In the beginning pages of chapter 12, Zull tells the story of teaching a class using a game as the learning activity. He stresses that the results of this game on his students’ learning was problematic for two reasons, 1) the game was “not designed to build on prior knowledge” and 2) the content of the questions didn’t matter to the students’ lives. Zull writes that the students remembered only the superficial, non-academic parts of the game such as who they were playing against, who won and who lost.

I have found this problematic myself in classes. I have often wanted to play a game of jeopardy or trivia with the class to review some text or material before a test but found that the content did not stick in the students’ minds. I think this all comes back to basic student motivation. I have written a great deal this semester about my belief in the importance of relating subject and lesson materials and learning goals to students’ lives. I think the only way to build intrinsic motivation to learn is if we portray the information in a way that seems desirable to learn. I think Zull is in agreement. He uses an example of a scientific experiment done on rats which attempted to provoke a link between the rats’ sense of basic survival—triggered by stimulation of the nucleus basalis—and a separate auditory stimulus (Zull 224). The proper analogy would then be to relate the material of a lesson in a way that made it seem important to the students’ survivals, which I’m sure is not possible most of the time. Though Zull’s example may be just a starting point for a broader conversation about learning, stimulation and intrinsic motivation.

Zull’s chapter 11 deals with he idea of what he calls, “active testing” which, if I understand correctly, is the final step in the learning process. Once we “get knowledge,” that is, we are told something that we take to be true for whatever reason; we then test that knowledge in the concrete world, whether it be through active discussion of the topic and concepts, comparing the information to pre-existing content via the internet or literature, reinterpreting the knowledge into our own words (taking notes), or simply defending our learning of the content. Zull explains that active testing is “always a clarifying process,” meaning that the more we challenge and/or express the knowledge we have, the more clear it becomes to us. He compares our pre-tested knowledge to a scientific theory, which once actively tested—i.e. put into words or made concrete—can either become truth or must be changed.

This portion of Zull’s text seems to be verging on the philosophical, which I don’t mind. I like this idea of active testing, of making knowledge concrete. I like how simple it seems, that by engaging in discussion of a concept or piece of knowledge, we in essence test it to see if it is true and that the action of testing facilitates learning. It clarifies the process of learning.

It also of course reminds me of the classroom in general. In all classrooms general discussion is a huge part of any lesson. A large part of my lessons involved helping students to visualize what we were learning. Many times I would have to explain a concept or piece of content from the lesson in several different ways in order for the entire class to fully grasp it. Google images were utilized more than a few times. I often attempt to relate lessons to my students’ real world experiences. By doing so, a teacher may be able to make connections between the lesson and the real world and therefore make the “theory” untested knowledge concrete in the students’ minds.

I was, unfortunately unable to complete week 5: day 5 of Zadina’s workbook, but looking over the activity now I wish I had been able to find the time. I reappropriated a lesson I found online that is very similar to the activity described for interviews in which I am to teach a mock lesson. In my lesson, we study a poem. The learning goal is for students to use their visual, auditory and artistic skills to analyze  a poem. It can be any poem, but the poem used in the original lesson was “Storm in the Black Forest” by D.H. Lawrence. To begin with I have the students write down a word from the title, say “storm” and ask them to define it and write words they associate with it to the side. Afterward, the main crux of the lesson begins and I instruct the students to draw what they hear as I read the poem aloud. This is the section of the lesson that is most similar to Zadina’s Pictionary activity. The idea of my lesson is similar to that of Zadina’s. We know now what an important role visualization plays in the understanding of concepts. We also know from Zadina’s book that, “Reading is not natural” (141) That is, reading does not occur naturally in the brain, it is not a normal function of the brain such as sight or hearing. This is why the visualization exercise is so important for students, especially those of a young age. Having them draw what they see (no matter their artistic competency) allows them to both visualize the poem’s setting and therefore better understand its themes and tone.

I had the opportunity to teach this mock lesson at two separate interviews and once for a group of genuine 8^th graders. They all said they enjoyed how the lesson was presented, but more than that they were all engaged, thinking critically about the poem and most of them seemed to consider it closer to art than to English. However, they all knew the poem by the end of the class, could dissect its meaning and identify key elements of its tone and themes. By asking for connotations of a specific word, the teacher is actively searching our prior knowledge, which is built on past experience. In ch. 7 of his book, Zull talks about the need for teachers to find old neural networks, those that have been created through past experiences and use them to build new knowledge. This has been an invaluable concept for me. I wish I had come across it while I was in my theory class over the past summer. This idea that as teachers we need to focus, not on the new content but firstly on what the student already knows to be true. His example questions on p. 120—“What does this make you think of?”—are verbatim what I asked my students during my mock lesson.