Article/ Esperenza

I have not quite finished Esperanza but I just finished the article. I think the novel is one that you could easily implement ideas from the article. 

I find it interesting the second example used and the student and teacher's perspectives in "What the teacher didn't know." As a student and tutor now, I think many teachers and students could benefit from writting something similar to this, to gain a better understanding of each other. I think we are so quick to judge and try to make others and ourselves feel sorry for our situations. we try to convince ourselves we have it worse off than others. I believe for most of us it is quite the opposite!

It was briefly mentioned in the article but Teatro seems like a great way to develop author's craft as well. It is also a great way for students to challenge and address the status quo. "Ivonne’s testimony of how she negotiated and developed social relationships challenges the idea that the only way to fully participate in school is through mastery of the English language."

I am always worried however about how administration will react to doing things such as this. just like at the beginning of the article, when you do things out of the norm, you will often be questioned. I worry about coming out of pre-service teacher training without having enough to back up these ideas with if I try to implement them and they are questioned.  

Discussion Groups

I really liked the way we did discussion groups today! Like I said in class, I never liked the discussion groups that my teacher set up in 5th grade because it made reading such a chore. We would rotate jobs each day and there were just some jobs that I absolutely hated. I always thought that things like that got in the way of reading, because a lot of the time I actually did like the books we were reading. I especially liked when we were able to pick the book we wanted to read out of a certain number of books and we were put into groups in that way. I remember one time in particular we were to pick out of 5 books that were all about the holocaust. I ended up really enjoying that book because I got to choose the one that interested me. I think if I end up teaching one of the older grades that is something I would like to set up, only in a more open ended way. I think 4th and 5th graders especially are capable of talking about a book they read without it being completely structured. I like the idea of having them talk about the book and then looking at different questions if the conversation comes to a stop. I actually came into class today hoping that we wouldn't be talking about what a good idea discussion groups where everyone has a different job are, so I am glad that we talked about a different way that they can be run. I am really hoping to learn about more ways to teach reading in such a way that kids will really enjoy it, because reading is fun!

Flint ch 10/ Esperenza

I read the 80pages of Esperenza Rising before I read the Flint and I am glad that I did so in that order. I saw good connections between aesthetic stance discussion in the book and how Esperenza and other non fiction books fit into that stance. I liked the example conversations in the chapter, they really help make each concept concrete for me. Seeing examples from the classroom is extreamly helpful.

I can clearly see how the reader response theory applys and the transaction that occurs as a student (or anyone) reads.

One very important part for me to realize was that stance is an internal and often not visible part of literacy which makes it a little more difficult to gauge and understand but it is still an extreamly important aspect of literacy and discussion in the classroom.

Knowing Literacy

I really liked the part of the reading that was talking about improving assessment by helping teachers make rapid decisions in a more productive way. I really agree with this because there is not always time to do formal assessments and they don't always tell you what you need to know to help your students learn. Teachers have to notice their students and listen to what they are saying and make a judgement of how much they have taken in from there. Teachers have to be flexible and willing to change their plan on the spot according to what their students need to know and how far along they already are. There is not going to be time for a formal assessment for all of these situations, so helping the teacher assess in a more precise and rapid way seems like a really good idea. There is a place for formal assessment and as teachers we are going to have to provide record for parents of how well their kids are doing, but on the average day in the classroom, assessment has to be faster and more subjective to what the teacher thinks they should be covering for longer/moving on from.

Knowing Literacy

"I argue that the ability to listen is a teacher's most important assessment skill." I think Peter Johnston makes a really good point. There is so much you can learn from your students if you take the time to really listen to what they say. Having a discussion with students about literacy, whether they know it is about literacy or not, may be just as effective if not more effective than the traditional paper and pencil test. By listening to a student, you are able to better understand what they are thinking and what their understanding of a topic is. Some students have a hard time translating their thoughts onto paper, so by allowing them to talk about it you may find a deeper understanding. Johnston also states that "children have interesting things to say and that the more you listen, the more you find they have to say". It is easy to assume that because we work with young students, they do not have much to contribute to a conversation because of their age and inexperience. However, I agree with Johnston that if we take the time to actively listen to students, they have a lot to say and much of it is very interesting.

Ray Readings

I really liked how Ray included real samples of student writing in chapter 3. These examples really helped explain the points she was trying to make about writing craft and envisioning all the possibilities involved in writing. The students' final works were extremely well written, and the one that hit me the most was the one that Ray had hesitation about. She said she was disappointed when her student was going to make an alphabet book about his dreams. This piece was astounding to me, especially because of the author's young age. His dreams and the craft he used left a great impact and made him seem beyond his 11 years.

