A Closer Look at Writing

This week in my field placement, I substitute taught for the morning in place of my CT. Mornings in this classroom are generally filled with literacy block. Part of this literacy block is the centers rotation, during which the teacher normally facilitates reading groups. This week, I ran centers and reading groups as usual and I was able to meet with three different groups for twenty minutes. I chose a book from the box that the readers in each group were working on. After we finished reading the book, I asked students a few comprehension questions about the story. Finally, I gave students lined paper and asked them to write at least one sentence about the story. I told them it could be anything they wanted: a sentence about what happened in the story, what they liked or didn’t like about the story, or perhaps they could make something up about what might happen next. Also, I told them they could reference the story by looking back, but that I preferred they did not simply copy a sentence from the text, rather, I was hoping they would write something original.

I chose to look at a writing sample from one girl, who I will refer to as M, for this blog post. Her writing sample reads: “Cat way at the party and gig it way fox’s party lets jog says fox thay won’t get up!” When I asked her what she wrote, she read this back to me: “Cat was at the party and pig. It was fox’s party. ‘Let’s jog!’ says fox. They won’t get up!” It is evident to me from this writing sample that M has a lot to say! The sentence she wrote about is obviously a run-on that should be broken up into at least four sentences. According to Tompkin’s six qualities of good writing, M has developed some good habits already, but has plenty of room for further growth. I would characterize her has being proficient in developing ideas and in employing her own voice in her writing: M builds on the plot of the text, adding emphasis and voice to parts with which she identified most. M needs some practice with organization, and word choice, but I think the areas in which M needs the most work are sentence fluency and mechanics. As one sentence, M’s writing is hardly comprehendible, yet broken into separate sentences, the content seems choppy and non-cohesive. Working on her sentence fluency could help M develop the content of her writing while simultaneously developing skills to improve her style as well. Finally, it is evident that M is lacking some spelling and punctuation habits in her writing. While she does include an apostrophe and an exclamation mark, both of which indicate practice with punctuation, M fails to include more basic elements of punctuation, like commas, periods, and capital letters. These pieces could highly improve the stylistic elements of M’s writing, which would, in turn, allow her the space and ability to further expand on her idea development and organization, as well as word choice and voice.

Writing in Kindergarten

Writing in my Kindergarten classroom has developed from learning about letters and what sounds they make, phoneme-grapheme correspondences, to finally using their knowledge to form words that they think sound right. They are all still emergent readers except for a select few who can read books designed for beginning readers. Writing is still very closely connected to reading. The only writing that I see in my Kindergarten classroom is the writing of their name, labeling of a drawing they made during an activity, or copying of words onto lines that are already printed on the page. We have a center during literacy center time called “The Clipboard Cruise” where they have to walk around the classroom writing down words that they see. I am not sure the validity of the center because I know that sometimes they may not be reading what they are copying down onto their paper. What I do like seeing, however, is when they students are copying down word wall words that are frequently used such as: I, am, he, she. It, play, ball, etc.
Going back to the basics, every Kindergartener is at a sufficient level when it comes to their concepts of print. They know which way the words go, when to put spaces before words, where punctuation should go (basics such as periods and question marks), and they can begin sentences with a capital letter.
I think what helps is the shared reading time that our CT involves our students in each day. They are immersed with writing all around them. The Clipboard Cruise helps them be even more surrounded and familiar with words and writing words on paper. Our CT is doing everything right with our emergent readers. Our only worry, though, is that when they are presented with a book with a lot of words on one page, it overwhelms them. They are able to recognize a single word such as “see” on a single piece of paper. But if they saw a sentence that read, “I see a dog.” They would stare blankly at it and not take the risk to try and sound out the sentence.
What I would like to see more of when they do activities is that they would begin to start writing brief and simple sentences to explain their drawing. This would push them to take risks and sound out the words they want to write on paper. We do not see enough of this when we are in the classroom on Wednesdays. We know that there is a writing teacher that does come into the classroom at 2pm every Wednesday, so we assume the bulk of their writing during the week happens then, but we never see it because we leave Lyons Elementary right at 2pm.

Writing Instruction

When looking at the writing in my placement classroom, I feel that many things are working. First, I think the fact that they have time set aside for writers workshop everyday is extremely important and effective. They never overlook writing and showing students the importance of frequent writing is very helpful in their overall written development. However, I feel that many of the writers workshops are very similar, not allowing for much variety in their writing styles. Most often, students are asked to write personal narritives. After some time, students began to grow board of writing about themselves. Once my CT changed the topic to writing on Desperoux, students began developing their writing more. Therefore, in my classroom I would strive to create more variety in my writers workshop in order to allow for more creativity from my students as well as engaging them in the writing activities.

In addition to writers workshop, my students participate in "buzzy the bee journal." Every three days one student gets to bring buzzy the bee (a stuffed animal) home and is asked to write about what they did with buzzy. When they bring the journal back, students share what they wrote with the class. They are more than welcome to draw pictures and there is no length requirement, allowing students to feel less pressure. This is an opportunity my CT has created for students to share their work which in turn allows them to feel that their writing is being valued by their peers and teacher. This is also an element in writers workshop, that Tompkins discusses, and it is one of my favorite ways writing is incorporated into my classroom. I would keep this type of sharing and the relaxed feel that students have when they are sharing their work. This is a way for students to have their work celebrated in the classroom and allows engagement from all students.

One element I would like to see more in my placement classroom would be the qualities of good writing that Tompkins discusses in chapter 2 to be more explicitly encouraged and taught. She talks about organization of ideas, voice, word choices, sentence fluency, and mechanics. The only aspect I see explicitly discussed in my classroom is mechanics (capital letters, punctuation, etc.) I think it would improve students writing if they were encouraged to use their voices more or vary their sentences with better word choices. I loved the idea of a "banned word" for a few days. I think this really promotes variety in word choices and could increase vocabulary for students. It could also work as a challenge for students, increasing their engagement and motivation in their writing. I think that these qualities of good writing need to be more present in the classroom in order for them to be worked into the students writing, especially during writers workshop. However, overall I feel that writing is fairly strong in my classroom but could be further improved to engage students more and make them really enjoy writing.

Writing Instruction in the Classroom

As we talked about writing instruction in class discussion yesterday, I was trying to remember the types of writing I see in my field. The only writing our students ever to is a couple times a week for about 15 minutes before lunch. They write stories that have happened to them before and the stories have to have a beginning, middle and end. About once a month our students pick one of the stories they have written that they want published. They go through the story to look for errors then they have the teacher edit it and then in their best handwriting they rewrite the story on publishing paper. I think this is a really good process that the students are learning, but it frustrates me that they only stick to the same genre and that they are always doing the same assignment. I think the students would benefit a lot by writing about other things. The only other time they write in class is on worksheets from science or social studies.

Also, writing time often gets pushed aside to do other activities like continuing centers or doing IOWA practice. I think the students are really loosing out on writing because their program is so reading focused I think they need more of a balance of both. It is great that the students are learning the writing process, but I think they need to practice more and with more subjects.

After talking about writing in class yesterday there a some elements of writing I would like to see in my own classroom. I read Tompkins chapter 14 this week, I really enjoyed the ideas for putting reading and writing together. I used to be a horrible writer, but an avid reader and eventually my reading helped my writing. I think that the two subjects are very closely related. Students would benefit a lot by writing about what they read and vise versa, and I think this needs to be incorporated in all subjects, not just language arts. I would love to see writing and reading incorporated into all subjects. Also books on subjects like science and social students can be incorporated into language arts. By combining genres and subjects students understand that everything overlaps, just like it does in the real world. I think that writing is so important and it will be a major part of my classroom. I wish that the students in my field placements had more opportunities to write and share their ideas because writing really does create an avenue where students thoughts and ideas can be heard.

New Literacies Reflection

For my New Literacies project I chose to create an online comic on Environmental Literacy. At first I chose the new technology of an online comic because it looked completely different from what I was used to doing. It was not until I began the project that I realized that I needed to also practice the technology of websites and digital photos. First I downloaded a free 60 day trial of this program called Comic Life where you are able to turn your digital photos into a comic strip and alter the photos to look like a comic. That was a simple program to understand but I needed to get even more creative than that because digital photos are fine and dandy but how was I supposed to have people in them talking with thought bubbles? That's when I thought that I needed a narrator for my project and my Dwight Schrute bobble-head sitting on my desk looked like the perfect person for the job. I spent a few hours one day walking around campus taking photos of Dwight Schrute in various locations so it looked as if he was telling a story. I also had done the same thing previously with a "gift" for someone last summer so I had a ton of Dwight photos still on my computer from the previous summer sitting in trees and swing sets. After I had the comic up and running I needed to post it to a website, so to showcase my assignment I thought to just attach it to my website I had already created as a web portfolio. This was difficult to do because I did not want it to be confusing when you clicked on the hyperlink. It actually took a while to configure the comic to the page so it was easy for people to click on the first page and read the online comic.

