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.
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I found this post very interesting because we are in the same level classrooms but in different areas. I too classified my group of students as emergent readers but I really enjoyed the different methods that you chose to use in your classroom. I love that you would make students have text - self connections. Just from writing out my lesson plan for later in the semester, I realized how important it is for students to have these connections with literature. If students do not have these connections that Tompkins discusses, it is much more difficult for them to comprehend the text. I think giving them a connection and a way of relating to what they are reading will ultimately produce better readers and writers who enjoy the process of reading and writing more. In addition, I never really thought about how important making predictions were until Colleen mentioned it. I think with emergent readers, like our first grade classes, it would be really helpful for them to make predictions in order to create imaginative experiences for each of them. I agree that it would also help students find patterns in different readings. For example, my first grade class studied fairytales as a genre of books and by the end of the unit they were able to predict what would happen. They would predict things such as good prevails over evil and it will end with happily ever after. I didn't realize at the time but not reflecting back, these predictions really provided a way of assessment for my CT and a way for students to connect several readings and stories together. The common links made comprehension and often even fluency improved.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughtful reflections, Gina.
ReplyDeleteIn creating this post, I honestly had a hard time deciding on only three scaffolding strategies to implement in my classroom as suggested by Tompkins. Almost every suggested strategy would be useful for immediate and/or further literacy development, so I thought carefully and chose the three activities I thought my students could best achieve and relate to, and would be most beneficial to their literacy development and fluency as well.
As you noted, I had not previously thought of using some of these strategies and activities with the young, emergent readers like those in my first grade classroom – the ones who actually need scaffolding the most!. I am glad I had the opportunity to explore these, though, because now I see how even the smallest steps are essential to literacy development. Particularly, the making predictions strategy, as you mentioned, is a great way to make connections, but more importantly for me, it is a way for students to develop a sense of and a feel for different genres. As these readers continue in literacy development and eventually transition into higher level reading, genre knowledge can be essential in understanding different types of characters, plots, and author intention. I found that as a reader, I began to appreciate different types of genres when I realized that there are specific conventions typically included in almost every book in that genre. It raised my interest level because I thought of them as different categories of movies: romance, thriller, fantasy, etc. I am really glad you touched on this in your response because these are a few things I had meant to mention about the making predictions activity but probably forgot by the time I got there in my post.