Sense Making

First off I have to say, I hate reading books online. So not only was this content really hard to get through, I struggled reading it on my computer. I like to highlight and follow things with my fingers (like I teach my second graders to do). Putting the book in front of me while on a screen makes it hard for me to read, especially long books instead of short articles. That being said, I had to read and stop constantly. I was really hoping to get through it quickly but I knew after the first few pages that was not going to happen. After reading this I noticed there was also a video to help us understand it. That helped too. I was listening to the video while finding the information in the reading to help me connect them together.

So  something that did make sense (or at least I think it did) was that I need to help students build a bridge that is designed specifically for them to make sense of information. Each student comes from different backgrounds no matter what race or ethnicity they come from. Students use information to bridge the gap, but the sense making does not stop after they built the bridge. It continues after they crossed it. (Am I even making sense???) Teaching students to communicate can help students bridge that gap.

If I were to try and teach this to a high schooler I would want to have some sort of picture representation along with a video to help teach this. Giving them the book to read probably would be very difficult to understand. I might have them research the information and Brenda Dervin to see what they came up with first. Based on this video, I might have them play a game that only one student knows the rules to. Then the other students have to make sense of what the other students are doing and make sense of the rules. I think this could help introduce the topic of sense making.