I felt that the technology I chose fit my personality so well because I was able to be as creative as I could possibly be without the hindrance of HTML rules or website restrictions. I was able to let my personality take over my project in all its glory. This feeling of boundless possibilities gets me excited to think that if I made an assignment like this for upper elementary grades that the projects that I would receive back would be so unique and original! If I had a blast taking my Dwight Schrute bobble-head around taking pictures with it, I can only imagine how the students would feel if they got the same chance to do what I did.

However, I cannot say that this would be the case in the future when I teach. Who knows what kinds of households my students will come from and resources my students will have in the future. What I have is an ideal situation. Many projects using technology will have to be put to the side due to lack of funds and resources. Every teacher needs to teach to the group of students he or she has in the classroom. If the school has the resources and allows the students to borrow the supplies, perhaps my online comic could be something my future students could be able to implement as an assignment. Otherwise, other technologies would have to be used to ensure that each child has a chance to complete the assignment successfully.

I chose to study environmental literacy because that topic interests me the most and will have the most direct influence on my teaching if I gain a position as a 6-8 science teacher in the upcoming years. The research of environmental literacy is what interests me the most. Especially since I have read the book, Last Child In The Woods, by Richard Louv. This books defines exactly what I want to do as a teacher when it comes to the subject of science. The main purpose of his book and the main purpose of the Campaign For Environmental Literacy is to alert citizens that their actions affect the world around them. Richard Louv, primarily speaks about the research done on children who do not get the exposure to the outdoors as they grow up. Louv links this lack of nature to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as the rises in obesity, attention disorders, and depression.

What this project has pushed me to do in the future is get the kids outdoors. I know that when I think about taking kids outdoors for a walk around the school (even if it was in the confines of the school property) the first thing that comes to mind is that they will go wild and not pay attention whatsoever. But just like any other classroom management, wouldn't one have to teach and model to the students the correct way to be "scientists" in the outdoors? Especially if you made this time a part of the natural weekly routine the students will begin to take this time learning outdoors seriously. I know it can be done with high school students because I was in a class junior year that went on ecology hikes once a week and we learned our native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers in all seasons and were assessed on how to identify them. If my teacher at the time could have us behave while learning outdoors, I can too create scientists out of my students as well. In my mind I know what I would want to do if I had the chance to make outdoor learning a part of my bi-weekly or even weekly routine, it just depends on how it would be taken by those above me in the school hierarchy. It would never be used in a way to keep the kids from going out of control like I have memories from, from elementary school. I would be providing environmental literacy to my students.

New Literacy Reflection

For my New Literacies Exploration project, I chose to create an informational website about Visual Literacy. Working first hand with this new literacy concept while using a new technology really changed my understanding of literacy even more than it has already evolved since the beginning of the semester.

On February 3rd, I made a blog post about Literacy, attempting to define it in what I thought were new terms. I first reflected on my previous conceptions of literacy as developed throughout my experiences in TE 150, 250, 301, and 401: “Literacy, for me, was the end goal of a step-by-step process of learning how to read. This included pronouncing phonemes, recognizing letters, concepts of print, and all these other pieces of the literacy process. After our discussion on 'What is Literacy?' and the readings concerning Literacy, though, I have come to realize that it is much more than that.” I went on to describe my ‘new’ conceptions of literacy. In reflection on this blog post, though I see that these ‘new’ conceptions still defined literacy as the ability to read, whether it was in terms of social functions or simply as a student reading in the classroom. Since then, however, I have grown and developed my definition of Literacy even further, especially after completing the New Literacies project. Because the literacy I learned about and reported on, Visual Literacy, is quite the opposite of reading words, I began to view Literacy with a much more broad perspective. As far as Visual Literacy is concerned, being literate is the ability to understand the world through images. These images can either be as simple as signs and symbols we use to navigate through our everyday lives, such as street signs, restroom signs, recycling symbols, map and map symbols, etc. Images can also be complex pictures, photographs, paintings and other works that have been specifically composed to convey a purpose or meaning that can be interpreted by a visually literate person. Finally, students can use visual literacy to communicate knowledge or meaning through drawings, thought webs, paintings, photographs, and more. After taking some time to explore some of my fellow colleagues’ new literacy projects, I now see that being literate is being able to understand the world in a fluent way, whether through reading, deciphering signs and pictures, understanding the needs of a healthy environment, social and political system or even communicating through use of emotions. All of these forms of literacy are relevant and can be used in critical ways in the classroom.

Another important aspect of literacy that I have come to understand through this project is being able to effectively communicate ideas, knowledge and understandings of the world around us. In the past, this meant by writing or drawing only, but now I view a wide range of technologies – such as blogs, scrapblogs, comics, and more - as modes of communicating ideas. As technology increasingly advances, the means by which students will be expected to fluently communicate and express themselves become more innovative and interactive. Students can use the technologies my colleagues and I explored to make their communication more interesting. Even posting in this blog has taught me a new way to express my opinions in a thoughtful and reflective way.

For me, learning how to create a website was a fun and exciting way to express my understanding of Visual Literacy. I chose to create a website because it was something I had never tried before and I had always been intimidated by the concept of using HTML. Fortunately, I found a great resource called ‘Weebly’ that allowed me to create and edit my webpage with a minimal use of HTML coding. In fact, I only used HTML to upload one thing on the site and even that was quite manageable. I felt so accomplished after having learned a new technology and having successfully created my own website. In order to use this technology, I needed to develop specific knowledge, capacity and commitment goals. I needed to know how to organize the information into different pages within my website. This required knowledge about how informational websites are usually structured and the ability to model mine accordingly. I had to understand what content was appropriate for which categories – i.e. what information belongs on the “About” page, and what information fits better in the “Importance” page. I also had to learn processes like how to upload this information, as well as pictures and videoclips to my website. It was very important that I understood how to cite the many sources I used in researching Visual Literacy. Finally, I needed to develop an optimistic and caring attitude about my Weebly site so I could make it look aesthetically pleasing, while being very informative, yet not overwhelming for me in the creating process.

As it relates to use in a K-8 classroom, this specific technology would require similar knowledge, objective and capacity goals as I found necessary in creating my own website. On a more basic level, though, students would need to know how to research and organize information before they even began to create an informational website. These are necessary processes for completing any sort of research-based report, but especially for using an advanced technology to communicate the information. If, for example, I required my first grade students to produce a website in order to demonstrate learning of the language arts lesson my teaching partner and I developed, students would have to be able to organize their thoughts first. Briefly, our lesson explored a text about the friendship between historical figures Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt. Students were encouraged to make text-to-self connections in order to complete the instructed activity in which they each created their own friendship books. I think creating a website could enhance my students’ understanding of both the text and a new technology. One particular GLCE that we used in our lesson planning that would fit nicely into creating a website based on the lesson is: R.CM.01.03 compare and contrast relationships among characters, events, and key ideas within and across texts to create a deeper understanding by mapping story elements, graphically representing key ideas and details, and asking questions as they read. Students could feasibly create a website that introduces themselves on the homepage, and includes other tabbed pages such as, “About the Book,” “Characters,” “My Friendship Story,” and “About the Author.” A project like this may be more involved than what we had planned, but would require the same knowledge, capacity and commitment goals, as well as those previously discussed that are necessary for creating a web page.

In the future, I can absolutely imagine using website creation to not only inform my students but also to allow them to express their own thoughts, ideas, knowledge and understandings. This project has really opened my mind to a more comprehensive idea of what ‘Literacy’ means as well as how to teach all kinds of literacy in my classroom using a range of new technologies. I look forward to using mine and my colleagues’ projects as models from which I can formulate ideas for new lesson plans in my future classroom.

