In response to the readings for today, I can now reflect upon my classroom and I can definitely notice a trend. I mostly see recitation in my classroom. Occasionally, my CT will pause and give the students a few minutes to discuss, but since the students seem to be trained to just say answers, they just blurt out the answers to questions they think they are being asked. The students don't often reflect upon each others' comments more than saying "That's wrong."
I believe that this is an especially important time to promote more of a discussion-centered literacy learning since the students I have are so young. This is an important time for that because this can be something that the students can take with them and can grow off of and become confidant learners and thinkers.
I agree with the Almasi article which suggests recitation reaps more benefits than does traditional discussion, but I also have to question if this leads to students' misconceptions of ideas. For example, when my CT's classroom was helping my CT spell out words from a personal story she used for writing, she did not correct the students when they suggested incorrect ways of spelling. I also noticed similar patterns in some of the examples in the articles that were read. I understand the importance of encouragement and exploring and learning from one another, but what happens what it is incorrect to the point where it seems as if students are learning incorrect knowledge at school? This is of great concern for me.
In order for response-centered talk to take place, discussion should take place in the form of a web, with students expanding off of what others say and developing new ideas off of the ideas that started discussion. The teacher needs to provide encouragement and should monitor involvement. The teacher should also steer the discussion in the general direction of where the teacher would like the discussion to go, but provide the students with the opportunity to take theirselves there.
Some students in my class need particular types of scaffolding. For example, one of my students are disabled, so of course he needs 24/7 scaffolding. There are other students where they need concentration scaffolding, where the issues is focusing long enough to do the work. Some students just need the teacher as a support to remind them to hurry up because everything they do needs to be done to perfection so she naturally takes a longer time. As I learned the students' personalities and who they are, I am better able to help them.
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3 comments:
Hey Alexis,
I really personally connected with the fact that often the exchange of ideas does not take place, because I even find myself evaluating other student's responses and not listening to their justifications once I've decided they're wrong. I also notice that in my classroom, and they are second graders, that the need to respond to a teacher's question is stronger than the need to explain one's idea to a peer, or to understand the discourse going on with the rest of the students. Finally, with the text connection, I think that the textbook we used in TE348 gave really great ideas on themes that students can address in large group discussion and ways to connect these themes to their personal lives and experiences!
Hey Alexis!
I really connected to a lot of what you were saying in your post, especially in regards to some of your concerns for students. When you talked about trying to figure out where to draw the line for letting kids explore and facilitating learning of incorrect information, I knew exactly what you were talking about. In my kindergarten class, I see the same things happening as the class works on sounding out words together to write in a story. While I understand that kids need to sound out words and work through inventive spelling, etc., sometimes I wonder at what point the teacher should intervene. For example, one day one of my kids said that "was" was spelled "wuz" by spelling it phonetically. The teacher then had the kids put the word to a song and sing the spelling. I know it makes sense to let them misspell it on the class paper, but to have the whole class sing a song about an incorrectly spelled word just seems wrong. I wish I knew more about what should be acceptable or not in those circumstances, because when I think of my own learning I was had a lot of formal spelling lessons, but now I'm a good speller. At the same time, one of my roommates had an inventive spelling curriculum all throughout elementary school, and she still struggles with a lot of really simple words today. Where is the distinction between encouraging students to explore and making sure they're headed in the right direction? I share your confusion!
Let me lay some fears to rest: there is a lot of research on the impact of invented spelling and it is unanimous in that it doesn't negatively impact kids learning to spell conventionally. The point of invented spelling (which should be explained to kids)is that if they waited until they could spell everything correctly, they would never be able to write. Invented spelling is like self-scaffolding. When teachers record this spelling, they are reinforcing two important things: communication is the main point of writing (the important thing is that someone can read it), and sounds map onto letters in ways that make words that others can read (if spelling isn't correct, the sounds are often enought to carry it). The important thing is that kids realize that this spelling, while functional, isn't conventional. Luckily, they almost always do becuase they are constantly confronted with conventional spellings in their reading.
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