Online Reading Circles Role Sheet

Passage Master
Name: Wes Williamson
Group Identification: Group B

Book Chapters: Chapters 5 & 6

Date: June 21, 2015

(Tess Collins, Lainey Howard, Alan Ledford, Wes Williamson, & Vicki Young)
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Your job is to identify key passages and guide discussion of them based on the required
readings. Your job is to develop a list or set of questions that your group might want to discuss
about the required readings in the text and facilitate discussion. Usually the best discussion
questions come from your own thoughts, feelings and concerns as you read which you can list
below during or after your reading. This means you need to organize the required readings into
different applicable themes that are easily digestible and can be absorbed by online reading circle
members. There are no right or wrong ways of facilitating questions based on your readings.
The Keeper of the Talking Stick and Passage Makers role can be combined***Strongly
recommended for small groups.
You are also responsible for deciding the order in which the discussions will be presented and
keeping track of your time. You should plan to spend at least a total of an hour or an hour
and half in each online reading circle meeting talking about all 5 roles.
Possible discussion questions or topics or today.
1. Learners that feel as thought they are excluded from a learning activity will suffer from
loss of enthusiasm and motivation. (pp. 126 134)
A variety of dimensions of intercultural nonverbal communication may play a significant
role in causing a learner to feel isolated in the learning environment. Dimensions
discussed include: immediacy (actions that simultaneously communicate warmth,
closeness, and availability for communication and approach), individualism-collectivism
(focus on the individual rather than the group), gender (impact on role and
communication behavior), power distance (degrees to which power, prestige, and wealth
are unequally distributed in a culture), and context (level or response and need for detail
in verbal communication).
Can you describe an instance in which you felt excluded in a learning setting and can you
attribute it to one these dimensions?

2. Strategy 4 Share something of value with your adult learners (pp. 139 140)
In order to connect with your learners and to humanize yourself, share anecdotes such as
funny stories, credible intense experiences, or personal involvement with the subject
matter.
Have you benefitted from such interactions from an instructor?
3. Introduction to four important attitudinal directions (pp. 172 174)
Wlodkowski introduces four key learner attitudes that play a role in an adult learners
motivation for learning. These attitudinal directions are directed: toward the instructor,
toward the subject, toward their self-efficacy for learning, and toward the specific
learning goal or performance.
Was there a time in which you lost motivation to learn and could you ascribe your loss of
motivation to one of these four attitudes? Follow-up . . . were you able to overcome your
loss of motivation?
4. Strategy 25 Use Entry Points suggested by multiple intelligences theory as ways of
learning about a topic or concept (pp. 214 220)
In an effort to overcome adverse attitudes toward a specific particular learning
experience, Wlodowski suggest that strategies should be implemented to create relevant
learning experiences that are grounded in a sociocultural perspective. Five different entry
points, narrative, logical-quantitative, foundational, esthetic, and experiential approach
are described to tools to introduce topics and help learners access relevant access to
content through multiple intelligences.
Which of these entry points will you consider using for your learners and why would you
use it?