Response to Breanne

I also do not see much of students talking in my placement in English Language Arts classes because of the MEAP test. For our ELA lessons, students are doing MEAP prep booklet since school started. Each day, students have an hour to work on their MEAP prep booklet. In the first two weeks of school, my MT read the passages to the class and gave students about 25 minutes to answer questions by themselves. Then, as a class, MT will go over the questions and ask students to support their answers such as why the other choices were wrong or where can you find answer in the passage etc. So, this would be inquire into text talk that The Book Club Plus! Mentioned in the book that I have observed in my classroom. However, the conversation did not last long enough to push students’ thinking. And now, students are not allow to talk when they are doing their MEAP prep because they need to also practice how to take the test by themselves without teacher read to them or help from their classmates. Although there was a lot sharing when they were doing their quote. Once a week, my MT teaches one quote and have students write it in their composition book and write one short paragraph about how it is related to their own life. Today’s was a quote from Henry David Thoreau, “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.” At first, MT talked about her experience doing bungee jump when she was young and she said that she was scared to death but after she jumped she glad that she has done it. Then, everyone started to raise their hand to share their fear and how they have overcome with it. This was a good opportunity to relate the students to the quote for the week and every student was eager to share their fear.

Third Week Post: Talk in Text

The only talk about text that I see/hear from my students is during Reading time. I see mostly Science and Math, therefore I don’t get to experience students talk about text during Language Arts and Social Studies. Every day we have Reading for an hour and a half. During this time, we do two scripted programs. First, is Reading Street, and the other is PALS. The program PALS we just started, therefore I have not actually seen it being practiced in my classroom yet. We have just taken our end of the first week test for Reading Street and the students moved on to Day 1 of Week 2 on Thursday. Although Reading Street is scripted and does not leave much room for freedom, we do still get to hear some student talk regarding the text that they are reading. At the beginning of the week, there is a main question. The first week's topic was on what makes people act courageously. We took the opportunity to relate the students to the text that we would be reading. We discussed different things that they do that are courageous, such as riding a bike, learning how to ride roller blades, sticking up for someone, etc. We then talked about why they do these things. Students responded with answers such as: they wanted to be brave, they wanted to learn, their friends could do it, etc. The Book Club Plus! book refers to this as contributing surface knowledge. Before starting the text, we opened up the class to a community share and learned about their background knowledge of the topic. While reading the text, we asked questions to check the student’s understanding of the text. The week’s comprehension skill was “monitoring,” so we wanted to make sure to practice this skill and had the students practice this skill so that they understood how to use it. By asking students questions such as: “Why did he do that?” We are asking the students to dig deeper and really think, or inquire about the text. After reading the text, we usually have students reflect on what they just learned. We do this by asking the class questions or asking them to talk in their groups. In their groups they often refer back to the original question: “What makes people act courageously?” Although the three kinds of thinking are touched upon in Reading Street and we try to have the students use them, I still don’t believe we do enough for the students to actually develop those kinds of thinking when reading text. This is something that I hope to work on doing during my guided lead teaching because we can get a little away from the Reading Street Program and have a little more freedom. (From my understanding?)
Something that I really liked reading about in the Book Club Plus! reading was the examples of MariAnne’s students using the fishbowl to talk about text. A quote that I really liked in the text stated: “Book Club Plus is based on the theory that language and literacy skills are learned through socially interactive settings that allow children to play with language and take risks. (pg. 68)” I think that having a fishbowl in the classroom is a perfect example of this. Students are able to socially interact and talk with their classmates and just say what they are thinking and really whatever they want to about the text. Fishbowls were something that I used in TE 448 a couple of times, but I have never seen it used in any other type of classroom. I think that it would be really interesting to personally see. I am not sure how exactly it would go in my classroom and if it would work, but I think it would be a cool thing to try out with the students. I also liked the questions about that MariAnne came up with at the end of the fish bowl for them to use talk to surface understanding and also reflect on their peer’s discussions. Using questions like these would be something I would consider doing, with whatever approach I use, to get more insight on what the students learned and what their thoughts were on the approach used.

