Alien Pedagogy

I suggested to my grade 9s that material objects can be used to represent abstract ideas on Friday. I wish that I’d read this passage from The Golden Compass first.

Describing the alethiometer, Pullman writes:

“All three pictures round the rim, they’re symbols. And each of them stands for a whole series of things. Take that anchor, there. The first meaning of that is hope, because hope holds you fast like an anchor. The second meaning is steadfastness. The third meaning is snag, or prevention. The fourth meaning is the sea. And so on.”

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events also clearly explains complex ideas on a regular basis.

Dr. McLeod posts this “Shift Happens” influenced video asking how we should teach students to master low level content. It’s a relevant question, but I’d prefer to be forwarded to some sort of research before I enter into an unproductive line of speculation.

In a recent PD session, Dennis Sale reported that the research (mostly Marzano’s) shows that students are unable to interact and manipulate information at a high level until they’ve memorized the content that goes with it. In other words, a thinking curriculum is more effective when higher-order thinking is taught alongside rote learning.

What research do should we refer to in order to balance our classroom teaching?

I asked several Grade 9 students to pick up books for my DEAR reading shelf yesterday.

They brought back:

• Colfer’s Airman
• Meyer’s Twilight trilogy
• Darren Shan’s Demonata
• Westerfield’s Uglies trilogy

I also asked them to return with Coelho’s The Alchemist.