New Literacies Reflection

I chose was a scrap blog. I chose this technology because it is one of the only ones I had not worked with yet. I ended up really enjoying working with this technology. It let me use creative aspects to create a presentation that actually meant something. I really liked the backgrounds and pictures it provided and it also left a lot of room to add your own as well. I chose to do social literacy with this technology because I wanted to learn more about social literacy myself. I felt that a scrap blog was a good way to show this type of literacy because it gave me a way to show several examples of social literacy and well as present ways to use it in the class room. I thought about creating a social account on a site like blogger, or making a wiki, but I had already done these technologies before and I wanted to use something where I could show multiple examples. I really liked the way my presentation turned out. I think it show a lot of social literacy examples and it gave teachers a lot of tips to use in the classroom. I think using this type of technology in the classroom would be a lot of fun for students. It would let them show their thoughts about a subject with a lot of creativity. I like it a lot better than similar programs like power point. There are a lot more graphics to choose from and a lot more fonts and backgrounds. Overall I learned that this technology is very good to put together presentations with. It presents informative material in a fun and interesting way.

At the beginning of the semester I thought of literacy as just reading and writing. However, after our class on the definition of literacy, I began to think about it a little more. I think one main reading we did that made me broaden my thinking about literacy was the Critical Literacy article. I really liked how the teacher made a point of sharing different kinds of books with her students. She read books from all different cultures so her students got to learn a little more about people around the world. Another thing that also really changed my view on the definition of literacy was our class discussion. Our group started thinking about it and we decided that there is a whole range of possibilities about literacy. It could be reading and writing or it could be speaking and body language. As we explored new literacies further, I started thinking about how much we do on the internet and how we rely on that as a means of communication and knowledge so that is a form of literacy too. It is probably one of the fastest growing avenues of literacy and students are always searching online for something. Many teachers hesitate to bring the internet into the classroom, but I think it is a valuable resource and a important form of literacy that students should learn from. My thinking from the start of the semester has changed a great deal. I not only think of literacy as reading and writing. Now I think of literacy as any way people use to communicate or to gather knowledge. After researching social literacy, I think literacy is a forever expanding concept. Since we have all of this new technology today we are expanding our literacy into it. This is what I liked the most about social literacy. It is understanding all of those social networking and group editing sites we use online now. It is incorporating new technology into literacy. I do not think anyone can put a set definition on literacy. Everyone interprets literacy in their own way.

If I were to teach the technology I used in my current classroom, I think the students would first need to know a little more about computers. The students in my class do not use computers a lot so to jump into a program like this would be very intimidating for them. Also they would have to work on their spelling and writing on the computer. However I think with a little guidance they could put together a simple presentation. I think if I were to use this in the lesson I just taught it would have been really cool. They could have done something like made a couple of slides about feelings and how the characters in our story felt and maybe what they would do in a hurricane. They could use a template provided and just add in the text and some extra stickers out of the graphics. I think this type of technology would be amazing to use in higher grades like 3-7 because students in those grades really have more writing and computer skills and they would probably be able to put together a pretty nice presentation based on a book they were reading. To create a presentation like the one I created students would have to know how to upload pictures and to research information online. Upper elementary and middle school students already are doing this for fun at home so it would be good to input this into lessons. Having them create something they can put online and share with the class would be very beneficial for them. They would be learning about what they are presenting by having to look up information to put it into the scrapblog. For instance, if the class just read a novel like Number the Stars which is about the holocaust, the students could create a little presentation using scrapblog that tells about the holocaust and the characters in the book. This would make them think about the book more and really reflect on what they are reading. They would also be learning technology. I think technology is important in the classroom which is why I chose social literacy. Having the student make blogs and wikis allows them to express their thoughts with each other and others around the world. Part of the literacy assignment could be to post a blog about the book and then put a link to the blog into the scrapblog. This will allow the students to learn a little bit about the holocaust and then see what other members of their class think about the book. New technology is affecting so much in literacy it is important that students get the chance to use and learn from it to teach literacy effectively.

New Literacy Project Reflection

My new technology was a website. Although I currently have a personal / professional website that I created last semester, I had never used a website to provide information about something other than myself. There were many applications that I was unable to explore when doing my professional website and therefore it was nice to have a bit more creative freedom through this project. I feel that this website gave me the ability to open a discussion about cultural literacy with regards to GLBTQ. I had never thought of using a website as a way of communicating with other teachers and sharing ideas about different literacies. I had also never recognized the purpose of what I was doing until I was forced to consider it for this project. I realized how beneficial I felt it was to have a purpose for myself therefore giving me a desire to have clear purposes for my students in the future. In order to create this webpage successfully and how I envision it I needed to gather information and spend time exploring the various layouts my webpage could appear. Because I was familiar with the technology I was confident that my webpage will succeed in accomplishing open minds about cultural literacy as well as GLBTQ issues, specifically regarding children’s literature. I feel that students K-8 are required to work with technology as a disconnected aspect of their learning. I do not feel that the GLCEs aim to integrate it into their literacy learning but rather as something they must know in order to "get by" in our world today. I would like students to understand the benefits of technology and be able to use it in order to make positive changes in their lives or to engage them in information that otherwise would not have been as engaging to them. In order to do this I feel authentic activities need to be made integrating technology into lesson plans that can enhance learning. For me, technology is a way of enhancing a "regular" lesson or activity and making it extraordinary for students. When students feel that their is a purpose in learning how to create a website or another use of technology, they will be more likely to find the purposes in several other technologies and begin using them for the betterment of their lives and learning.

In the beginning of this semester I never thought of literacy in all of the various ways such as cultural, mathematical, environmental, emotional, etc. Although I think I believed in these types of literacies and their importance for student's learning, I did not know to identify using these terms. I have always felt that it is important for teachers to use literature and forms of literacy (oral, audio, visual, etc) to infuse their student's minds with more than just words on a page. During the completion of this project, I realized my passion to teach students, even from a young age, about their culture and the cultures of others. I think one of my major goals of teaching is to understand my students on personal levels and individually. Therefore I must know about their cultures. In addition, I want my my classroom to be a safe community and in order to accomplish this I need to have my students understand the cultures of the students around them and the cultures of people all across the world. I never realized how easy this all would be to overlook in a classroom with all of the other curriculum requirements. However, I recognize now that integrating this particular type of literacy as well as many others is necessary and will produce more intelligent and accepting human beings. I use to think that cultural literacy would just happen in my classroom and now I understand that it is a concious choice that I need to make to incorporate it. I also think I was scared to truely delve into this type of literacy because it is something that I will never have all the answers to. I realized from this project that it is okay to learn alongside your students and will actually create an environment where students feel that it is okay to not have all the answers either. I find that much of my growth relates to the Cambourne conditions and that cultural literacy has been an avenue for me to see how these conditions might work. For example, Cambourne discusses engagement as a condition and we defined this as having students understand the purpose of what they are doing. I want my students to understand the purpose of their literacy. It is not only to read and write but also to gain meaning about cultures and about issues that might be important to them. Through this project I learned that students can be engaged most effectively when they excited and actively involved in their learning. Cultural literacy is a wonderful way to have students excited and feel that they can be actively involved in their own learning because it has a meaningful purpose. This was the reason for my "tying it together" page on my website. It provides a purpose to cultural literacy (speciafically for the cultural group GLBTQ) for teachers and parents and if they understand the purpose and importance of cultural literacy then students might "catch the bug" too. The other Cambourne condition that I feel I grew in understanding of was employment. I feel that cultural literacy will provide students with the opportunity to apply their knowledge of literacy to daily life. Hopefully by immersing them with literacy that has cultural meanings, they will become openminded individuals who apply their knowledge outside the classroom. The main take away that I have from this project is that if students are learning literacy with a purpose and can apply that knowledge into their daily lives then they will become more active and educated participants of society, continuously growing in their thoughts and literacy skills.

I do not feel that there is only one way that students can obtain effective literacy instruction from their teachers. However, I think one way that diverse learners can gain effective literacy instruction is through learning about culture. In the diverse environment in which we live, students need to have diverse literature and resources that provide purpose and meaning to their literacy skills. Without this type of instruction, that provides opportunities for rich discussions and high level thinking, students are not able to gain the overarching goal of literacy, which in my opinion is to be a literate individual of the world around you. My website is geared for parents and teachers, however, it provides purposes for these adults which will hopefully reflect onto their students and children. In addition, I think it would be extremely beneficial and engaging if students created a classroom webpage that discussed their cultures. This is a way to integrate cultural literacy with my technology. Each student would be able to access the website and keep in mind that where everyone comes from is important in the way our classroom operates. It also provides personal connections amoung students and teachers. Assignments like the "where i'm from" poem would be awesome links to a classroom website and would allow students to understand that they are valued as people by their peers, teacher, and other adults. Students would need a great deal of guidance to create this classroom website and some background knowledge. They would need to know how to use the computer, write about themselves and be creative with their pages, read and comment on other students' pages, listen to each student share if a presentation of each students' page was given, speak in front of their peers if presentations were given, etc. They would gain so many important literacy skills while also building life skills and opening their minds to the differences in people. I think about my own field placement and the Flat Stanley Project that they completed. I think it would be increadably effective if students were able to post their projects onto a classroom website. This technology allows students to see each others work outside the classroom and provides a space for them to share their culture with others. In addition, I think it would have made for an excellent extension and allow students to know that literacy comes in many different forms, not just reading books and writing on writers workshop paper.

