Saturday, January 24, 2009
Language Arts Vignettes group c 650pm
View the NCTE/IRA vignettes at your level in the pdf standards handbook and then post entries on Class Blog for your group:1)propose “meaty” fat questions to discuss,2) make connections to your teaching and work with students, and 3) Please respond to two of your classmates’s entries in your study group.4) Consider how what you have learned from this book might support the work of your integrated language arts unit
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6 comments:
In Vignette 1 and several other vignettes, I noticed that the students in each classroom feel comfortable working together and feel safe to participate in a group discussion where they share their ideas and take risks with their learning. I have always thought that setting up a positive and safe classroom community was so important. I spend a lot of time in the beginning of the year getting to know my students and using ideas from “The Morning Meeting Book” to help them get to know one another and feel comfortable sharing ideas with one another. How do you set up your classroom community? Why do you think this is so important to do?
After reading Vignette 3, I have begun to think about my own integrated language arts unit. In this vignette, the power of giving students choices about the projects they do was evident. These students were clearly motivated by their interest in water pollution and worked hard to research and present the information they collected. This successful story of student inquiry makes me want to give my students options in my integrated unit. Whether it be a research project or a literature study, I think that giving students choices about topics and the way they present information is very powerful.
In response to your question, Brianne, about how we set up our classroom community: I set up mine in a similar fashion to yours. I, too, use many ideas presented in "The Morning Meeting Book" to help build a sense of community in my classroom and to help students feel comfortable to discuss and take risks in my classroom. We have a morning meeting everyday, and I find it beneficial. Not only is it an enjoyable time for students (as that is the time of day we do some fun "activities"), but it is also the time we address any issues occurring in the room, and it also brings us together as a class.
Upon reading this Vignette, I began thinking about my integrated language arts unit, as I would love to see such situations occur in that unit. Therefore, I will begin thinking of assignments that will encourage such interactive discussions to help students better understand a concept.
As I read Vignette 1, I also made a connection to my classroom, as I consistently reinforce the importance of respecting one another's opinions and actions, as it is a goal of mine to have all my students feel comfortable to take risks in my room. It was great to read how those first graders were so willing to take risks to read the title of the story without fear of being criticized if they made a mistake. While my fifth graders are not always so open (as they become much more self-concious at the ages of 10-11), it is so encouraging when my students do take similar risks, as it makes them more invested in the learning process. Therefore, open and risk-free discussions is something I strive for in my teaching.
I also made a connection to Vignette 6, as that situation was similar to what I see quite often in my classroom. While I have many students who enjoy reading and have little trouble picking out a book, I also have a handfull of students who do not care for reading at all. For many of them, it is because they still do not know which kinds of books they enjoy. I approach this dilemma in a similar way to the teacher in this Vignette. When I conference with the student or when I notice a relectant reader at the bookshelves, I show him/her some of the books we have that I feel might strike his/her interest. I quickly booktalk those stories, and when the student chooses one, I express my excitement to hear his/her opinion of the text. If that child does enjoy the book, I then encourage him/her to booktalk it to the class. Upon doing so, other students become more curious about it since one of their friends enjoyed it. While it doesn't work all the time, I have found this method was successful in several instances.
Vignette 7 reminded me of an ongoing goal of mine: teaching and encouraging the use of successful reading strategies. While I spend a good amount of time modeling, teaching, and practicing these strategies with my students, I still struggle with knowing if they are truly using them on their own without explicitly being told to do so for a given assignment. Is there any way to tell if those strategies have truly become independent, or is it something to just somewhat hope for?
Vignette 3 was a situation that I would love to happen in my room, but unfortunately it rarely does. While I give my students choices occassionally for assignments/projects, I do not see students take such initiative on their own. I constantly attempt to show/explain the real world connections to what we are learning, and while my students will ask intriguing questions, they never take it to the level of doing something about those questions. How can you encourage students do take such an initiatve without giving out an actual assignment and have them actual follow through with the project? I would love it if I could spark such an interest with an assignment in my integrated language arts unit, and I will therefore be thinking of activities that could lend themselves to such inquiry as I begin planning my unit.
