Placement class discussions

There isn't much discussion based learning going on in my placements that I can see. When the students are reading, they are doing it more for the practice rather than the analysis of it. They are reading so they can become more fluent and be able to pass their reading tests so they're not placed with the low leveled readers.
I've never seen the entire class have a discussion over a book. I haven't even seen IRE based instruction over a book. The closest thing that I can think of is, when I read with small groups (about 5-6 students), the manual tells me to ask certain questions mostly based on comprehension. There are also questions such as, "why do you think the author chose to..." "Where's the homophone in this sentence?" "What generalizations can you make about..." etc. The kids answer, and yes, sometimes that creates some form of a discussion but it's not a very good one.
I think, first, the teacher needs to show the students how to have a discussion over a book by asking possible controversial or deep questions and trying to probe the students for stronger arguments and answers. The teacher also needs a rich text to work off of. A lot of the stuff we've been reading in my placement are science books that are purely facts and no real imagination. The students can't have vigorous discussions based off of the text books they've been reading.
Hopefully, after showing the students how it's done, then the teacher can have them try to do it on their own. It would be a wise idea for the students to be assigned certain jobs (as said in our readings) so each student can be responsible in participating in some form to the discussion. This will help the shyer students feel like they need to speak up; they know they have a responsibility to fulfill a certain job.
The shy students also need to feel that their opinion is valuable. The teacher can scaffold this while listening to each students' opinion and making statements such as, "that's a great thought. Does anyone agree with ______? Why do you feel that way?" Once the shy students see that other kids will agree with what they say or at least respect their opinions, then they will be more inclined to participate.

Readings for Feb. 14

After reading the articles for this week, the articles that stood out to me the most were the ones about urban settings. Because my placement is in an urban school, and because it is so different from the schools I attended growing up, I try to pay close attention to any literature on urban classrooms. The Scott article, “Effective Literacy Instruction for Urban Children” in particular was interesting to me. One main section of the article discussed the needs of the children in the urban learning environment. These needs include emotional support, exposure, and changes in attitude toward education. This section visibly relates to my placement classroom and relates perfectly to this week especially. This week in my classroom we have been dealing with one student in particular that is refusing to do schoolwork and displaying very unusual behavior. My teacher has been talking with the student and the principal to try to determine what is going on, but it has been a struggle. I have talked with the student also, and this change in behavior may be because of something going on at home. This article says that certain students in these settings often “enter school with a defeated spirit” and that these students need “support by being compassionate enough to look at each child individually and realistically, to communicate genuine care and concern for the student, and to help the students move past emotional issues being dealt with at home”. This student has been told that it does not matter to whom, but they must tell someone if something is wrong. It is so important to let a child know that you are there for them if they need something and providing emotional support. While working with this student one-on-one today to try to encourage him to do some work, he told some details about him home life and I realized just how important it is to listen to your students and be there for them. The article discussed how it is easy to assume these students are lazy and do not want to do their work, when in reality there could be so much more behind their behavior in school and things going on in their home life you do not know about.

I have always said that two of the greatest struggles a teacher has is classroom management and making sure you are addressing all your students despite variation of ability. In all classrooms you will have a wide range of abilities and children on different levels. In my placement classroom the range of ability is huge. I have noticed a lot of splitting into groups, one-on-one help for struggling students, and extra extension projects assigned to advanced students as ways of addressing all students and their needs in the classroom. It can be very hard to make sure you are addressing all students and I think this is one of the major struggles a teacher has throughout his/her career.

Week 5 readings

Week 5 Readings

Immediately when I began reading the article on classroom discussion I thought of our own in comparing to the ones we will be teaching in. It mentioned the importance of different views or interpretation of a text by students that make a reading interesting and worth the read. In our TE 401 and 402 classes our discussions about readings and the way we viewed them is the most helpful part of these classes and what makes up a majority of them so why would we not bring this into our own classrooms? I have talked about before the way teachers sometimes view younger students. Do we see them as students at to low of a level to be able to hold a discussion? Do teachers not know where a discussion could fit into a full day of required subjects and glecs? Or are there other reasons? Getting the students to let us see there views and what they understood I believe is a great assessment and way to help students learn from each other. Students should not have to learn alone. The article touched on how bringing the reader’s view of the reading and their own life experiences bring new information to the people around it. Now relating that to my classroom I am in now I have a mix of discussion being interpreted into it. My classroom spends much time reading the books they have to read for literacy and a small amount of time sharing with the class what they read and why they like it. It is a fifth grade classroom that many students need that time to read but the discussion is lacking. This however is what I remember in my classroom growing up. Much time was spent reading and few was spent sharing.