Comprehension Instruction in the Classroom

When I think about the students in my CT's classroom as comprehenders in relation to the classifications provided by Applegate in the article, Profiles in Comprehension, I would say that I see mostly 'Left-Fielders'. As is often in the first grade, many of these students provide seemingly unrelated or incoherent answers to comprehension questions. It can seem as if none of the students are paying attention to the story because of their tendency to be so off topic. It also seems as though students raise their hands to share and provide input for the sake of simply talking and being the center of attention. To address this need for attention, Applegate suggests some "small group discussion activit[ies]" (53) that would allow students to share their thoughts and feel like a valued member of the classroom community. The one I liked the most was Induced Imagery. I think the students in my CT's classroom would respond very well to this activity because one of the strategies that I see my CT already implementing as she reads a story is to think aloud or pause to ask her students questions about the text as she is reading instead of afterwards when they may have already lost some of the information. Induced Imagery incorporates this think aloud/modeling strategy with making text-to-self connections. I think these connections are extremely important for easily distracted readers who may disregard seemingly irrelevant information. Induced Imagery also allows for students to share aloud, getting the attention they need. In this strategy, "teachers first model the use of mental imagery in response to descriptive text. Afterward, they ask their students to generate their own images and share and discuss them with others."(53)

Although I would consider many of the students in my CT's classroom to be 'Left-Fielders', there are a few that stick out in my mind that I would classify as 'Minimalist Quiz Contestants'. This is a combination of two of Applegate's profiles. The quiz contestant is a student who may "respond to questions about text by searching their memory banks for an explanation that will serve as a plausible response."(53) I have facilitated a few Read Alouds in this classroom and I have noticed about three students who continually make intertextual connections when I ask questions during or post-reading. This is so impressive to me, but I have difficulty getting these students to elaborate on their responses. This is why I chose to include 'Minimalist' in describing these students as comprehenders. These students are "usually reluctant to elucidate their responses or explain their thinking." (55) Of the two types of Minimalists, I would consider these three students to be type b - the ones who have a fear of failure. I think their lack of confidence falls more in line with social concerns than academic abilities. For this reason, I really liked the idea of having students keep journals. Applegate suggests that "student journals can often draw out of Minimalists what we will never hear from their lips." (56) Journals would encourage these students to elaborate on their responses in a way that they feel safe and comfortable to explain their reasoning.  

Comprehension

At the beginning of the year, I had not seen a lot of comprehension taught in my classroom. I saw more of our CT teaching decoding skills and stressing more of learning what the text actually says. However, lately our CT has been really stressing comprehension. The last couple of weeks in class there has been a passage read out loud to the class where the students have to then look at the big ideas and practice their note taking skills or they have a venn diagram type of assignment. I have seen them do a lot of QAR type of readings and currently this is actually one of their centers. They have different levels of cards they have to read a passage from and then answer questions based on the passage. I think that reading together as a group and then discussing the passage and what the big ideas are is more effective than the reading and answering they do on worksheets in their centers. We have a lot of literalists in our classroom who look for the exact words in the passage that were in the question to find their answer. I feel that this is not helping them comprehend the reading, it is more like a word search and they are not getting much out of it. However, when they work together as a whole group to discuss a story, I feel like the students get really into it and what to participate and help our CT find the big ideas. I think the students actually learn more from this and I wish I saw more of it in our class.

We do a lot of work in centers in our class, which I feel is good most of the time because it is allowing the class to work in small groups. However, when they read and answer in their one center they tend to get more off task because the teacher is not supervising and guiding them. Therefore, I think it is a good idea in our classroom to use small groups for skill work and independent reading, but I have seen the students get more out of large group for comprehension. When I work independently with students on comprehension I feel like the student really gets a lot out of it, but it is very difficult to have time to work with each student one on one all the time.

I remember in class this week we talked about how in the younger grades the students can often be left fielders. Well, we have a lot of those in our class in second grade as well. Sometimes they pull stuff from the most random places. I also feel like we have a lot of minimalists in our class. they will give and answer to the question but won't extend on their answer. A lot of the more confident readers are literalists they look at what the text says and that's the answer. I feel like a lot of them are still pretty young to find deeper meaning on their own, but I am excited to see more comprehension strategies being taught in our classroom.

Comprehension

When I first begin thinking about the different methods our CT uses I cannot think of many right off the bat because most interaction in my Kindergarten classroom is recitation. It is not probable that we could ever get our group of Kindergartners to discuss an idea. Recitation takes up most of the afternoon, after lunch. Our CT asks questions about the book he has read and the students answer. This is similar to the QAR method. However, many of the responses are only text-to-self. Some times there may be a text-to-world connection, but very few; and never any text-to-text connections. Sometimes there are so many student that want to share their story that he has them partner up and share their stories with a partner. This could begin instigating some discussion about a certain topic, but there is no way to asses it.
Throughout all of the morning, our class has centers. Many of the activities that they perform require what they have learned by rote learning. Numbers on a number line, the alphabet, etc. The center time lasts the whole morning. Most of the class is still unable to read simple books yet, this hinders them from reading to comprehend. The majority of their comprehension has to come from what they see on the page (illustrations) and what they hear. Many students are able to pull ideas from a story audibly because that is how they have been comprehending whenever they read with another person.
Only once this year have I seen our CT use a Venn Diagram as a comprehension strategy. He used it to compare how baby animals and baby humans are alike and different. I am unsure if this was useful for their comprehension at a Kindergarten level, however, it exposes them to the strategy when they use it again in higher grades.
Many in our class are left fielders, however, one in particular can never answer a question. He always has his hand raised, but when called on he stares at us blankly. After a whole year I would have guessed that he would change and begin to have an answer when he raised his hand. He has never answered a question in class, yet. It troubles me because I have no idea how to go about retrieving an answer from him. Applegate suggest modeling as an intervention to begin showing him how to begin listening to a story for understanding. If I was to work one on one with this focus student I would show him how I would begin reading a book and what I would be listening for as I listened to our CT read the story. Perhaps these methods would help him begin picking main ideas from the story.

Comprehension

I see comprehension taught in my classroom in several different forms. First it is taught through QAR methods. Often, students are read a story by my CT as a whole class and as the story is being read they are asked questions and are expected to respond to them. These questions vary from asking them to describe character emotions, their own emotions, plot lines, themes, take away messages, predictions, etc. Comprehension is also taught during writers workshop. It is more of an assessment of their comprehension, usually of a book that they read earlier that day. Students have been asked to write an ulternative ending to a book, write like a character in the book, or write about an experience they had that was similar to the experience of the character(s) in the book. This seems to be an effective way for my CT to see if students understood the plot of the story, the way characters were feeling, and often the theme or message of the story. These are the two main ways that I see comprehension taught in my classroom and they prove to be pretty successful because I would characterize most of my readers as strong comprehenders. Although we have many struggling readers in my classroom who are still decoding words at a sluggish pace, they seem to still comprehend the overall meanings of books. However, I think that they are in general stronger at listening comprehension. Most students respond very well to the QAR style when my CT reads aloud and their writing seems to reflect understanding. I find that the struggling readers are especially benefitting from this style because they are able to hear the book aloud read fluently, which is what they struggle with as readers. Without their own reading fluency I notice that they sometimes struggle to understand what they just read, even in simple directions. However, some of the more advanced readers have an equal amount of comprehension when they read themselves, especially students who read with punctuation and inflection in their voices. They seem to understand the books they read and have an easy time talking about them with friends or with my CT.