One idea that I really liked from the Ray readings this week, was her idea of a writer's "office work" or work that they must do to prepare before the actual writing process begins. This is a neat idea to think about because like Ray points out, a lot of kids just jump into writing a story without properly forming the whole idea first. She suggested that research for ideas can come from experiences and from outside the classroom or the "office". This relates to the video we watched in class where we saw a teacher taking his class on a walk around the school neighborhood. You could just see how the kids were getting ideas from things that had happened in certain spots and such. This research allows not only for better writing because of consideration for the topic, author, purpose, etc., but it makes the child so much more connected to the work that their writers craft and quality can really come through!

Ray Ch. 13

When I was reading Chapter 13 of Ray, I stumbled across something that I wasn't sure about. Ray talked about how she helped a little boy with his writing by offering him a writing craft he could use. The boy wanted to write about how there were so many feathers, and Ray told him, why don't you write like how Cynthia Rylant did when she wrote fields and fields and fields. She told him, you can write like this and say feathers and feathers and feathers. This bothered me a little bit, and here's why: I felt as if Ray was sort of writing his story for him. I like her idea of teaching children about writing craft and looking at other authors for inspiration, but I feel like she could have said something different where he would have come up with a way to describe how many feathers there were on his own. I think there is a very fine line between teaching writing and just writing something yourself, and I guess I am not sure if she crossed that line or not. I don't remember ever really being taught how to write, and I especially don't remember learning how to write creatively in elementary school, so I think it would be a really tricky thing to teach. I can really see how Ray's idea of reading like a writer would help kids to learn to be good writers, and I think as a teacher you can give advice to a certain point. I think it might have been more beneficial for her to say something like, "how do you think you could really describe how many feathers there were?" or else show him the passage she was thinking of and ask him how he could get his point across in a similar way. I'm wondering what everyone else thinks about this, because for some reason it just kind of bothered me the way she told him what he should write. Do you guys agree? disagree? (it's on page 246)

rays readings

I enjoyed these readings so much. I often feel overwhelmed with my workload and reading but I am loving learning how kids learn and developing my own ideas about how I will best be able to teach children or provide them with a space they can learn in.

I particularly love her idea about “shopping for ideas”. A seamstress has materials and just needs to decide how to put it together. Students have what they need to express themselves they just need to decide how to put it together.

I am very glad we looked through books today in class because it helped me concrete this concept of shopping for ideas.

Envisioning….what a wonderful thing to have students do. I really connected with Ray’s thought about how this can add so much energy to a student’s writing.

Class Discussion 10/18

I was glad that we discussed Ray's use of the phrase "real world writing". This was bothering me a little bit because I think children already separate what they do in the classroom and what they do at home and we as teachers should encourage our students to think of it all as one. I wouldn't want my students to not value the writing or work they do in my classroom just because it is for school. If school is not the real world when it comes to writing, that devalues a LOT of work I have done over my lifetime. Personally, I think every bit of work or writing is "real world writing". Not valuing what a student is writing in school might also damage their self esteem. Students should be proud of all work they produce, not just if they are in the "real world" being paid for their work.

Reading Strategies

As I have mentioned before, English was never my favorite subject, and once again I remember a reason why that is so. I absolutely hated when I was forced to use reading strategies whenever I was reading a book. I didn't always have something I could make a connection to, and there wasn't always something to predict. I was a good reader and most of the time I could comprehend what I was reading, but these strategies just got in the way of enjoying reading. I think one of my biggest challenges as a teacher will be coming up with other ways to check for understanding in reading that do not involve forcing reading strategies on kids just because that is how reading education has been done in the past. I love the idea of creative book reports that allow kids the freedom to demonstrate their comprehension of a book in a way that makes sense to them and is fun for them. Katie and I had such a good time making our diorama for the book we read, and I remember as a kid that was the most fun book report I ever had to do. I think it is important that we don't get stuck in doing the same kinds of assessment strategies for each book we have the kids read, because every kid has different strengths and weaknesses, and there is more than one way to show understanding of a text.

Guided Reading

I found the video on Guided Reading that we watched last week in class to be really interesting and educational. It provided some great insight into the literacy practices that teachers actually do and to see them really put into action. The video showed several teachers and their guided reading practices and what I liked about multiple perspectives was that while they were all very similar practices in structure, you could see how many skills or practices could be taught through the same practice of guided reading. One teacher was teaching vocabulary, another fluency, and another predictions. Both times that I have been to Cedar Ridge, I have been placed in two different second grade classrooms, of which both teachers were working on guided reading with small groups of children. This most recent time, the teacher was working on making inferences and asking the kids to find context clues to figure out what the author might mean by a certain line. Both this experience and the practices seen on the video, I feel have really given me a basic footing on the idea and practice of guided reading as something I can use in my classroom as an effective tool for a variety of purposes.