Readings: February 7

I really liked the Almasi and McGee articles because I could relate to them. All my experiences in school and in my placement now I experienced and witness the more “traditional” recitation style discussion around literature where the teacher has a predetermined list of questions to ask students. In my placement, my CT will as the students a question and let most of them answer. She’ll respond to some, but not others. I am in a kindergarten classroom so it may be young to let the students have a student led discussion, however it might be good practice for the students to start having “response-centered” discussions at an early age. This will encourage the students to form their own opinions and conclusions about a text and discuss and compare it with others’. I think that even in younger classrooms this type of talk can be done. It may have to be more teacher facilitated so the teacher should be prepared to encourage others to listen to their peers' responses and ask questions based on them.

I liked the part in the McGee article where it states, “good talks can provide more than just what children know, it can be an opportunity for them to learn.” I really like this because I feel that often time’s discussion is just a form of assessment, seeing what student know or think. Instead, the talk should be more of a discussion not based on right answers or who has the best observation. Any comment can provide a chance for peers to learn from each other and those opportunities should be presented as often as possible through response-centered talk.

Week 5 reading

I enjoyed the Almasi article “A new view of discussions.” This article showed the difference between recitation and discussion. Recitation being when a discussion is led by a teacher who asks the students questions, with which there is usually one right answer. This method focuses on teachers asking questions and students answering, this method is also known as the IRE method. Discussion involves more communication within the class. The students are able to reflect and give their opinions and ask the other members of their class questions. The discussion can be done with or without structure, it is a chance for the class to reflect upon and push their ideas and understanding.

            When I was in elementary school I remember my teachers mainly using the IRE method. I remember doing the reading and the whole time I was reading I was looking for the answer to questions.  My CT does a great job of having actual discussions with her students. When the class reads a book or does a lesson, the students are invited to raise their hand at any time to ask a question or give their opinion. When a student does this my CT generally opens their question up for discussion among the class before she carries on with the lesson. She also stops periodically to ask the students questions about a reading. she will ask questions such as why they think something happened, or how they would have handled a given situation. By allowing the students to discuss what they are doing I think it helps them to retain the information and to make connections with what they are doing. 

Readings 2/7

Almasi article

I like the thought of literacy being considered as a “social endeavor” especially when looking at the discussions because I think that discussing the things we have read help people reach a better understanding of what they have absorbed and also see things from different views. Based off of some of the topics in this article, I feel like I have seen a lot of Initiate-Response-Evaluate type of “discussion” in my classroom. I think that I may have been guilty of doing it as well because it is what I have been programmed in to doing based on past schooling experiences. This article helped me see that this type of recitation was not beneficial for students because it did not allow them to go in depth with what they were learning and just let them stay on the surface. I also completely agree with the article when they talk about the recitation style seeming like more of an assessment than an actual teacher lead conversation. I think that students will catch on to this and become less and less involved. I would like to see more of an interaction that was described on page 8 in my classroom first of all to see how the students would interact with each other and secondly to see if it would help them understand the text any better.

McGee article

This idea of response-centered talk was interesting to me because at first I was a little confused when it was introduced because it sounded like a little bit of the IRE talk that was portrayed very negatively in the previous article, yet also held a bit of the actual discussion type of talk that was mentioned in the Almasi article. This response-centered talk seemed like a happy medium for the previous styles of discussion that were brought up. The one red flag that I had when evaluating these discussion approaches was when it had been mentioned that the talks help students agree upon interpretations. My concern with this would be that some students might just nod along and agree with the other students without actually forming their own opinion, where I personally think it is important for all students to hold their own opinion, even if they do not all agree because that is how they interpreted it and in the long run it might be another thought to bring to the table for other students to consider. I think a way to go about this could be having students write about their opinions and what kind of interpretations they came up with before doing a group discussion. This way the teacher could see all the different views even if the student did not feel like going against the grain in class.

Incorporating literacy in classroom curriculum

Literature is found everywhere in my placement. The students are reading books on every subject as well as just for fun. For my social studies lesson, I read a book that helped solidify some of the concepts we were learning. I think it really added something special to the lesson overall; it helped the students be able to apply some of the terms learned in the lesson to examples found in the book. Like I've said in other posts, the students in my placement are always reading and this is how I want my future class to be run as well. I love the idea of reading a short book about a particular subject to get students in the zone and ready to learn. Sort of like the math book that Professor Oesterle showed us in class. I think that's a great book to have in ones classroom for students to pick up at anytime and enjoy. I just want to make sure that literature isn't just for the "language arts" portion of the class but is applied to all subjects throughout the day. I took a poetry class last semester and was introduced to the idea of reading a poem at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. This is a good way just to incorporate multiples ways of exposing the students to literature.