Although I feel my students are rather strong comprehenders, many times during QAR or recitation style comprehension methods during language arts, students tend to fit one of Applegate's profiles. This profile is left fielders. Students often have responses that are rather unpredictable and seem to come out of nowhere. I think part of this is because students at this young age readily express whatever thought comes to their minds. Often these thoughts do not correspond to the text we are discussing and seem random and unpredictable. However, often times I feel that students are trying to make text to self connections but say them in the form of stories. Students often fail to explain why their story connects to the text making it difficult to see the relationship they are making. In addition, I feel that many students could be categorized as fuzzy thinkers much of the time. They often make vague and imprecise comments, especially with regards to character descriptions. My CT will ask students how they think a specific character was feeling when something happened and they will respond with the words sad or happy. Although I think students are still comprehending the emotions that the character might have, they are still often using very vague language that does not provide much support or confidence in their statements. Therefore I think it would be beneficial for my CT to include more map work and modeling in order to increase their levels of comprehension.

Scaffolding Strategies

In my classroom, there are more than a few students who I believe would benefit from the various scaffolding activities we discussed in class and are provided in both the Gibbons and Tompkins texts. I could imagine using these strategies with most of the class, but in particular I could see them working well in small groups of students. I feel that the students in my classroom are often times easily distracted which highly affects their performance levels. Usually, the students in this environment work best one-on-one or with a few peers. I assume this is because they are receiving more attention from the teacher and perhaps they feel more relaxed than they might if they are put in on the spot in front of the entire class. There are a few students who I think would respond extremely well to this type of small group scaffolding activities for their struggles in reading.

The students I would place in this category are in the emergent stage of reading. Based on this placement, there are some useful Instructional Recommendations from the Tompkins text that I would use for this group of students. The first is to “Have children manipulate sounds using phonemic awareness activities.” (Tompkins, 97) After working with a young girl using the Orton-Gillingham tutoring program, I have seen success with this type of scaffolding practice and would be inclined to use it with the students in this classroom. Second, I would try to “Encourage children to make text-to-self connections.” (Tompkins, 97) I feel this would help students understand language and readings in a more personal way that would connect them to literature, promoting an early appreciation for reading. I think if students value reading, they will more willingly practice it. Finally, I would “Encourage students to make predictions.” (Tompkins, 97) I would use this activity for a few reasons: It helps students to think abstractly about readings, encouraging their imaginations. Also, I think it would help students detect patterns in various readings whose plot lines take similar turns.

“[Swain] argues that actually producing language encourages learners to process the language more deeply than is required when they simply listen, and tends to stretch or push learner language in a way that listening alone does not.” (Gibbons,15) For this reason, within all three of these activities, I would require students to express themselves audibly to produce language while discussing readings.

Helping Emergent Readers

After we received this noteblog, one student in my class came to mind almost immediately. I will call this student Claire. Claire is very shy and keeps to herself a lot. I have just noticed recently that she is opening up to her peers. Claire is one of the students in our lowest reading groups. She not only struggles with reading, but most classes in school. She is currently being tested to see if she qualifies for special education. I work with her a lot, I have noticed that she struggles greatly with reading. She tries to decode words, but when she cannot get it she just skips it. In centers, I notice that she skips a lot of the questions and just guesses at an answer, especially in the sliders center where the questions are multiple choice. In math, she does not understand the directions to the problems because she cannot read them. She is constantly seeking help, but wants us to tell her the answer. When I have her work through the reading we eventually get there, but it is slow and she requires a lot of help. After reading some of the suggestions in the text, the following are a few activities I would consider doing with her.

One of the suggestions in Tompkins is to have the children retell and dramatize stories. I think this would be a good activity for her to do because she spends so much time focusing on decoding words that she is not taking meaning from the text. By retelling the story and acting it out she would have to remember what she read. I think it would help to stop her as she was reading and ask, "What just happened in the story?" This would make her slow down and she would only have to remember small parts of the text at a time. I think she has to spend so much time decoding it would probably be hard to hold all that information in her head at once. I might also have her draw a picture of what happened in the story to show me that she understood.

Another activity I would do with her is to have her write with a single idea to her compositions. This is actually from the beginner readers section of Tompkins, however, I feel like she could handle it. This is something that our CT already does with the students. However, most of their writing time consists of writing what they want and then showing it to the teacher. I think that if Claire was encouraged to sit down and write about one idea and share it with her table group at the same time she would be more likely to stick to an idea. I noticed that she is jumping around in her writing a lot. I might also have her write a thought web first to concentrate her ideas around one single idea to write about. I think this will help her think about what to write about. Even though she only writes a few sentences on each page this will help her concentrate her writing.

One of the things in the Gibbons text I really enjoyed was the going from speaking to writing sequence in chapter three. I think a lesson structured like this would really help students like Claire. Currently, when we read a text out of their language arts book, our CT goes over all of the vocabulary first. I think it would be good to read the text first and then ask the students what they think the word means based on what they read. This would help students like Claire take in the context around the word to figure out the meaning. This technique will help them when they are independently reading and come across a word they are unfamiliar with. I also like the journal writes after they talk about what they have learned. This would help Claire practice her writing by getting her ideas down on paper. She would also have more of an idea of what to write because we would have just discussed it.

I think Claire would benefit from this activities because they would help her focus on what she is reading or writing. If she learns to take context clues from her reading or writing she will be better at doing this work independently. Also, working with her group during writing would also help her. She struggle a lot with coming up with things to write about. By sharing ideas I think this would help her.

Helping Emergent Readers

I find there is one student in particular that is greatly struggling to operate at a first grade level. He is in the lowest reading group for guided reading with my CT and has still not moved past the first level of books provided by my CT. This student still struggles to put the correct sound with the letter, especially with digraphs such as ch, sh, wh, th. In addition, if he can sound out the individual sounds of a word, he then has trouble blending those sounds together. For example, he might say c / a / t with the correct sound attached to each letter but doesn't hear himself blending those sounds together to create the word cat. Therefore he usually guesses while reading and instead of saying cat after he sounded out the letters he will say something completely different such as Christmas. This student thus has difficulties with comprehension and this lack of ability carries over onto his writing. He needs quite a bit of time to complete writing assignments because he is not sure how to spell words and is either constantly asking, looking them up using a word chart, or finds something different to say in his writing. Many times, he wants to write something but is afraid it will not be correct so he writes something different which holds his writing back.

This is a student who needs some scaffolded instructional activities to help improve his level of reading and writing. Tompkins strategies for emergent readers are very helpful ones and I think my student could benefit from a few of them very much. I think it would be helpful for him to use big books in order to assist him in making connections with sounds and letters. I also think it would be helpful for him to attend literacy centers that were beneficial. For example, Tompkins suggests having literacy materials in play centers. I would have him visit specific centers each time they occur that included a focus on digraphs or blending or any elements of phonemic awareness in an engaging and interactive way. Maybe even having these centers so that he was paired with a student who is at the grade level or higher grade level reading so they could work in a successful group and help the lower acheiving student. Group work is a plan I think he would benefit in if students knew how to work properly in groups, like Gibbons suggests. I think it is important for this student to also portray his ideas through his talk and writing and therefore think it would be helpful to have him respond to literature through talk and drawing as Tompkins suggests. This would allow him to not become frustrated but rather express his ideas and test for his level of comprehension. In addition, to build his writing skills I would have interactive writing for whole-class and small-group writing projects where he felt comfortable writing and felt that he had a personal connection to his writing. Overall, I think a personal connection with regards to this students reading and writing would greatly benefit him. I do not believe he would become as frustrated as quickly and would take more away from his reading and writing if the material was more culturally relevant to him. I think an increase in skills at centers and throughout other various group work would help this student become a stronger reader and writer however I also believe that if he is interested in the text and can relate to it then his skills will be more applied by him through his comprehension and writing.

Strategies for Emergent Readers

The student that comes to mind first when I think of those that are unable to perform at the level the majority of the class is at, for Kindergarten, is a girl who cannot match sounds with letters. She has so much difficulty completing the morning worksheet every morning. Every morning our Kindergarteners receive a worksheet that involves the letter of the week. Last week was 'D', so the morning worksheet had a bunch of pictures of different items, some starting with the letter 'D'. The students had to color in those that began with the letter 'D' or the "duh" sound. By February, this task is easy and the students are finished in a matter of minutes because they have understood that when they say the word outloud, "doctor", they hear the "duh" sound and know it starts with the letter 'D'. It is so hard for me to watch and see the one student look at the paper next to her or stare blankly back at you when you help her slowly pronounce the word to you. For me, it is difficult to understand why it doesn't click.

