“Cracking the code:” 7-1 Students and Learning Styles

I found it to be a fascinating week. The lesson on learning styles encompassed a great deal of uniqueness and compelling ideas. I realized the validity of this when many of the conferences in which I participated used the potential discussion of student learning style and a springboard to conversation about student strength and areas of improvement. I thought this to be powerful. I further realized the magnitude of the lesson when I heard students initiating conversations that strove to analyze how they and their colleagues learn. When a teacher hears students express where they are on the axis of perception, or in what arena of judgment greater success can be found, a note of redemption is heard. My original projection was that while we lost a week of history based instruction, we were going to gain much more in learning a system of analysis and thought that would help to frame our path to scholarship. I believe that such a projection held validity given what I experienced this week.
We now find ourselves in a very challenging time. It is a time where we will have to learn new patterns of recognition in addressing the very tests that will help to define our mettle and our intestinal strength. It is a time where the great ones will differentiate themselves from others. It is a time for great ones, now. While one could sense this as describing the last week of current national political campaigning, I think it has just as much meaning in articulating where 7-1 students are. After an open note learning style quiz this week, students will engage in the domain of the chapter 5 writing tasks. Learning styles will play a prominent role in the composition of these writings. Students are being asked to compose two writings on the intellectual concepts presented in chapter 5 and then prepare two “defense pieces” which explain how each writing task and student writing represents a specific style of learning. In composing four writing samples (two on American History, two on specific learning styles), students will be utilizing the writing process in the hopes of achieving 400 points worth of work. This week students will receive a timeline for completing the tasks with incremental benchmarks that should be reached throughout the work phase. As mentioned at conferences, rough drafts can be submitted at multiple points in order to enhance student composition of work. At any and all points of this process, students are encouraged to “reach out” for help as “I’ll be there” for assistance.
I believe that this will be the most challenging endeavor we would have encountered. I know that our students, emerging scholars, will reach for these heavens in expanding their understanding, their strength, and their intellectual honor.

Happy hunting!
Mr. Kannan

“Hold on to your seat belts- It’s going to be a bumpy ride!” Learning Styles and 7-1 Students

When I originally conceived of the lesson on Multiple Learning styles and how they filter into the lives of 7-1 students, I confess that my original idea was to hold a brief talk for a day and progress from there. Yet, as I began to delve into the notion of making this a meaningful experience for students and started the process of analyzing the story I wanted to tell, it evolved into a life of its own. The organic growth and evolution of a singular item into so much of educational consciousness became something that I tried to contain, but could not stop. From distilling the four learning styles, I drove deep into the heart of models of learning, patterns of brain recognition, and determining how students can be empowered, I felt that this became too important a lesson to “gloss over.” When the opening starts with, “To ‘crack the code’ of how students learn becomes the essence of teaching and the root of all power,” it becomes evident that this lesson is larger than a mere explanation. I redid a pair of syllabi, changed a timeline on a writing task, added a quiz, and am ready for what will come out of it. This lesson might be one of those lessons where its ideas prove relevancy outside of the classroom and to all domains of learning and interpersonal dependence. I believe in a great deal of what I do, but I feel passionately about this particular lesson.

It is at this point where students should be rightly scared. I know I would be.
We start the lesson on Monday. Students will receive the scores from their exam at that time as well as the Chapter 5 Writing Extensions. Both can be revised, with the former being able to be revised during Tuesday and Wednesday lunch and the latter at any time until October 31. Students will receive updated progress reports on Tuesday, but all grades can be accessed online. We will be engaging in lecture driven instruction on Monday and Tuesday, and then profiling students based on their learning patterns on Wednesday. We will continue this process by profiling teachers on Thursday and Monday of next week. Students should expect a quiz on this material next week, and the unveiling of the Chapter 5 Writing Extensions to follow by mid next week.
I will be the first to claim that it is a time investment to sacrifice a week of instruction on a concept that is not directly linked to American History. However, I believe that our students are ready to receive a lesson that can serve as a snapshot of where they are at this moment in time and perhaps foreshadow where they will be in the future. I sense that this lesson will have meaning for several reasons. The first would be that a greater sense of understanding will result if students can identify their dominant and secondary learning style. Instead of saying, “I didn’t get it” or “Yeah, I got it,” there might be a stronger and more relevant discussion if they can explain why based on personal learning styles. Additionally, affording the opportunities to articulate why some find greater levels of success than others might help to bring a healthier notion of learning to our students. Too often I have heard students acquiesce to defeat and bluntly say, “I am not good at school.” While I have admired the honesty, this lesson on learning styles might offer some refutation to such a cynical claim. If students can understand where success might lie and where challenges might be present, they can appropriate a domain that seemed unreachable. I believe that we sense a greater level of meaningful and differentiated instruction for all if we can teach the idea that every learner possesses dominant as well as an equally compelling inferior learning style. The challenge placed upon the broad shoulders of all students is to not be afraid of their auxiliary or inferior learning style, but rather take ownership of it. This lesson might tear the mask of student ineffectiveness by giving them a vocabulary to articulate where their strengths and areas of improvement lie. In doing this, our students become stronger, taking one more step on the path of scholarship. They also become tougher and, in doing so, represent the spirit of the “Jayhawk”- a creature that binds and connects and compels us all to “master success.” Finally, I think a greater level of knowledge will unveil itself to students when they are able to take the lesson taught and apply it to their teachers. I plan on explaining to students the same learning styles that govern their understanding also govern their teachers, as well. To understand the learning styles that lie in their hearts and minds will give students power. Yet, to grasp the learning styles that lie in the hearts and minds of their teachers will give students access and control of their own academic destinies.
Yes, students should be mindful of this week. In the attempt to make something difficult a bit more approachable, I have uploaded the lecture notes to this lecture on this blog under, “Recent PowerPoint Lessons.” The file name is "Learning Styles 2008." It might help students to have a copy of the lecture notes so as to assist them.
I look forward to seeing many of our stakeholders this week during conferences. I also look forward to hearing about how your children, our emerging scholars, begin the process of better understanding themselves and the world that not only surrounds them but awaits their arrival.

