Mr. Hossack

     Mr. Hossack taught a very engaging class on the Senecas with reading and expressing ideas. He did not lecture but rather taught in a way that guided students through what he wanted them to learn. Mr. Hossack began with a brief introduction and discussion session, instructing students what he wanted them to do, clarifying any words that may have been confusing such as “gist.” His main goal was for his students to see the connection between important details and the main idea. He guided his class through a closed reading process. Students would first read the entire text without stopping to get the flow of the passage. This would incorporate minimal intervention from the teacher. This allowed students to continue to persevere through their reading and become more motivated to read through the piece. Then, students would read the passage again, circling the words they found important or may have been unfamiliar. Then, students would annotate the text and write the “gist” of the reading in the margins of the text. It was important that the students broke the reading into one-two paragraphs so that they could get a better understanding of what was going on. Students would read and record important details in that fashion. Then, Mr. Hossack had the class get together in front of an interactive white board and discuss the main idea. He had the students pair up and go around the room to read details the teacher personally picked out. The students had to write on a post-it about if they felt that particular detail was important and why. Finally, students debriefed with the teacher and they talked about which detail they felt was the most important in supporting the main idea and why. This was used as an informal assessment to see if students really got the idea about how details connect to the main idea. His main questions he kept asking to those students who spoke about the detail they liked best was “how did it connect to the main idea?” Through this, this helped students to understand the process of coming up with the thesis or main idea of paragraphs and/or stories.