Understanding Text

I was intrigued to see a long list of things children do naturally when reading. Some of them I had already considered but was glad to see that children do a lot of these strategies naturally. I like the idea of teaching the strategies for further understanding but firstly basing learning of what they are already doing themselves. I agreed that forcing ideas and techniques on students is not a beneficial way to go about it. I think students get so much more out of assignments when they are open ended and leave kids room to create and imagine different ways to do the project, just like our book report projects. I loved seeing all the different ways to represent a book. I find all of these techniques much more useful and memorable than just simply writing a book report in Word.

video

“Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand”
(Chinese proverb)
I like this statement because I can see its accuracy within my own life.I also enjoyed the video we saw in class because I see it as the second step to the proverb: Show me and I will remeber. Us getting into the classrooms will be the understanding aspect.

Guided Reading Video

On Thursday we viewed examples of teachers leading guided reading groups. This was extremely helpful for me. I am a visual learner, so seeing a teacher perform the skills and techniques we had read about in Flint's book was very helpful. It was also helpful because we were able to observe the students involvement and how they responded to the teacher's instructions; this is not something you can do reading text. It was also nice that we were able to view different reading levels and different styles/techniques that teachers used. One teacher chose novels that he knew interested his reading group because they made a connection to a previous book they had read and enjoyed. Another teacher used the reading groups to work on making predictions. I was able to see some of these techniques in person today when we observed at Cedar Ridge. I was in Mr. Miles's first grade class and when he was reading aloud to the class he used some of the same strategies that we saw in the video.

Flint Chapter 8

One thing I really connected with in this chapter was the story in the beginning with the boys that seemed to be off task while the teacher was running reading workshops. Instead of trying to avert the boys' attention back to what they were "supposed" to be reading, she connected with them and had them explain the reading that was holding their interest. She allowed them to continue with the type of text that most excited them and allowed them to express their creativity. I thought this was a wonderful way to handle the situation. Not only were the boys using literacy skills, but they were having fun doing it and they even influenced others in the class to do the same. This is what I want for my future classroom! I want literacy to be fun and enjoyable, and something the students may not even realize they are working on.

ch 8 Flint

One thing I really connected from the text in class today during the video was about exposing children to high quality oral language texts. Its discussed on page 233. I had jotted down "Im not sure this is a great idea" next to the section. The text read "high quality literature regularly usues language that talks over students' heads but remain intresting and engaging to read."

I was thinking that is it was over their heads the students would not be able to comprehend the text and make connections, but merely be able to decode and seem like they are reading it. But after watching the video I changed my mind. I realized that it is not giving a third grader a book on a seventh grade level, but rather giving them a third grade level book that uses rich language they may not be familiar with. This makes much more sense to me now.

Flint Ch. 8

In this chapter, Flint talks a lot about developing vocabulary and one of the methods she presents is that of using graphic organizers. I really love to use graphic organizers as I know that they always really helped me when I was learning a new text. Reading and specifically reading comprehension is all about making connections, either to other ideas in the text or to experiences outside of the text. When you can make connections with the text, thats when you can really understand and make meaning in a text. Graphic organizers such as Venn diagrams, T-charts, and word webs, like Flint suggests are a way for students to visually map out their connections. In the video that we watched today in class, we saw that teacher use a graphic organizer which she called a "mind map" with her students to make connections and understand a new vocabulary word. The students all made different connections, using different clues from the text and relating them to different experiences and knowledge, but the graphic organizer allowed them all to come to an understanding of the unknown word.

Flint Ch.8

One aspect of learning words that the book talks about that I really liked was contextual vocabulary work. It reminded me of a program my school implemented called Word of the Week. The entire school had one word for every week. It was the english teachers job to teach that word, but it was focused on in all the classes. Most of the english teachers gave extra credit if you could find the word of the week in other forms of literacy. I still remember some of these words today because I worked hard to find the words in books I was reading, tv shows I watched, songs I listened to, etc. By finding the words somewhere other than the classroom text book it solidified for me their meaning. I think this shows that their are other ways of getting kids to learn something other than just here is the word and here is the definition. The book was talking about using drama and scenarios to help kids learn vocabulary. I really liked these ideas because it demonstrated a more creative way to get kids to remember words. Also, I see more value in not just having kids memorize a definition, but having them practice using the words correctly day to day.

Flint Chapter 8

I really like the introductions to each chapter of this book where she shares a story that actually happened in a classroom. I feel that they are really the only part of the book that I can really relate to for the most part, and I really liked the one that this chapter began with. I think it is so easy to imagine a group of boys huddled around something they are doing that is not what they are "supposed" to be doing and then trying to hide it. I think it is equally easy to imagine a teacher that would not even take the time to see what they are doing before completely dismissing it and telling them to get back on task. I think it is great that this teacher took an interest in what the boys were doing and deemed it valuable, because that is what the boys thought of it as. The teacher was also able to turn what they were doing into a learning experience and still allow it to be enjoyable for everyone. I would really like my classroom to look like that in the future. I think it would be great to have a classroom where the children's interests are seen as valuable and where they can have some control of their education. I think more kids would be excited to go to school if all classrooms were run this way. The teacher is showing the students that we can all learn from each other and that reading and writing doesn't have to be boring.