Happy Hunting all you feelers and thinkers!
All best.
Mr. Kannan

“The Train Keeps On Rolling:” Writing Extensions, Exams, and Metacognition

A shortened week brings with it a great deal of work. It is odd how so much can be compressed into so little time. A concept that embodies relativity, time becomes our powerful adversary and our success becomes contingent on how well we can navigate through what it presents us. With the field trip Tuesday, Wednesday becomes a critical day. Writing extensions on chapter 5 will be submitted by the end of class. Students will have either composed a Top 5 List of the Causes of the Revolution or a Newspaper Editorial from the time period. Timely submission of writing extensions will result in a 4x 6 index card that can be used as a reference during Thursday’s exam. Thursday will also be Stuffing Day for Student Portfolios. The exam will last two days, so students should be mindful of using Thursday night as an evening of focus to help shore up curricular support to make Friday a worthwhile day, the concluding day of the 55 question multiple choice exam. Indeed, in three days of teaching and learning, much will be undertaken. When one week contains close to 200 points of work, it becomes understatement to say it is a “big week.” Time becomes our worthy adversary, one where battle is waged and swords clash in pursuit of those things that are "good, true, and beautiful." Within such a collision of values, the journey towards scholarship continues.
The week after our shortened week will not only mark conferences, but also our foray into metacognition. In order to approach the writing tasks for chapter 5, I wanted to spend some time discussing the four dominant styles of learning in students. My hopes are to engage students in an intellectual dialogue about the nature of how they learn. Oftentimes, when asked why a particular option was chosen, students respond with the ubiquitous quip, “I don’t know- it sounded cool.” After this week, students should be able to give more in terms of how their particular learning style meshes with a chosen task or assessment. Driving the train from this point, students should be able to engineer an assessment of how their teachers learn, as well. This would play into them gaining a stronger understanding of how to “read” their teachers as well as themselves. Such discussions will lay the groundwork for the completion of the chapter 5 writing tasks, to commence next week, conference week. It is a challenging time to be a 7.1 Social Studies student, indeed.
I will be sending out updated progress reports on the week of 10/27, once the writing extensions on chapter 5 as well as the Chapter 5 Exams have been entered. I remind all stakeholders that utilization of this blog, as well as accessing student grades online through http://www.mygradebook.com/ are recipes for success in times of challenge, as we are immersed within at this particular moment. Finally, I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible during Conference Week. If you have a free moment (and if I have one), I certainly hope our paths will cross to engage in meaningful discussion. If time becomes an adversary for us, as well, I will have a box outside my room for comments, questions, and concerns, and will respond to each query with all possible dispatch.

Here is to defeating the forces of time. Happy Hunting!
Mr. Kannan

P.S. If you are interested in previewing some of the questions featured on the chapter 5 exam, please examine the link on the top left hand corner entitled “Upcoming Tasks/ Handouts.” Examine the Table of Contents on the first page and test question stems await.

Clocks, Matrixes, and Historical Ideas: Rushide, Neo, the American Revolution and 7-1 Students

