Guiding Thinking

Citation:

Colinvaux, P. A. (1978). Chapter 9: The ocean system. In Why big fierce animals are rare: an ecologist's perspective (pp. 89-96). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Rationale for Choosing

My partner, Ted Watson, uses this text as part of his environmental science class. He said that they found it to be difficult reading and as such it would be a nice contrast to the first reading that we selected. I do not want to shy away from having students read difficult texts or even texts that are poorly written. It is a useful skill to be able to identify what is wrong with a text or difficult about it to keep it in context.

Text Frame

Concept/Definition

Proposition/Support

Strategies used and resource:

Pyramid Diagram (Buehl, 2014; Solon, 1980)

Using Pyramid Design

            Pyramid diagram is a graphic method to select specific information from a text and organize it into categories in an effort to develop main ideas. It can be done to guide students use of a text, draw conclusions, and write organized summaries. It can also have a social component if it is done in a group setting, but does not have to be done what way. The general steps are as follows:

1. Students are given a focusing question that is used to guide them through a reading.

2. As students read the text and write down individual pieces of information. They can use note cards as an organizing tool

3. Students then organize the individual pieces of information into categories with titles that they decide on.

4. Students then organize the information under the categories with headings.

5. Student then place a rectangle above the categories and write out a summarizing sentence to the entire exercise, with a title of the pyramid above that.

6. Students then write out a summarizing paragraph using the summarizing sentence as the topic sentence and the pieces of information as supporting sentences.

You can see the results of using the strategy on the reading we chose below:

Guiding question: What are the characteristics of the ocean that determine how much food it can produce for human consumption?

 

Pyramid Diagram Summary:

            Oceans are vast places that lack the necessary components to support increased food production for human consumption. Deserts are deserts that provide humans with as much food as they are capable of at present. Oceans produce 92,000,000,000 tons of plant while land produces 272,000,000,000 tons. Chemical fertilizer is lacking in the oceans and this is what accounts for the difference in plant material produced. In the oceans plant life occurs at upwellings, where nutrients are brought up from the ocean floor. Upwellings only occur in .1% of the oceans. These upwellings cycle nutrients from the ocean floor to the plants and then animals that consume them. With humans at the top of the food chain, we make poor use of the calories produced in the oceans.

Impressions of the text & strategy:

The text

            This reading was difficult. I found that it was written awkwardly, had excessive use of metaphors & subjective statements, and vague or contradictory statements. There were also references to other chapters that were in the book containing this chapter, which made it difficult to understand the reference, since I did not read those chapters. Also, as I technical writing I found it difficult to read as there were many fact and science based statements that had no references attached to them. Given that, I think that this would still be a good reading for students to be exposed to because sometimes this is exactly what scientific reading and writing is.

The strategy

My impression of pyramid diagram is that it is a comprehensive strategy to have a student engage in a directed reading of a text. To look through a text to answer a specific question in that way that this strategy lays out is a very detailed way to have students pay attention to the reading. However, I found it very labor & time intensive to go through the text looking for answers like this. This caused me some frustration given the difficulty that I had with the text and the time that it took.

I would keep in mind the time constraints that this would have given the length of the reading. It might work better to have students break this up into three activities: 1) read looking for information based on the guiding question, 2) create categories 3) write summaries. Part #1 here would take the greatest amount of time, and I would hope that students would be able to check their work in parts 2 & 3 in this way. I know I found it difficult to do the entire strategy at once, and several times had to stop at awkward break points.

I particularly liked the summary writing idea as I think that it gives students a chance to practice writing while they are checking the individual facts that they found in the reading. I found that many of the facts that I found in my first and second reading of the material were not important to the guiding question or main idea of the reading. This was a good check on alignment of content and understanding that I think would benefit students.

Challenges To Students

            As I said the strategy itself is time and labor intensive. Students must be engaged and focused to find the facts that form the bottom layer of the pyramid. But this is the point of the strategy, to focus students on comprehending the reading. It also resulted in repeated readings of the material. I would be concerned about burnout or disengagement of the students because of this.

            I also found the reading difficult and easy to tune out to. Some of this may have been the prior knowledge form earlier chapters in the book which may have helped me see the connection to a larger theme. As a result, if I were to use a chapter out of a book such as this reading, I would want to be sure to frame the context of the reading for the students.

Connections to Broader Themes

            The entire summary activity is a metacognitive exercise to check for learning (Tracey & Morrow, 2012). I used several reading strategies such as re-reading, underlining, drawing diagrams, and writing out questions as I read the text, in response to writing out the summary. Pyramid design is also aligned with engagement theory as it includes elements of themes, student choice, and hands on activities (Guthrie, Wigfield, & You, 2012; Tracey & Morrow, 2012).

Overall Impression

            The pyramid strategy was a beneficial strategy to select the main ideas and summarize a reading. However, I would reserve it for only a few cases and most likely easier readings because of the time it took to complete the method. I think students’ comprehension would benefit from learning how to use this strategy.

References

Buehl, D. (2014). Classroom strategies for interactive learning (4th ed.). Newark, Del.: International Reading Association,.

Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., & You, W. (2012). Instructional contexts for engagement and achievement in reading. In S. Christenson, A. L. Reschly & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 601-634). New York: Springer.

Solon, C. (1980). The Pyramid Diagram: A College Study Skills Tool. Journal of Reading, 23(7), 594-597.

Tracey, D. H., & Morrow, L. M. (2012). Chapter 4: Constructivism Lenses on reading : an introduction to theories and models (2nd ed., pp. xx, 251 p.). New York: The Guilford Press.

Because this blog has become a little boring, here are some other pyramids that I like: