From REV to MTMM

[annaz]

Can someone tell me how the questioning advances towards more critical thinking in MTMM from REV or whether it does or is the differences between these two programs perhaps more on an even keel. We are doing REV now and Storytime contains (Key Idea) "higher level thinking skills". I'm wondering how this questioning advances in MTMM and in what way.

[LynnH]

I can think of 3 boxes where the thinking is a higher level in MTMM. In storytime they are filling out bookmarks after each reading and have questions to answer that follow Bloom's taxonomy. Some examples of this are "What was the author saying about life and living through this book? Explain.", "Connect this book to another book you've read. Explain the connection.". Even where they are doing copywork there is something like this "Copy several sentences of dialogue that show a character's personality." Some of the questions are similar to what they have done before such as "What is something this book has made you stop and think about?". And another one asks them to write a probing or clarifying question about the reading.

In the Worthy Words box they answer several questions that are interpretation questions as well as literal understanding questions. For example after reading a speech by a Vietnam war protester one of the questions asked them to look at a specific part of the speech and figure out how the Vietnam war was viewed in contrast to WWII and why might this be? They write their answers and then come and have a Socratic discussion with the parent. These are great! I have been able to guide my ds in understanding how his knowledge of the history behind the document can help him interpret the document and I can challenge him to give me proof from the text that backs up what he is saying.

The third box that has some deeper thinking is the reading about history box where there are some assignments such as looking at posters, cartoons or newspaper articles from the time and either answering orally what they think it is saying or sometimes in writing in the notebook pages. These are not as obvious as some of the ones that are in earlier guides. They can be challenging to really figure out. They also do some outlining of the history readings. One thing that I didn't think would be harder, but it is for my ds, is when he is asked to pick out character traits about a person after reading. He tends to want to give me facts about them such as where they are from or what they did verses really analyzing their actions and coming up with overall character traits.

I know you were mainly asking about story time, but I thought I would throw in the other things also. Hope that helps some.

[annaz]

This is exactly what I was looking for! Thank you! In reference to Storytime, I was merely using that in example in REV as a reference point. Yay! Thanks!