This week will mark an intellectual delving into the American Revolution. We have spent the last week analyzing specific events’ impact on this moment in American History, but this week will mark a point where we discuss the intellectual merit of this essential nanosecond in historical time. We will begin by concluding our Scholarly Sparknotes presentations on Monday, and then Tuesday will mark our discussion of midnight and inevitability. Wednesday presents a moment where we become the intellectual freight trains that cut like a razor blade as we “walk the line” with polar opposite statements and assess where we as individuals and community members stand. Our week will conclude with working on our writing extensions, writing tasks that will be worth 80 points and will be due on Wednesday, October 15. The exam on chapter 5 will be on Thursday, October 16.
The post modern philosopher Friedrich Nietszche has been credited with uttering the line, “Truth is a mobile army of metaphors.” I have always been fascinated with such a concept. The notion of describing historical truth through metaphorical analysis allows both students and me to frame history in a paradigm that allows for greater understanding, stronger analysis, and more critical thought. It helps to bring students closer to understanding that the currents of intellectual thought underwrites all historical advancement. I have always believed that ideas have roles and possess power, and that expressing these ideas through metaphors allow a greater chance to holding, if only for a moment, an elusive notion of truth. The first two metaphors I employ in our journey are the notion of midnight and the idea of inevitability.
Salman Rushdie’s book Midnight’s Children highlights the concept of the hour when both hands meet. It is an unique and powerful moment for while the clock strikes repeatedly, the two hands touch for only an instant. This represents a moment that can last for what seems to be an eternity. Rushdie plays with this metaphor throughout his book to describe the world of Indian freedom and independence in 1947. As the protagonist, Saleem Sinai is born into a world of mystery and autonomy at the same moment as the nation of India. This notion nestled into my mind as I became drawn into the parallel between individual psychology and national history. The pain and joy of love and politics seem to be united in one metaphor: Midnight. When applying this same image to America, I found much in terms of similarity. Midnight: The stroke of time when nations and people awake to freedom and life. Midnight: When our “trysts with destiny” are met with the redemption of a promise and a pledge. Midnight: While the world sleeps, a nation and a people awake to life of freedom and the sometimes challenging inevitability of both. Prime Minister Nehru’s words serve as the backdrop to Rushdie’s work, but can also be deftly applied to the study of the colonists’ struggle for freedom. When we study American freedom, my hope is that we will be mindful of time, noting when events brought us to the moment when the clock’s hands met, and when our hands met with history and intellectual analysis.
Midnight will become a central image, a metaphor through which we will examine the colonial struggle for freedom. Accompanying this will be the study of inevitability and its role in the American historical dialectic and within individuals. This metaphor comes from The Matrix. In the narrative, there is an ongoing battle between the forces of authentic reality, embodied by the protagonist Neo/ Thomas Anderson, and the forces of controlled reality, embodied by the antagonist Agent Smith. At the pitch of dramatic tension, conflict ensues between Neo and Agent Smith. When it appears that Neo is going to fail in his desire to defeat the forces of inauthenticity, Agent Smith pins Neo down on a set of railroad tracks and, hearing a train in the distance, he utters prophetic words for both the film and 7-1 students: “Do you hear that sound, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability- that is the sound of your doom.” When he says these words, the insinuation is that Neo will be unable to escape from the clutches of inevitability, from the grasp of what will be. As we study the emergence of the Revolution, the question then becomes whether or not we hear the same sound, namely that of inevitability? Was the Revolution inevitable? Was it bound to happen? What role do human beings play within history? Is history, itself, something that is inevitable or something that can be altered?
It becomes interesting to sense the implications of such a paradigm. If the Revolution was indeed inevitable, then the textbook based mythology is right and America is indeed a shining beacon of freedom and liberty. We, as a nation, were meant to be the city on a hill. However, this means that humans are essentially powerless when faced with the inevitability of history. Human beings seemingly become like Neo, crushed underneath the weight of the historically inevitable train. However, there is a flipside to this coin. If human beings do have a role and can exercise freedom to escape from the train, then we must embrace the reality of failure as a logical extension of our freedom. If inevitability is not present, shortcoming and sad endings become apparent. In this light, we begin to understand that justice and fairness is not always guaranteed. Monsters may walk among us and things may go bump in the night and there might not be a satisfactory explanation for either. Examining the American Revolution in the context of inevitability and midnight helps to create a stronger sense of thought. Plato’s notions of the happy ending, noble lie, and wandering into the world outside of the cave become the constant companions of our 7-1 students as they attempt to determine where they stand in the face of such intellectual paradigms. Once again, we begin to see the dominant theme of ideas having power emerge into full focus.
Some housekeeping ideas conclude this week’s thoughts. Midterm progress reports will be sent home with students this Friday. Additionally, student led portfolio conferences rapidly approach. If you have conferences with me, all confirmations for conferences have been sent, and I have posted his conference schedule on the blog under the “Handouts” link. Students will have their writing extensions due on Wednesday, 10/15, and the exam on chapter 5 will be on Thursday, 10/16. After this, we will start the process of examining the idea of dominant learning styles, which will lead to our writing tasks on chapter 5, worth about 200 to 300 points. Grades are updated each weekend and as we approach the midterm point of the trimester, I encourage all stakeholders to check grades on a weekly basis to ensure a line of clear communication being present.
To paraphrase Agent Smith, I ask all of you, “Do you hear that sound? That is the sound of academic inevitability.” I await to see how all of you stand against that train.

All best and happy hunting.
Mr. Kannan