Week 6 readings

I kind of actually enjoyed this weeks readings...weird.

Maples: I had a lot of fun reading this one. What a great way to get parents involved in your classroom as well as get to know your students? I really loved that idea and honestly think I will try to use it in my future classroom. And I like how she found how to incorporate it into her literacy lessons by finding out student's interests and experiences so she could pick texts that they could relate to. Just thought the whole thing was a really cool idea.

Breitfelder: I love that our articles are becoming more about what we can actually do to improve our classrooms. For the past year or so I kept on feeling like all we were doing in TE was reading about what the problem was and then never finding out how to solve it. That's why I like Breitfelder's article on how teachers can modify their classroom to fit the needs of students with varying disabilities. What I learned from this article was that most students with disabilities are visual and that it's always good to include pictures in their everyday. But it also suggests to write things out for "the readers." My only question is that this article was designed for early childhood so what do we do when the students start getting into upper level grades? Is it still appropriate to facilitate their reading with a lot of pictures? Or is that stopping them from the actual practice of reading? Just a thought.

Marcus: I also really enjoyed reading the Marcus Case. To be honest, I never thought of the struggles a gifted student could be facing. I think the stereotype of a gifted student is that they are really smart AND focused. But now that I think about it, I have a cousin who was a lot like Marcus: very smart but a trouble maker. It was cool to see that once he changed schools and got a new teacher who made accommodations to Marcus, he responded better. He began WANTING to read because at the beginning of the day she would let the student choose their own books to read. And she did what his parents do and that is, warn the students when they have a few minutes until they have to move on. This helps students like Marcus who can just up and leave a project. I also can't help but sympathize with Marcus that he didn't have the fine motor skills to write yet but was constantly being pushed to write, write, write. How awful it must have been to be pressured to express himself in such a particular way and not be able to do it? I can see how students come to hate writing at an early age if they are having difficulty with the simple act of holding a pencil and putting marks on a paper.

Carlisle: I decided to do my jigsaw on How Can I Help Children with Learning Disabilities? In comparison to the Marcus case, Carlisle's article suggests that teachers do what Marcus' new teacher did and that is have the students pick out their own books for silent reading "even if the book the child selects has few words in it," (pg. 3). I assume that reason for this is because some reading is better than no reading at all. And the students can also benefit from looking and analyzing pictures in a book. This is something I wish my placement did. I never see the students reading something that THEY want to read. I never see silent reading time. This is something that I know I always had in elementary and middle school and I valued a lot. And after we'd read, we would write down in our journals a quick summary of what we read and how we felt about it. What a great way to get students not only excited about reading, but excited about writing on a book that they like.

Overall, good readings this week!