then went back to their tables to
write their sentence.
By the end of the
year I let them spell it out themselves and leave the chart up for support. This time I actually cut the chart paper up
and had them take their own phrase back to their seats to copy. After illustrating them, they were
done!!
My littles were so excited to see themselves as writers and
make our own This Plus That book. It is
a favorite in our class library!
For my first #113texts Mentor Text Challenge post, I am going out on a limb, out of the box, out of... something. This isn't a typical mentor text for me, nor is this a typical mentor text post. But then again, the #113texts Mentor Text Challenge isn't typical either, now is it?
Caveat: I am not currently teaching in a classroom, and haven't had a chance to use this text with more than a group of two. Typically, for this challenge, I'd suggest sharing a text you've used and including student work. I'll share some of those, too.
I discovered this book while roaming around a large bookstore-that-shall-not-be-named. In fact, I knocked a pile of these books off of a table and ended up carrying one around the store with me for a bit. I ended up leaving it there and getting the e-book edition at home, but taking it for a walk in the store was enough to set my pea brain to thinking. That, and I remember my dear SI Fellow-WRG-group-member Cynthia asking specifically for texts that could be used in the upper grades. And Mindy who helps us all remember the importance of math as we learn in SDAWP. Hey Cynthia and Mindy--how about this one? And Kim, didn't you mention a book like this, or even this exact one? Why didn't I read it right then?
Enough fanfare, let me begin...
I have an unreasonable fear of math. It strikes me as a kind of magic that some people can do and that I cannot. Or a language similar to that of the Swedish chef on the Muppets.
I want to speak the language, do the magic, and I might be able to with the right teaching, but as of right now my brain still shuts right down when math approaches. Any math. Even addition.
This book is written by someone that speaks the language of math, but in a format that I can access--words. As we continue to explore the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in ELA and Math, we will be looking for texts that provide complexity, opportunities for deep reading, opportunities to take learning across more than one text, and that allow for students to do more than give us one single right answer. We are also asking teachers across the content areas to focus on reading, writing, speaking, and listening. I say, let's also thread the content areas into each other and into our ELA classes. Enter... Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math by Daniel Tammet.
Just look at the Table of Contents and consider the possibilities:
Family Values
Eternity in an Hour
Counting to Four in Icelandic
Proverbs and Times Tables
Shapes of Speech
On Big Numbers
The Novelists Calculus
Selves and Statistics
I spent some time with one chapter in particular--Chapter Four: Proverbs and Times Tables.I was thinking in terms of the possibility of using this with younger students as they learn multiplication and with older students who may be struggling with number sense or math concepts. Don't get me wrong, this text is complex and will be a challenge for may grade levels, but rather than look at what we can't do with it, let's look at what we can do. Try these excerpts from Chapter Four on for size:
Narrative Non-Fiction:
"I once had the pleasure of discovering a book wholly dedicated to the art of proverbs. It was in one of the municipal libraries that I frequented as a teenager. The title of the book escapes me now, the name of its author too, but I still recall the little shiver of excitement I felt as my fingers caressed its quarto pages. "
Informative/Explanatory:
"One hundred proverbs, give or take, sum up the essence of a culture; one hundred multiplication facts compose the tens times tables. Like proverbs, these numerical truths or statements--two times two is four, or seven times six equals forty-two--are always short, fixed and pithy. Why then do they not stick in our heads as proverbs do?
Opinion/Argument:
"But they did before, some people claim. When? In the good old days, or course. Today's children, they suggest, are simply too slack-brained to learn correctly. Nothing interests them but sending one another text messages and harassing the teacher. The critics hark back to those days before computers and calculators; to the time when every number was drummed into children's heads til finding the right answer became second nature."
These three short excerpts could provide opportunities for close reading for many grade level--as young as third grade, I'd say. Yes, there are some structures that are difficult, some vocabulary they may not know. Perfect, right? And each excerpt above, from each CCSS text type, is rich in discussion and writing opportunities--discussion centered around proverbs, learning, math, and perception.
Let's go a step further and examine an excerpt where Tammet discusses math as the essence of knowledge:
'The facts in a multiplication table represent the essence of our knowledge of numbers: the molecules of math. They tell us how many dimes make up a dollar (10 x 10), the number of squares on a chessboard (8 x 8), the quantity of individual surfaces on a trio of boxes (3 x 6). They help us divide fifty-six items among eight people (7 x 8 = 56, therefore 56/8 = 7), or realize that forty-three of something cannot be evenly distributed in the same way (because forty-three, being a prime number, makes no appearance among the facts)."
Let's just pull out the math vocabulary in this short paragraph: square, quantity, surface, trio, divide, evenly, distributed, prime number. Are one or more of these vocabulary words found in your grade level curriculum? I think, perhaps, yes.
After a close reading of this text, imagine the discussion opportunities! Imagine a classroom full of eager elementary school students--eager to make those odd and personal connections to each topic we introduce. Where could they take these concepts? Either in isolation (proverbs and then multiplication tables) or together (learning proverbs vs. learning multiplication tables), this discussion could really go somewhere. Our kiddos wouldn't leave the discussion with a correct answer, but would their brains be buzzing? Would they be buzzing about things we want them to buzz about?
How about in a high school English class? The CCSS demands that content area teachers incorporate reading, writing, speaking, listening into their lessons. What if an upper level English class incorporated some math? What would happen?
All of this from just one chapter. A. Maze.Ing.
Here is a summary of this text for the #113texts challenge:
Title and Author
Thinking In Numbers: On Life, Love, Meaning, and Math by Daniel Tammet
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