Reading 1: Students can retell a story in their own words.
We have a literacy teacher Mrs.Salstrom in our school. She comes to my classroom twice a week for MEAP prep. Every time she comes to class, she brings one short picture book and reads to class. After she is done reading, she always asks if someone can tell what happened in the story or summarize the story in their own words. So, when someone retells the story, Mrs.Salstrom can find out if that a student can retell story using their own words and did comprehend the story. One of the advantages is that Mrs.Salstrom can quickly know if that student understood the story and another one is that student gets a feedback from the teacher right away. However, this is only limited to one student or maybe just two students because whole class cannot retell the story to the teacher.
Writing 1: Students can use writing to communicate ideas.
My MT and I use our bulletin boards to post students’ writings with different “themes”. For example, one bulletin boards is about “where did your feet take you?” which we did very beginning of school year. For this one, students had to write one paragraph about what they did over the summer vacation. Student had about 45 minutes to write a paragraph what they decorated their paper which was a foot shaped. Another bulletin board is about rock star. Every week, a class will choose one student in the class and write one paragraph about that one student (everyone has to write something nice about them). These are some fun and quick writings that my students do once a while. Advantages of these assessment is that students do not feel like this is a test that they will get grade on and they will just freely write whatever they want to within the big topics. A disadvantage will be that students are not used to write an essay or longer writings. They will get frustrated if we asked them to write 5 paragraph for their essays because they are so use to only write a paragraph.
Writing 2: Students can write for different purposes and audiences.
I have seen two essays in my classroom so far. One was for social studies class when they had to write a persuasive essay to newspaper editor and another one was during their MEAP prep that they have to write argumentative essay. Before students start writing their essays, my MT explicitly explained that they are not writing for teachers (my MT and I) to read. There are always audiences and purposes of writings and they need to think about their audiences before they write. So, for social studies they wrote in a letter format because they were going to write to the newspaper editor and for MEAP prep writing, students wrote in general 5 paragraph essay format. These assessments have shown teachers that they wrote for different purposes and different audiences.
Retell is something that my MT has the students do every time we read text in Reading Street. If she feels that important events have been left out, she asks other students to share what else happened in the text. I agree with you on the advantages and disadvantages of retell. Retell does give my MT the opportunity to assess some student’s comprehension of the text, but what about the others? Something I think that I would do is incorporate sort of a Think, Pair, Share in the classroom after reading the text. I would have students retell the story with a partner and then have students share out loud. This way I can circulate and assess more students’ comprehension of the text. This has taken place a little during PALS, but I don’t believe was practiced enough. One activity during the PALS program was for students to use retell with their partner after everything paragraph. Though students were able to practice this strategy a little, I think that the retell activities we have after Reading Street are more reliable.
ReplyDeleteI really like the two ways that you and your MT have used writing in the classroom to communicate ideas. I especially like the Rock Star idea and think this is a cool way to really build a community amongst your students. I agree that this kind of writing is an advantage because the students have a lot of freedom with it. This type of writing would be a disadvantage if it were the only kind of writing that the students are doing. I think that students should practice both formal and informal types of writing. As I’ve said before, I do not see much writing. I know that my students do writing in their Language Arts class, but we haven’t had them do any in our Math and Science classes, as well as little in Reading. We are hoping to move towards having students keep a science journal soon. One thing I did have the students do was write a piece on a group that they belong to. The theme of the week was Leadership, Belonging, and Responsibility. That day we were focusing on belonging and so I gave the students a writing prompt to write about a group that they belonged to or were a member of (Leslie Middle School, Student Council, Sports teams, etc.) and what they did as a member and liked about it. I told students to write as much as they liked and when finished, I made it into a classroom book. Now the students can look at the book and see the variety of groups that make up their community. This kind of writing was fun for the students but it also allowed me to assess the students understanding of what the term “belonging” meant to them and their comprehension of the discussion we had earlier on it.
That is very interesting that you have a literacy teacher come into your classroom. How much literacy do you see in your classroom when Ms. Salstrom is not there?
ReplyDeleteMy students are also practicing retell. We are doing in during PALS (the scripted curriculum that stands for Peer Assisted Learning Strategies). One student prompts the other student by saying "what happened first?", followed by "what happened next?" and so on, until all the events in the story have been talked about. It's a way of making sure that the students actually comprehend what they have just read.
I think that your students writing a paragraph about another student is a GREAT idea!!! It seems to serve several purposes: not only are students getting pretty consistent writing exposure, but the other student is getting a boost of confidence AND it's a huge factor in creating a learning community! Have you seen any growth in this writing?
My students also become frustrated when they are expected to write a long essay. For example, we have reading journals, which we write in about 3 times a week, and the students are told to write about a half a page for each entry. Only a handful of students actually write this much, however.
I have not seen too much writing with regards to a different audience or purpose - perhaps this is something that I will explore in my literacy unit :)