Extending Thinking

Citation:

Carson, R., Darling, L., & Darling, L. (1962). 12. The Human price Silent spring (pp. 187-198). Boston, Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin; Riverside Press.

Rationale for choosing text:

            My partner for this group of assignments, selected all of these texts. They come from his environmental sciences class. He reported that this specific text has gone well in the past as it is easy to read, ideas and concepts are well explained, and students seem to relate to it. I wanted to read this chapter of Silent Spring, after reading the first one because it was so enjoyable. I found that it made me think of so many things that are not in the reading, which is what I liked about it and wanted to use it for the extending thinking assignment.

Text Frame:

Problem/Solution

Proposition/Support

Strategies used and resource:

            For this assignment I chose to use paired summarizing (McLaughlin, 2015; Vaughan & Estes, 1986) as a strategy to extend thinking. The other strategies that I chose in the previous two assignments have been more teacher dependent strategies. I wanted to use something that relies more on a students’ ability to independently construct and demonstrate meaning. This is also a strategy that fits with the situation that I will be teaching my reading lesson in, so I wanted to try it out before I use it.

Using Paired Summarizing:

            Paired summarizing is a process by which students pair up and go through a reading and then write a summary of it, share that summary with their partner, and summarize that. Students can then discuss the implications of what they took from the reading. Again as we have experienced with other strategies used, this is an awkward situation. I summarized my reading and shared them with myself to re-summarize and discuss the implications. Given that, below is the results of what I did.

            For the reading that my group chose, I broke it down into sections and summarized each section. I took a break and then re-read my summary and summarized that. My discussion was brief, but I noted several key issues that appeared in both:

Section 1:

            One of the main issues that pesticide use has created is the conflict between Natural and man-made disasters. Though human history we have had to worry about the natural occurring things that may kill us, not we have to concern ourselves with the things that humans have created that can cause disease and death. Pesticides being the example, are a silent killer that can have long-term negative effects. While we would like to think we are above nature, humans are a part of it and anything we do to one part of the environment, affects us all.

Humans must deal with the real world effects of the dangerous chemicals that we have put into our environment

Key words: Responsibility, man-made vs natural disasters, human’s & nature.

Section 2:

            One to the primary concerns of the use of pesticides is the delayed effects that of absorbing small amounts of chemicals that humans have put in the environment. Health officials point out that the worst disease can creep up on us with no obvious signs. This is a result of the link that we have to the environment and all of its components. Figuring out what is causing the disease becomes a very difficult task given the wide variety of symptoms in different fields of medicine and science.

Humans look for the obvious answers, when pesticide poisoning can be a silent and difficult to detect disease.

Key words: Inter-dependence, links to environment, non-obvious manifestations

Section 3:

            The typical human response is to think that it cannot happen to me. People have used pesticides and not gotten sick so it is their natural response to think that they are fine and everyone else should be as well. However, given the insidious nature of pesticide related disease people do not know that they are sick, which is the root of the disease problem. Pesticides have clear disease causing effects on the liver, metabolism through fat storage, and the central nervous system. Also keep in mind one of the confounding issues is that individuals have varying responses to chemical exposure, some will become diseased and some will not.

Humans typically think, “it won’t, or can’t happen to me”, which only increases the complexity of the pesticide exposure issue.

Key words: Human judgement, biology of pesticide exposure, more research needed

Impression of the text & strategy:

            The reading was great. I loved reading this chapter. Silent Spring is now on my reading list, maybe I will get to the entire book this summer. The strategy as I completed it, was a good summary experience. However, I clearly missed out on the benefits of the social component by missing out on a partner. Keeping this in mind I still had a better understanding of the key elements or the elements that meant the most to me after completing the paired summarization.

Challenges to students & teachers:

            This is a hands off activity for a teacher. It is up to the students to interact with each other through the text to construct meaning. I think this would be a great strategy to use after students have demonstrated that they are capable of engaging and comprehending texts.

Connection to broader themes:

            This is clearly a social constructivist activity as it relies on students to work together and socially create learning. As part of a larger plan of scaffolding learning, it can be used to push students to their zone of proximal development after they have demonstrated that they have learned to engage with and comprehend texts.

Overall impression

            While it is still an awkward exercise doing this alone, it was beneficial to do. This was a first run for the reading lesson activity that I will be using, so it was good to have done at least this to understand the process of using it. Hopefully, the reading lesson goes well and I will have a better understanding of its use with partners.

References:

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content area reading: teaching and learning for college and career readiness. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Vaughan, J. L., & Estes, T. H. (1986). Reading and reasoning beyond the primary grades. Newton, MA: Allyn and Bacon.