During shared reading time when our CT reads the book and sometimes points to the words, I notice she is never looking up. She is always looking at another student, or down at her shoes, or out the window. The chances for her to pick up what familiar words look like in written text are not very high due to her lack of intrigue. She does not participate much when our CT asks questions to the class during morning carpet time. I wonder how much she absorbs throughout the day.

What I would do to help this student would be one-on-one work. I would read books with her that contained familiar words that I know the rest of the class would be able to recognize. Our CT has a word wall and he has certain books that contain high frequency words that are used constantly in everyday speech. I would read the story to her and point out the words as I read them. Tompkins talks about guided reading and how the books chosen for emergent readers contain perdictable outcomes that match the pictures. I would start out with these books so I can see if she is able to recognize letters when I point to them. I would ask questions that would let me conclude if she was able to recognize familiar words. Finally, I would ask her to tell me what certain letters sound like to see if she could sound out words in that fashion. If anything, I think she needs practice and more experience with sounds, letters, words, and books. She may not have ever been read to at home or challenged by anyone other than our CT. Since I do not know her home life situation, I would only be able to help out as much as I can during class time. Strategizing ways to help the situation in this case is always harder because there are 31 students and it is easy to overlook it and keep the rest of the class moving on schedule.

Discussion in the Classroom

As I approach discussion with my students, I would define it as a way to get our ideas out and open our minds to other opinions. I would explain to my students that people think about topics several different ways and it is important that we hear each other out and recognize each other’s values and beliefs. It is also a way to learn from our fellow classmates. I would remind our students that we all know a lot about different topics and a discussion is a way to share what we know and help others understand the subject better. Discussion is a way to test our own knowledge and beliefs and open ourselves up to those around us.

I think that creating a classroom community is the first step in creating quality discussions. It is so important that every student in the room feels comfortable enough to share their beliefs and experiences. I also think it is important to take small steps toward discussion. I think it is important to start with pair discussions and then move on to small and large group discussions. I would also have the students do quick writes at first before discussions to help them think about things to talk about because it is difficult at first to think of questions. The Almasi reading talked about the difference between discussion and recitation. I think that it would probably be a good idea to start classes out with recitations before moving right into full on discussions. Many students have never participated in discussions and are used to the teacher facilitating. In many instances students are only used to answering what the teacher has asked and then waiting to see if they are right and wrong. I think the teacher should start by asking the questions, but begin to include other students on the answer. They could do this by saying such things as, "That’s a great idea Jenny, What do you think Irene?" By doing this the teacher still plays an active role, but is moving the class toward discussion. Discussions involve students building off one another’s thoughts and bringing in new ideas. Many students do not know how to approach this, it is important to take small steps.

I also really enjoyed the Response-Center talk I read about. I had never really thought about all the planning teachers do before discussion. This article showed me that by careful planning before hand, the teacher can play less of a facilitator role and the students will be able to interact and build off one another’s ideas. I think it is important for the teacher to respond to the students, but in a way that guides the discussion and does not just direct the talk in the way the teacher wants.

The teacher must know a lot about their students before just diving into a discussion. First of all, have these students ever participated in a discussion? What was their learning like before this class? If they are conditioned to raise their hand and talk only when called on and are not used to a sort of free discussion, it might be very intimidating to just dive in with discussion. We discussed in class how many students are conditioned this way and I see this a lot in my field class. Our students raise their hands to do everything. We do not really see discussion and I do not think the students would know how to react if we tried to do one. I think it is also important to know where your students are coming from. Many students might be hesitant to approach a certain topic because of their background. As a teacher, it is important to know when students feel uncomfortable or when they just do not want to participate. I think successful discussions are in large part an outcome of careful planning.

Discussion in the Classroom

I am really excited about the challenge of conducting a discussion in my first grade classroom. I think it is going to be a challenging task because in my experiences I have not seen very much discussion in the younger grades. Usually I observe or participate in more of a recitation style talk in my classrooms for field placements, which have for the most part been successful and productive. However, I think introducing discussions in these early grades is something that will help prepare them for the grades ahead of them as well as later in life. I think the oral and listening skills acquired through discussions can benefit students in their daily lives outside of a school environment.

In order to conduct this type of discussion in my classroom, the set up and classroom management skills are essential to success. I would first start by explaining to my students that discussions are a different type of talking. Their are some different rules that we need to consider when having a discussion in our classroom. For example, we discussed in class the importance of having discussions feel like a natural conversation between students and teacher. I think this is so important and will help to create a safe environment for students to participate in. I also think that in lower grades discussions should begin small in order to introduce the style of them. For example, talking with a partner or with a small reading group, before entire class discussions take place. This is just a way for students to get comfortable using their oral skills in front of their peers and apply their listening and reflecting skills to their peers comments during discussion without feeling overwhelmed with the whole class. I think I would have my students come up with a list of rules together for discussions. This way, students created their rules and are more likely to remember them and stick to them. In addition, I think the way in which the room is set up can affect the discussion itself. I would position my students so that they could all see each other and in a more casual arrangement so the comfort and ease of the discussion carries over to the physical set up. In class we also discussed the importance of wait time when conducting a discussion. I think this might be the most challenging aspect for me when running a discussion with students because it seems somewhat uncomfortable. However, I think wait time in the younger grades is imperative because it might take some students longer to process information before they speak than others.

I think McGee made an excellent point when explaining that books need to have multiple layers of meaning and quite a bit of depth in order to have a successful discussion where student's ideas and thoughts can be explored and challenged. This is key in my thoughts when planning our discussion lesson and I think discussions can flop without this aspect. Therefore it is important for me to chose a book that incorporates aspects that I feel students will relate to. This requires me to understand my students and their prior knowledge, experiences, and backgrounds. If I do not gage what I might expect students to bring to the discussion, I will not be able to facilitate the discussion as much nor will my students be as engaged in the topic of discussion. That is why I love the statement by Goldenberg claiming that conversation is instructional and instruction is conversational. Personally, that is what I want to strive for in my discussion. The conversation of the discussion and the manner in which it is conducted is essential for instructional learning to occur.

Overall, I want to create discussions in my classroom that cater to the needs of each of my students. As Weinstein & Mignano state, you must find out which strategies work best for your students in order to create a maximum level of active participation. For me, this begins with knowing your students, understanding how they learn, and creating a safe environment for a discussion to occur. When these elements are included, I believe a IRRR can run successfully and deep levels of thinking will develop.

Classroom Discussions

Many people think literary discussions should be aimed more toward older students who can critically analyze texts, but I think it is highly possible to have a fruitful discussion with any age/grade level. I would really like to facilitate a discussion with the first grade students in my CT's classroom and I know it is possible because these kids have a lot to say! Even though some of the students are still learning how to read, they have skills that would be useful in compensating for reading level in a literary discussion. Skills such as listening, understanding/comprehending texts, emotionally connecting with characters, brainstorming, inferring, etc. would allow these young students to fully participate in a great discussion.

In order to make this type of discussion with young students run smoothly, however, I think it is necessary to know the students, understand how they learn, establish rules for discussion, and be prepared to listen carefully to my students in order to guide the discussion. I would present a discussion like this by introducing it using words like "book talk," "conversation," "casual conversation," etc. This would make it seem like less of a task and more relaxed in order to reduce any anxieties - I think students learn best when they are most comfortable in their academic environment. 

For my particular classroom, I would have to understand that these students get easily distracted and learn best with a lot of preparation and demonstration. I would probably read a book to the class, asking them to think about who the characters are, what is going on, how they feel, etc. while I am reading. After the story, I would like to have the students do a brainstorm activity such as drawing or writing about the story before the discussion. Then I would have students come to the carpet for discussion, bringing their brainstormed work. This would assist students to keep on track and focused during the discussion. It would also ensure that every student would have something to add to the conversation. I really like the idea of allowing the brainstorming to be about anything that concerns the book - something they liked, didn't like, they're curious about, etc. My reasoning here greatly reflects McGee's article: "children set the agenda for discussion; their comments initiate topics of discussion. Children's comments arise from their unique and personal responses to the books," (McGee, 1996)

Finally, because the first graders are so young and may not have much experience with literature discussions, it is important to establish a rule that they may not speak while someone else is talking. For these discussions to work, listening is key. A quiet group is important for listening. Also, I would have students call on each other, as someone in class session suggested. This way, they are not relying on me to regulate and evaluate the conversation. 

