Hannah's Week 3 Post
- My MT works with a instructional book that uses one big book throughout an entire week. Each day my MT scaffolds my kindergarteners to further understanding of the book and its theme. While the first day is often spent learning how to read the basic text of the book each day after helps the students to think about how the book might relate to their life. Students are given opportunities each day to discuss the predetermined topic. My MT emphasizes how the books relate to the kindergarteners lives. On the first day each student is given their own copy of the teacher's big book to practice reading. In addition, the books have three to four empty pages for the students to complete assigned activities in connection with the book each consecutive day. MY MT also reads multiple trade books throughout the day. While these readings do not always include discuss with the students my MT uses these book to model good reading techniques. There is also silent reading time everyday after lunch where students read books that our at their level. Finally, books are placed all around the classroom for students to read and look at during their free time.
- After reading the three articles there were many different ways I am interested in incorporating literature into the curriculum. First, I am interested in seeing how Langer's four stances of interpretation discussed in the article Understanding Literature would work in a kindergarten classroom. "The four major stances in the process of interpretation [...]: being out and stepping in, being in and moving through, being in and stepping out, stepping out and objectifying the experience." (Langer, 813). I feel that my class often just discusses the surface level elements of the literature they read. I would be interested in seeing kindergarteners use higher level thinking. The teacher would need to provide scaffolding in the form of open ended questions to begin the student's thinking process. This would help student's to think critically about the books they are reading. One way to help students think critically about literature would be to include more social issue books in the classroom. This topic was discussed in the article Out of the box: critical literacy in a first-grade classroom. Kim Huber wrote about how social issue books and changed her students "They now look critically at texts, looking for clues into the meaning the author intended. They have examined books for hidden assumptions and have looked at how the readers are being positioned through these texts." (264) I saw some of this from my kindergarten teachers when my MT read a story about Martin Luther King Jr. The students discussion was longer and more in depth. In addition, the students talked about their feelings about the book and what they want to do to make sure everyone feels included. I would like to include more social issues book into the classroom to encourage students to think critically about social issues and books. Finally I enjoyed the multimodal discuss in the article Theories and practices of multimodal education: the instructional dynamics of picture books and primary classrooms. Not only are students interacting and learning from different media forms such as videos and the internet but books have multiple modes within one book. "Each element of a picture book, then, is a mode of sorts, because all of these features are socially and culturally shaped resources that signify something." (Hassett & Curwood, 271) I think children take meaning from the variety of modes present in today's children's books without even recognizing they are doing it. The different modes present in today's literature allow student's to use their own prior knowledge to construct their own individual meaning of the book. I would like to incorporate more multimodal books into the classroom because I think children find them more interactive and interesting.
In my classroom, my MT uses literature by reading a story to the children each day. The story is usually a picture book about a fictional topic. However, after the story has been read, there is no discussion about what was just read. It seems as if my MT is utilizing this time to read to the children for fun. The Langer article mentions the differences between reading for information and reading for fun. When reading a book for fun, Langer suggests staying away from the typical teacher response of reading the enjoyable book to get the right answer. While my MT does not do this, she also does not initiate any type of discussion about the book she just read, which also seems counter-productive. In my classroom, I would like to discuss a book with my students before, during, and after reading it. This would help the students verbalize the four processes of interpretation, discussed in the Langer article. These types of discussion would help scaffold the students to go through each process as they read a book.
ReplyDeleteAlso, my MT just started having the students participate in silent reading time. Each child has a "book bag," which is a bag that contains various leveled books at each child's reading level. My MT told me the goal of this process is to get the students to focus on word reading accuracy. Therefore, a student has to read a book aloud to a teacher (my MT, intern, or me), and he/she has to read every word correctly. If the student does this, then we take that book out of their bag. If the student misses even one word, then he/she has to keep practicing until he/she can read every word correctly. The goal is to get rid of all of the books in the bag, so they can get new books to read. During this time, the classroom seems competitive among the students to get a teacher to listen to them read. This reminds me of what the Critical Literacy article talked about in what not to do with literacy. Silent reading time places so much emphasis on decoding the words correctly, that the students are not engaged in any higher-level thinking about the stories they are reading. While decoding is an important reading skill, this article points out that readers today need to do much more than decode what they are reading.
In addition, my MT uses some multimodal texts in her classroom. My school uses the Reading Street ELA curriculum, which comes with stories to read each week. My MT put a lot of these stories on her SMART board, and reads them to the students from it. I have only been in the classroom one time to see this happen. After reading the story, my MT asked the students comprehension questions, and one question about how the students could prevent the problem that happened in the story (the story was about pollution). In the computer lab, the students participate in a game-based reading program that involves reading books on the computer. After reading a story, they can take quizzes about what they read, and they earn points to buy items for the game. In my classroom, I want to read a lot of multimodal books to engage the students, but also to get them thinking beyond what the print in the book says.
Finally, I have never seen my MT read critical literature to my first grade students. However, reading the article about critical literature interested me to try this in my placement, especially since my students are in the same grade as the students in the article. My students do not get the opportunity to critically evaluate literature or issues that our society faces. Also, my students rarely get the opportunity to write down their own ideas (the writing is usually copying down what is on the board). Using critical literature in the classroom is one way to get the students writing more about their own ideas. Also, using critical literature in the classroom gets the students to connect what they are learning about in school to contexts outside of the classroom.
In my classroom, I do not see the language arts lesson that is done with the entire class. Instead, I see a group of students that my MT works with because each teacher in the second grade works with a different group of students depending on their reading levels. My MT works with the smallest group, which happens to be classified as the "low-level readers." I have been able to work with other teachers and their groups, but mostly work with my MT's group. My MT reads a book to them, but there is no book discussion afterward. I do not see them thinking critically about the books that are read to them and without a discussion I do not see them using the four stances of interpretation. The students listen to the book, and then work on different things (ex: phonetics) on individual white boards.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see the reading group have a higher level thinking discussion and see their use of the four stances of interpretation or even have a short writing about the stories read to them so they can begin to think about the reading individually and then have a group discussion. My MT will occasionally ask the students questions about the books read to make sure the students pay attention, but I have found that some of the books the MT chooses are easily relatable for the students. The students can often relate to the stories, but most of the time do not get the chance to share their ideas and life experiences that can relate to the story because they are too busy moving on to the next set of work that needs to be done.
Like Hannah, I also saw my MT's reading group think critically when we discussed Martin Luther King Jr.Day and read a book about him. The students also talked about how to make everyone feel included which allowed for a longer and more detailed discussion than the class usually has. The students encountered a social issue and were able to have a thoughtful discussion about being treated fairly. It was interesting for me to see this for the first time (a discussion about social issues) and how well it went. All the students were involved and had great ideas about how people should be treated equally and what they could do as an individual to help make that happen.
As Allison and Hannah, my MT also uses some multimodal texts in the classroom. I agree with Hannah that each student will use their own personal past experiences to interpret the texts differently and that multimodal books should be used in classrooms often to keep the students' interest and are interactive. My MT has the class watch a book on video on the smart board after they get out of recess that can catch the students' interests and can be interactive with songs. The students really seem to enjoy this part of the day and it helps the MT and/or intern have a short break after they get back from recess duty.