reponse for Carolyn

Oh! I also really like how your MT uses delicious hamburger as a graphic for a great paragraph. As I was reading Writing Essentials, I realized that students are not getting a big picture why they are learning those different skills to write. Students are just write because that is what the teacher told them to do or what the test booklet told them to do. I as a student, I also just did whatever was told me to do. Also, including audience in all writing is essential because then students will know it is not just for the teacher to read and to grade them. So students will put more effort to provide background information that the reader will need to know when they read which will lead to quality writing.
I have not seen much writing in my classroom yet. Only writing that I have seen was for social studies class. Students had to write persuasive paper about whether school should allow students to play dodge ball at school. My MT went through writing process and with students on the white board. So as a class, they made a T-chart and gave reasons if they agree or disagree. It was a good modeling how she drew the T-chart and made everyone copy it down and decide which side they are on. However, at the same time because they did everything together, there was no creativity in their writings. It was all similar what they wrote in there paper.
I totally agree with in essential writing that writing requires a daily commitment and if we value writing then we will make time for it. It is sad that my 5th graders are not writing as much as they need to. It is because there are so much to cover in their curriculum and also they do a lot of MEAP preps which are reading and grammar lessons. So hopefully students are done with MEAP test, they can do some more writing!

Week 2 - Writing in the Classroom

With the writing I have seen go on in my classroom, I have been fairly impressed. My MT has done a great job modeling ways of creating effective paragraphs. We have a great graphic hanging up in my classroom that depicts a great paragraph as a delicious hamburger. This graphic immediately intrigued and engaged my students, so that they were already pumped up about learning how to write “delicious” paragraphs.

First, my MT started by introducing the idea of a topic sentence; however, she didn’t just do by saying “Topic sentences are a part of a paragraph, and they help to introduce the main point of the paragraph”. She had the students suggest interesting topics that meant something to them – some of the examples my students thought of were things like their dogs, their favorite vacation, etc. She then had the students give example of intriguing topic sentences, and she would revise them on the board in front of the whole class, in order to model a good revising thought process (“Is this clear?”, “How could I arrange the words to make it sound better?”)

The only thing that I haven’t seen in my classroom yet is conferences, and I think that my students could really benefit from having them. My students are comprised of a lot of lower achievers, who lack confidence. Having feedback from either my MT or myself could not only guide them in a good direction, but could really boost their confidence as well. I really like the idea of having the “I Can…/I’m working on…” list for the student while conferencing with them one-on-one (on pg. 219). It gives them things to feel pride in, and makes them feel capable, while also giving them helpful suggestions that can make their writing more effective – and the wording “I’m working on..” does not discourage them.

Balanced Literacy

Regarding my literacy instruction:
What can I do ? (agency)
-There are four curricular target areas for literacy in the Book Club Plus page 16-17 which are comprehension, writing, language conventions and literary aspects. In these four areas, there are many sub-areas under the target areas. I can do all of those target areas but some areas might be weaker than others.

What can I do? (readiness)
-As a teacher, I can study more on some of weaker areas such language conventions especially words and grammar. Also, I should read more children's book so I can be able to choose which books are good and which books are not.

What can I do? (action)
-During the literacy instruction, I can give more explict instructions to students and I can also do different reading methods such as read aloud, guided reading, paired reading and silent reading etc.

My placement for both Junior and Senior year in MSU were in kindergartnen class. So I have seen my CTs do many read aloud for their kids because kindergarteners cant really read. While they read the story, teachers kept asking students to see if they are following or not. And I also had chances to do read aloud to students and when I did it, I accessed their prior knowledge because I think it is a good strategy to help students place stories and informational texts in a familiar context. Also, I asks students to predict what is the book about just looking at the cover of the book. So, I am pretty confident doing read aloud. However, now I am placed in 5th grade with no experiences at all in upper elementary classroom, I am worried that I dont know the stuff what 5th graders learn. I have not actually seen a literacy class but I know that they are going learn grammar soon. So I hope to learn more grammar and learn how to write a better paper.