Talk in my Kindergarten Classroom

The talk in my Kindergarten classroom is very limited, and will always be limited. Kindergarten, in my opinion, would not be the most favorable age to begin bringing discussion into the classroom because even recitation is very, very hard for our CT to control and stressful for us TE students to witness. We have two situations in which there is discourse between our CT and the class. One is where they are supposed to be quiet and not talking because either our CT is teaching or reading a story. During this time there is always someone whining, poking, flailing, laying on another student, sneezing, getting up to use the restroom, tattling on another student, or making comments such as, "Guess what I'm going to be for Halloween next year?!" Situation two is where there is recitation and students shout out answers, do not raise their hands, have raised hands but have no answer, are called on and then repeat what someone said a few seconds before hand, and everything else that is mentioned above. Before even recitation can begin, our Kindergarteners need to master sitting quietly and raising their hands. Classroom management skills are needed first in our Kindergarten class in order to proceed to other forms of talk. Our Kindergarteners are still unfamiliar with the protocol of the classroom, they still feel as their behavior at home and their behavior at school is one in the same. With 31 Kindergarteners it is also hard to make sure each and every one of them is progressing and not causing a disturbance. Most of what our Kindergarteners learn each day is how one is supposed to act while in school.

For response centered talk in any classroom to take place, there are many factors that are needed. One of the points that is taken from the McGee (1996) article that I find the most beneficial is that the students must be willing to talk about what they are thinking and must know that they will not be ridiculed in front of their peers. Even at a young age, I can sense that some students are hesitant about answering questions in class because a certain student in our class may laugh if they are incorrect. In fact, in Kindergarten, some begin crying. As mentioned in discussion today, the books that are chosen are needed to be chosen wisely by the teacher. For my literature lesson plan, I would most likely choose a literature book that would get the students thinking about emotions and prior life experiences. Kindergarteners love to share stories and if they are able to see themselves in a book, or picture themselves in the main character's shoes they would be more apt to behaving because each would want to share their story with us. I also would be wise and choose a book that had a social justice theme involved to see how my diverse Kindergarten classroom would respond. Would they be able to pick up on the actions taking place? The emotions that the characters portray? I am very interested in seeing how a well picked book would be able to foster good recitation between the teacher and students.

Diversity in the Classroom

In the third chapter of The Dreamkeepers, Ladson-Billings states "My own experiences with white teachers, both preservice and veteran, indicate that many are uncomfortable acknowledging any student differences and particularly racial differences." (31) As a white teacher myself, I can identify with being uncomfortable addressing diversity in the classroom. 

Often times, teachers are instructed to view their students equally, without bias, and to hold one set of expectations for all students in order not to set up an environment that attributes academic abilities with racial or cultural backgrounds. I have received this type of advice, but after some rich field experience and some meaningful readings and class discussions, I am not so sure that I agree. I think that it is important to not only acknowledge, but to celebrate racial and cultural differences within a classroom. This would not only work as a learning process for everyone involved, but it is a way to build a rich, tight knit classroom community - which I believe is important for supporting all types and levels of learners. 

Even as young as kindergarden and first grade, children have been immersed in their families' cultures and traditions enough to recognize if they are different from someone else's. In fact, in my current field placement, there is a student whose family is from Egypt! I think this is really exciting, but perhaps he did not receive enough support in a previous school or public experience because he seems to become very embarrassed any time this is mentioned in front of other students. Rather than ignoring these differences, which could make students feel ashamed of their personal backgrounds, I think students should feel encouraged to share their traditions and culture with the class as an enriching experience. There are many ways this can be accomplished.

I can imagine creating a classroom community that celebrates diversity by including a wide range of books by diverse authors and about diverse peoples in my library. Not only that, I would be sure to read and discuss these books with my students. I would like to establish a norm in my classroom that does not necessarily conform to societies norms that students will receive outside of school. This could also include weekly explorations in different cultures' histories, traditions, holidays, foods, etc. I would also like to involve parents in this process in order to make the sharing of each students culture important and authentic. I hope to be able to reflect on my experience in the college of education, bringing together the things I have learned, articles and books I have read, and resources that I have become available to me in order to make this special community come to life in my own classroom.

Diversity in the Classroom

As a teacher I feel I could learn a great deal from my students. One way to learn about my students and the diversity in my classroom would be to have classroom discussions. By talking about different readings or discussing current events, I could learn how my students view the world around them. While, participating in discussions, students tend to draw from their own experiences. As a teacher it is important to understand where students are coming from and why they think certain ways. If you know this it is easier to come up with a way to teach to their needs. In order for classroom discussions to be effective, the students need to feel comfortable sharing their opinions and beliefs with the class. In our reading on discussions, it stressed the importance of this concept. If the students do not feel comfortable participating in discussions then it will probably not be a very fruitful discussion. I have also seen the value of forming a community in my own classroom in field. Our CT has built a very open and communicating classroom and because of this she has been able to learn a lot about each student and we have as well. I also think small group discussions are valuable for those students that do not feel comfortable speaking out to the whole class. The point of discussions is so the teacher can see what perspective the students are coming from. I think this is much better achieved in a small group discussion.

Another way to learn about diversity in the classroom is to have the students do a project about themselves. Our CT did this at the beginning of the year. Not only did she learn a lot about the students life, but also about their writing levels. I think the main way you can get to know your students is to be available in the classroom, let your students know you care and also keep that open communication in the classroom.

It is important to know your students so you know how to teach. Some students may have special cases that prevent them from doing their work or that make them tired in school. The student may want to learn, but something is preventing that. It is important to know this as a teacher so you can try and help the student and not just brush them off as another student who does not care. I feel that most kids want to learn and it is the teachers job to make that happen. For instance, that case we read in class was a good example of having to know your students. The teacher asked the students friends what was up with the student and she was able to find out without embarrassing the student and she was able to help the student instead of just assuming he did not want to do his work. It is important to know your students so you can help the learn and achieve in the classroom.

Diversity in the Classroom

In my field placement I find myself constantly observing how the diversity of students and the diversity of communities factor into the education of your students. I have come to realize that various teachers take many different steps in trying to understand their classrooms diversity and in turn each of their students. I think the article entitled, "Seeing Color, Seeing Culture" discusses this manner when they state, "Given the significance of race and color in American society, it is impossible to believe that a classroom teacher does not notice the race and ethnicity of the children she is teaching" (33). I have found this to be true in my own field placement, where my CT not only notices diversity of her students but celebrates it in various ways. For example, she did an ongoing project called "Flat Stanley" where each student made a picture of themselves and mailed it to another state or country to a friend or family member. One student sent it to his aunt who lives in India, another to her grandmother in Greece. Not only did each of these students get to share a presentation about this experience but they were recognized and applauded for their ethnic diversities. I found this to be directly in alignment of how a teacher learned more about the culture and diveristy in her classroom. It allowed her to get to know her students and their backgrounds better in a positive, educational manners. Each student completed this project and therefore she was able to see some commonalities and differences within her classroom culture, allowing her to see her students multiple perspectives on their lives. This is a project I would definately want to incorporate at any age level for my students. I think it was a wonderful way to begin understanding the diversity that the students in your classroom bring each year.

In addition, I think it is important to consider the positive responses to realities of urban teaching in class last week. I know it was easy for me to identify the negativities in communities that are coined urban but I think as a teacher it is important to take it this next step, in seeing what can be done to improve negativity that often surrounds these areas. I think that through these positive steps, as a teacher I can get to know more about the diversity of my students and help them be proud of the diversity each of them bring. It is important to the way I teach, to understand how my diverse set of students learn. The article referenced above also states, "By not claiming to notice, the teacher is saying that she is dismissing one of the most salient features of the child's identity and that she does not account for it in her curricular planning and instruction" (33). I think this is why understanding my students from multiple perspectives is essential for good teaching. I want to take the diversity of my students and use their diversity as the foundation for my planning and instruction. I want to take whatever my students bring to the table and create positive experiences and educational memories from their multiple perspectives. If I can accomplish this, not only will I have good relations with my students and the community in which I teach in, but I will also provide an education that will stick with them long after they leave my classroom.

Diversity of a Classroom

I get excited at the prospect of having my own classroom someday and learning about the lives of my students. I want to use the knowledge I gain to make good classroom choices in how I teach and in what methods I decide to teach. The Ladson-Billings article had a good statement that read, "Teachers with culturally relevant practices see themselves as part of the community, see teaching as giving back to the community, and encourage their students to do the same." I think that one of the best ways to understand my future students would be to get out into the community where the school is located and understand how their lives are lived outside of school. This goes beyond just realizing that the school is perhaps in a neighborhood that might all be of one race (or even multiple races); to me it means participating in community functions and seeing your students outside of school. I always liked running into my teachers in the grocery store. It made them seem like real people who had real families.

