Most of our talk about text occurs during “Get Ready to Read” and “Read and Comprehend” in our Reading Street curriculum. Although it is not as natural as I would like it to be as a teacher, it does suffice as discussion in the classroom. Each week, we have a new story that we discuss. We talk about the plot, characters, theme, vocabulary and much more. I think that Reading Street has its positives in that we do cover a lot when we have classroom discussions about a text; however, it often feels forced. Most of the talk is teacher-led and based off of questions that we have in our curriculum. The discussion usually starts with a teacher question and leads into student responses. This discussion time happens about every day in both sections of the Reading Street material. There are significant opportunities for “Surface Knowledge” talk where the students are able to discuss personal opinions/ideas about a topic and share stories. Here, they are often connecting their background knowledge to our story. We also do a great deal of “Inquiring into Text” because we ask the students so many questions throughout the story such as, “Why do you think the main character did that?” or “How do you think he will change his behavior in the end?” With the Reading Street curriculum, there is also a lot of “Reflecting” happening – the students have time for summarizing and a type of community share. Although Reading Street seems to cover the majority of the “talk about text” that should be happening in the classroom, I don’t think it does a very good job at allowing student-led discussion because so much of it is teacher-led and question-response based. I know that my MT agrees with me on this issue, and we are working toward incorporating more student-led conversation about each text within the classroom.
Things to think about: How can we transform these teacher-led conversations from Reading Street into student-led conversations? Is it possible? Would student-led discussion take up more time in the classroom?
My classroom is almost exactly the same as Kelly's since we're at the same school and in the same grade...so I guess I will talk about something different :).
ReplyDeleteI think that when I start taking over the classroom (literacy in particular), I want to have more student-led discussions. I think this will be hard to do at first because the student's aren't used to this type of discussion. One way I will lead them into this is by doing think, pair, share activities with a partner and small group activities where they are responsible for working together and sharing their ideas. Then I will do a mini-lesson where we talk about ways that we have discussions in the classroom. We can go over it a few times and refer back to it when needed. I think some essential things to have on a poster about classroom discussions is examples of questions to ask each other such as "Why do you think that?", "Can you tell me more about...?", "I agree/disagree because...", etc. These will help guide their discussion. I think that putting up some questions on the board at the beginning of the lesson that revolve around the main idea of the discussion will help them to come up with things to say and they can go back and look at the other questions to remind them of the topic and maybe bring out a different point in the discussion. Kelly- I think that student-led discussions will take up more time in the classroom at the beginning because there is going to have to be time spent on preparing them for it. And even the first several times it happens, it probably won't go very smooth and I think that there will have to be a lot of probing by the teacher and that might make it go slower than normal.
In Strategies That Work, it mentions how to teach students how to choose books to read independently. I have been doing lessons through Daily 5 about this exact thing and I think it is really important for students to understand why level of books are good for them. I think it is good for them to have the skills to be able to choose books that are right for them as opposed to choosing books that are too easy or too hard, which gets them no where.
Things to think about: Strategies that Work also talks about how to teach comprehension. I want to know what are some good ways to teach and practice comprehension without doing boring worksheets where they read a story and then answer questions or other boring activities that are similar. I think that comprehension is a really important skill to have and it is a skill that students should be very, very skilled at. I also know that most of the students in my classroom aren't excelling at comprehension. So how can we teach/practice comprehension in the classroom in a new way that is also equally or more effective?
My class is also very similar to Kelly and Zoe's classes since we are all at the same school. However, I feel that each of our teachers has a slightly different take on Reading Street and how they teach it. They each alter the lessons and add their own creative touch when they can. My MT is big on class discussion and I would like to follow in her lead when I take over the classes. In fact, i taught a lesson today from the Reading Street curriculum, reading and comprehension section and I based my lesson on a class discussion of the text we read.
ReplyDeleteDuring my lesson I made sure to ask my students questions that would probe their prior knowledge that might help them understand the text we were about to read. The questions would also get the students thinking and predicting what the story might be about. We had a discussion based on the title and the illustrations.
We then began to read the text and I would stop them every two pages to check for understanding. We talked about what they had just read and how it went along with the big idea "Exaggeration in Tall Tales". We discussed while reading, I asked most of the questions and the students responded and shared their ideas.
After reading we summarized the text and sequenced it all together as a class. We reflected back on the text and what the students may have learned. The theme was discussed and students gave their ideas of what the theme/lesson was.
I liked the KWL idea that was talked about in Book Club Plus. I would like to use this method in the future. i feel as though it is a good gauge for background knowledge and what you might be able to expect from your students.
My class is completely opposite from everyone. We are not participating in Reading Street. Being that I do not understand the program I can not give any advice on Reading Street. However, I can give some insight on how to address teacher-led conversations and student led conversations.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Strategies that Work, giving students independence (especially with choosing books) is important. In my class, students can choose their own books but they must be able to explain and answer the "4 book rule" questions. Why did you choose this book? Is this book interesting to you and why? Can you understand the text? Did I base my decision on the book cover?
Also, I noticed that my CT uses teacher-led and student-led conversations. He will begin the conversation by asking 2-3 questions, then he will probe students (to answer the first question more in depth). Probing students is a good strategy. For example; if a student says, "I like it," the teacher should respond and say, "What about it do you like?" This idea of probing students will lead to student-led conversation.
I tried using this method during a poetry lesson that I taught last week. Students were really engaged and active throughout the entire mini-lesson.
Zoe:
I think you can teach comprehension by role-playing and poetry. You have to incorporate text that students can understand, relate to, but also semi-challenging.