I think my post is going to be a lot like Sarah's in that I wanted to mention TE 348 too. Especially after reading the Hassett article-- all I could think of was that these were principles we were taught in TE 348. One thing that will always stick with me from that class is that we can't hold ideologies about our students; we can't just assume that they won't understand something or it will go over their heads. This is why we need more instruction on the multi modal aspects of literature. Before I had taken 348, I had never realized that picture books could be so complex. I just thought of them as this thing that had pictures and a couple of sentences at the bottom. But it was after I had 348 that I had realized that the font, size of the text, the colors used, the artistic design, and the point of view had so many meanings. Not only that, but each part adds something special to the story. If we can get our students to start considering every element in their reading, their analyzing ability will increase tenfold. However, I'm not totally sure how I feel about students shouting out ideas throughout a reading. I believe that could potentially get too distracting and also disruptive. Maybe if some base rules were set before hand. Or maybe the teacher could read the story one time though without interruption and then another time through while having the students calling out what they think.
What I love about these readings is that it's not about the student being right or wrong. It's very much based on the opinions and thoughts from the student. Each individual student will come up with something completely different and unique from the other. In the Langer reading, Being out and stepping in, Being in and moving through as well as Being in and stepping out all encourage each student looking back on their prior/background knowledge to make connections with the text. I like this idea because the students will be learning more by building off of ideas they already know.
The only problem that I have with these articles are that it's unclear about what we should do if our students are not responsive. What I've found in my placement was that the Advanced readers will have tons to say about the reading or story. They will back connections with other texts, with their daily lives, with their school projects and experiments. But what about the Strategic Intervention (S.I) readers? When I'm reading to them and asking question, I often find myself hearing crickets. It's like they don't hear me. If I ask a critical thinking question, they avoid my eye contact. There's a major lack of rich discussion. What do we do? How do we make the students responsive without it feeling like pulling teeth. It can get really exhausting trying to force kids to talk.
As I had mentioned in my previous post, before taking 348 I also did not realize how complex picture books could be. This is very important to keep in mind when deciding what literature we use in our classrooms and how we present these books to our students.
ReplyDeleteSomething else in this post that I agree with is the students shouting out ideas throughout a reading. This can get out of hand very quickly. In my TESOL placement this week I observed this first hand. When the teacher was working with 4 ELLs that were in Kindergarten, they constantly wanted to shout out their thoughts while she read them a story. This disrupted the reading and the students got off task very quickly. Pretty soon they were yelling out things that had very little to do with the story whatsoever. I think especially with this age group it can be hard to allow comments because they can all over the place. However, I really like the idea from this post of reading a story once without interruption and then reading it a second time allowing students to interject. This would ensure that all students were listening the first time through and could focus, but allowing them to voice their thoughts afterwords.
Melody,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post.
The end...
Just kidding!
No, I really did enjoy reading your post. I liked that you drew all of the articles together into a cohesive whole. I am starting to see how all of the readings connect with each other and in very specific ways each week as they are grouped together.
What I really valued about the articles this week, and what I think you touched upon in some good detail in your blog post, was that the articles all seemed to stress (especially the Langer and the Creighton article) the idea of student choice in what they read and finding value in seeing themselves represented in the literature they find in the classroom. Students are going to come into our classrooms with an array of personal and emotional problems including race, financial worries, and, even sometimes, issues of gender and sexual orientation. I know it might seem strange to think that elementary schoolers can have these as issues they deal with but they do. I remember the agonizing lunch recesses when I felt forced to play football with the rest of the guys in my class when really all I wanted to do was swing or climb all over the jungle gym creations that smattered our playground. Profound? No, but nevertheless there are inherent problems that go into choosing ones desire to swing/climb rather than tackle and toss around the ol' pigskin.
Literature, however, can help to not only allow students who may be struggling to fit in socially, see their likeness reflected on page as well as allow for critical thinking and discussions in the classroom. I think that's what these readings really are all about.
I thought you brought up some very interesting points throughout your post. I liked the last paragraph where you talked about students who struggle with reading because they are often difficult to teach because they don’t respond to you if they don’t know the answer. A teaching strategy that I have seen used affectively for this problem is pair sharing. Each student is given a partner and after the teacher reads a story or during a discussion the teacher tells the students to turn to their partner and tell them what they think. In this activity the student is able to share their ideas in a non-threatening way. Another strategy that might be helpful for students who struggle in reading is to have them write in a reading journal about what is going on in the text, what they think about the story, or a topic that the teacher chooses. This way the teacher can read the journal and the students don’t feel intimidated by the teacher.
ReplyDeleteI liked that you brought up 348 because that was something that I also picked up on in the reading. What was interesting about your post though was this sense of difficulty and analysis when dealing with so many of the textual elements, especially in picture books. While I do think that it adds a lot of "material" past the text, I almost think it makes it easier for the students to read sometimes because if they cannot read the literal text, they can at least rely on the surrounding clues to try to understand what is going on. From an analysis point though, I think you're right. It adds a lot more depth than what students might initially be used to.
ReplyDelete