Not only do I want to learn about the cultural diversity of my classroom, but I would also like to understand the different ways in which my students will learn. Not all students in my classroom will comprehend language arts in the same way. I was never a student who liked reading nonfiction, like my history books. I could never concentrate and it always seemed my social studies homework was always reading the text and answering the questions. However, some students thrive on reading non-fictional texts and dislike reading novels. Finding out differences in reading among my future students will help me to get to know the diversity of how they learn. I would mix up the assignments so each student will be able to learn in the way they know best as well as learn in ways that are different to them as well.

What is Literacy?

Having grown up without experiencing difficulty reading and with parents and teachers eager to teach me to read, I took literacy for granted. I really had never even thought of the process of teaching reading until I entered TE 301 and learned about all the steps and components of literacy. Within the last two years in my TE classes and in my field experience, I realized how much work it can actually take to learn or to teach someone how to read!

I thought I had it all figured out after TE 301: Literacy, for me, was the end goal of a step-by-step process of learning how to read. This included pronouncing phonemes, recognizing letters, concepts of print, and all these other pieces of the literacy process. After our discussion on 'What is Literacy?' and the readings concerning Literacy, though, I have come to realize that it is much more than that.

During class, when our group tried to come up with a definition for Literacy, it was actually more of a struggle than I had expected. A few of these working definitions included:
Literacy is...
...the ability to comprehend and assign meaning to language in various forms within different contexts.
...a tool to be used in the process of achieving success.
...both a necessity for basic functioning and as a tool to be used in the process of achieving goals.

These few definitions were found within our small group of five, so it was no surprise that when the other groups in class offered their definitions, there were many that overlapped, and at the same time, many had opposing ideas about the function of literacy.

Even Cambourne added a new component of literacy that I had not really thought about before: Conditions of Literacy Learning. This is to say that environmental factors are as important in learning to read as the steps in the process. Teachers and parents act as "provider[s] of literacy skills" and are necessary to support the learner. I found this very empowering as a future teacher and look forward to providing a supportive literacy environment in which my students feel wholly immersed in language and literacy in the classroom, as well as provides avenues for them to continue their literacy learning at home with their families.

Defining Literacy

When I think of literacy, I always just think of learning to read and write. However, my views on that have changed since working with students more and taking TE classes in college. I consider literacy a means of communication. It includes reading and writing, but also speaking and communicating with others. Today we consider people illiterate if they cannot read and write, however, most of these people are functional members of society and communicate well with others. Not all societies have a written language, but I do not consider these people illiterate. They still communicate and find ways to pass down their history and legends through oral history. I believe speaking is just important, if not more so, than written communication. So, in my own words, literacy is a means of communications between people, whether written, spoken, read, or acted out.

After last weeks readings, I found that I wanted to incorporate more into my definition of literacy. Especially after reading the Critical Literacy article. I always thought of culture as an important part of picking books, but this article shed new light on how it can be part of literacy. People learn about other cultures through talking to others and reading about that culture. When I think of it this way, that is part of my definition. I think it is extremely important to include critical literacy in the classroom. Students need to know about people different from themselves. Many people fear what is different, I feel that this is the problem for many cultural divides. By learning about other cultures and understanding them through literacy we will be able to understand and accept other cultures more easily. I also liked the Cambourne article. I liked the way he broke up learning into different conditions. It gives teachers a way to look at literacy learning and incorporate it into their classroom. I would not say this article changed my definition of literacy, but it defiantly gave me a way to make literacy part of my future classroom. I especially liked the conditions immersion and employment. Although these are conditions I have thought of before, I liked the way it was explained. If students are constantly immersed in literacy and doing activities involving literacy then they will pick up these skills.

My ideal literacy learning environment would look a lot like the video we saw in class. I have seen teachers have literacy in the class, but that teacher had it everywhere and I loved how she did it. I would want creative centers where the students are eager to do the activity. I would want them engaged in the activity because that is the only way they will want to learn the concepts. If students are not engaged in learning they will not learn as well. I also want the students learning from each other. This is because the teacher cannot help everyone at once. If the students are modeling for each other and helping each other not only will that build classroom community but it will help all students. I also want to have centers with activities that students can do at home. This way the learning will not stop at school.. The students will see that literacy is all around them. I know that I never wanted to learn anything that I would not need to do later in life. If students see that what they learn in class is useful everywhere, they will be more likely to find meaning in the concepts and learn them.

In my field placement, I see many of the aspects of literacy I want to include in my own classroom. However, I would probably include more. My CT does a great job of making centers the students enjoy and there are posters and literacy concepts on the wall. I feel like when we are done with the literacy block for the day we brush it aside and move on. I would like the students to understand that literacy effects everything they do. In class we discussed centers, I think my CT does a great job with centers. She recently created a new way of rotating centers that works really well. She always has two groups up front reading with her. One is reading directly with her and the other is reading with a group leader. The rest of the groups are in centers with literacy games or skill work that keep them pretty busy. I like the way it is set up and would probably use this method in my own classroom.

Definition of Literacy

My small groups definition of literacy is very similar to the one I previously had. We said that literacy is more than just reading and writing it is the ability to understand the world around you. It is the gateway for citizens to continuously develop and grow. I thought it was important to think of literacy as more than just reading and writing, in the traditional sense. To me, literacy involves a variety of aspects that assist in a person obtaining and achieving thier goals. I agree with the group that included the more technical definition of what literacy was, becuase I believe those are aspects that make up the basic knowledge that literacy involves; however, I feel that it also encompasses more than just reading, writing, comprehension, etc.

I realized that the conditions Cambourne discusses are extremely important in order to see good literacy in your classroom. I began to observe many of these conditions in my field placement this past Wednesday and felt that some were more prominant than others. For example, I think my classroom is the definition of immersion. On every wall and in every corner there is either a poster, book, or active literacy activities for students to be engaged with. There is an extreme amount of print in the room, especially in the form of literature. Students not only have a classroom library but they also have shelves with books on them that are the appropriate level for them to read. They keep books in their desks at all times and when they are finished with assignments early, they know to grab a book of their choice and read, either to themselves or with a partner. I find, therefore, that this group of first graders is indeed immersed with literacy by result of the classroom setup. I thus find immersion to be an aspect of literacy that I think is extremely important to enforce in my classroom because when students are surrounded by and saturated with literacy, it makes it known that the emphasis of my pedagogy revolves around being well rounded literacy learners.

In addition to immersion, I feel that in field I have seen employment used often as a condition of literacy. I realized that I saw this often with one specific activity students completed. They read a play in small groups, each taking on the role of a different character. They practiced these lines for several days in order to practice what they were learning about the format of plays (not say the name before your lines, following along so you know when to speak, speak loudly in front of the group when performing, influx in your voice, etc.) After practicing these skills with their small groups, students performed their version of the play in front of the class. Students were able to apply the skills they learned the last several days, for their performances. This created an application of knowledge for students and excersized employment as a form of literacy learning.

The one condition that I would like to see more of in my field is engagement. This is not to say that students are not engaged in literacy learning, because in fact they are mostly active participants. However, I would like to see more engagement occur during centers. I do not feel that students understand the purpose of most of the centers and therefore I do not feel that they are fully engaged in them. They understand that centers are to work on specific skills such as listening, spelling, writing, etc in "fun" ways, however, I do not feel that students fully understand the purpose beyond the obvious skills. Because they are not believing in what they are doing, I find that centers are not run very effectively. Students often become off task and lose interest of what they are doing. I think if they had a purpose and believed in that purpose it would create better literacy centers.

This aspect of engagement is one that I find myself wanting to incorporate into my own classroom and is the condition that I think aligns with my personal literacy pedagogy most. After reading the Cambourne article and discussing literacy in class, I realized that although I felt strongly about engagement, it was not a word that I used when describing literacy. However, now that I have been exposed to this concept formally through the Cambourne article, I feel that it is the center of my literacy definition. This is because without engagement of students in literacy, I feel that the skills they need to develop in order to become literate will not be achieved as effectively. Therefore my definition of literacy would be slightly altered to incorporate the importance of engagement. My ideal literacy environment would look like a combination of immersion and engagement, meaning students would be surrounded by literacy while believing they can and understanding why literacy is important in their lives. Students would be models of active learners in my ideal environment and all of the conditions Cambourne explains would be incorporated into my teaching of literacy throughout the year.