Observation

While reading ‘The Cookie’ from JHS Grade 2’s textbook today, students struggled with thought organization (in JP) and were unable to successfully predict the comic panel they were looking at. They were also unsuccessful in effectively summarizing the comic panel’s events. The JTE expressed her concern after she read through the predictions and suggested we try a brainstorming activity through which students must choose any panel and explain it in a single sentence. After which we consolidate it by organizing it into either a) flow of events or b) cause / effect.

Notes

In general, meta cognitive skills are sorely lacking in educational systems and its something that I, on a pedagogical and epistemological level believe to be a critical aspect of education and higher order thinking. In considering reading comprehension exercises more thoroughly, I’m really hoping to break the “I don’t know what I don’t know and I don’t know what what I know” trench they fall into, then only somehow to muddle through the brutal onslaught of standardized assessments and evaluations that don’t explain anything to anybody or about what students need to do… other than to gird their loins and ganbaru.