I agree Brianne,
I believe that creating a positive and safe classroom community is vital to student's learning environment. It is especially important that struggling readers feel comfortable and safe because they are more vunerable. Many are self-conscious about their reading because they read below grade-level. I taught in a middle school self-contained classroom which included students with learning disabilities and behavior problems. These students were often quick to criticize eachother. I had to work very hard to create an enfironment in which students could develop self-confidence and tolerance of others. Community meetings are a great place to discuss differences, talk about feelings, empathy and working together. I think that volunteering in the community is one way to teach these things. My class volunteered at the local convalescent center in town. These students enjoyed helping and interacting with the senior citizens and I believe they learned a lot about differences and tolerance. I also found that peer tutoring was helpful. For example, if some students were good at math-they may work with another student who needed help in that area. Focusing on the student's strength is helpful for building self-confidence.
Vignette 3
Allowing students to choose activities that really interest them creates excitement and motivation. I think it helps students feel that they have choices when it comes to their learning experience. Our elementary schoo has a program called "responsive classroom" all teachers must give students a variety of choices when it comes to projects and activities. The benefits of allowing students the freedom to "choose" their specific interests are clearly shown by the group of 5th graders who enthusiastically pursued the water pollution project
Krysta, I also teach my fifth graders to use reading strategies through modeling and reading aloud to them. I feel the same concern as you mentioned—are our students really using these strategies independently without prompting? At the end of my reading workshop, my students and I usually close with a whole class share and sometimes I will ask my students to describe the strategies they noticed their minds using as they read. I have found this to be especially helpful for me to assess whether or not they are using the strategies. Often times, students will share pages that helped them to really visualize, ask questions or make connections (these three strategies seem to come up the most with my students). Another thing that I ask my students to do is to reflect on how they feel about their use of a certain strategy. After my last unit on making connections, I asked my students to do a self-reflection. They were asked to explain how comfortable they felt using the strategy and to explain how it helped them to understand as readers. By reading their reflections, I had more of a sense of where my students were with making connections and was able to pull a few guided groups for additional work with this strategy.
I also connected with Vignette 6. I have a few students who struggle with book selection and always seem to be forgetting their book at home or abandoning it after a few days. One of my students in particular always seems to have a new book started but never finishes anything and recently told me that he hated reading! I have tried to match this student with books that he’d enjoy but have been unsuccessful in motivating him to read at home and stick with a book. I am on the verge of forcing him to stick with a book until he finishes it. How do you help reluctant readers like this stick with a book they enjoy without forcing them into reading? Is it a bad thing to tell a student they can no longer abandon books or will that just encourage “fake” reading?
Renee, I think that it is so exciting that your school has created that “responsive classroom” environment. It must be great that your students are used to and comfortable with having choices about their work. I have found that sometimes it is challenging for students to come up with ideas for their own projects when they are given choices as they weren’t always given choices in the past. It must be terrific to share ideas about the projects your students are doing with the other teachers at your school as well!
I definately made connections to vignette 6, a couple of my students read below grade-level and they often have difficulty finding interensing books they can actually read. They are aware they can't read some of the same books their peers read and they don't want to be seen reading "baby" books. Often when we find books they can take home to read for journal response, they run and put them in their lockers so no one will see the books they chose. They don't mind sharing the next day-they just don't want to show the (lower leveled books). I'm always on the look-out for interesting books at a lower level (Scholastic book-clubs).
Brianne, I really like some of the ideas you presented about how you run your reading workshop. I can see that it would be beneficial for students to close with explanations of what strategies they used and how the strategies helped them. I definitely will begin asking such questions, as I can see my students making more of an effort to use their strategies knowing that I'll be asking about them. Of course, the hope then must be that they do this enough that it begins to be more natural and they use those strategies in other settings other than school. I AM THINKING THAT WHEN I BEGING MY LANGUAGE ARTS UNIT I CAN USE THAT SAME STRATEGY. THE STUDENTS WILL BE READING MORE NON-FICTION BOOKS ON THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, AND THROUGH REINFORCING THE STRATEGIES TO USE WHEN READING NON-FICTION AND THEN HAVING THE STUDENTS EXPLAIN EITHER ORALLY OR IN WRITING WHICH STRATEGIES THEY USED AND HOW THEY HELPED THEM WILL NOT ONLY PROVIDE ME WITH AN ASSESSMENT ON THEIR ABILITY TO USE THE STRATEGIES, BUT IT WILL ALSO GIVE THEM ADDITIONAL PRACTICE WITH THE READING STRATEGIES. (This was in all caps, as it relates to my integrated unit.)
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