Something for Class

Thus far in my experiences I have not seen poetry used in the classroom. I think that it is something i would like to incorporate in my future classroom however. In class we have spent time talking about visual imagery. Most texts allow for students to create mental images and I think poetry really promotes this skill. The great thing about creating mental images is that everyone's will be different. Once children make a mental image we can make it more concrete through artistic, dramatic, and written responses. Poetry opens up a lot of doors for creative expression in a classroom. 

This author does an excellent job of providing examples off why reading is often more of a social act than a solo one. When I took a second to consider the reading that I do, it seems that most of it is social. For example, the new Taylor Swift CD came out this week. It is exciting to listen to the songs, look up the lyrics, and talk to your friends about what you think about each song. There are certain verses that stand out to certain people or entire songs that evoke a powerful feeling. For me, I like hearing other people's opinions of the songs and what stood out to them. If I look forward to opportunities like this, it makes sense that in a classroom we would not only allow, but encourage, reading to be social. 

Obviously, there is a clear connection with this because it is what we worked on earlier in the year while reading The Girl with the Brown Crayon. I liked the opportunity to take on each of these roles within my group. There were some roles that appealed more to me than others, but overall I enjoyed the opportunity to contribute something of my own, that no one else had done, to the group. I also think that these roles are a good idea because they allow people to focus on specific things that they may not have even considered before. 

7. During independent practice, students will use post-it notes to mark in the texts that they are reading where they notice something about a character’s traits (!) and where they make predictions about what might happen in the story, based on what they know about the character (P).

I like the idea of reading logs. I think it is very important to allow children to freely write their response to a certain text. As this article says, "When students bring these logs to their literature circle meetings, the ideas feed the discussion, reminding members of feelings, connections, questions, visions, hypotheses, or predictions that occurred while they were reading." Last year in my practicum I observed a very structured format to reading logs, where the students had to answer certain pre-determined questions. I did not like it!! When I think back to when I was a younger student, or even today, if I am given questions to answer, I will focus on finding those answers as I read. To me, this defeats the point of reading because you cannot form a natural reaction to the book. If I were to do reading logs in my classroom, I would allow it to be a free space for students to record their own responses to the book. 

I have seen in several experiences, especially with my reading buddy, that it is important to provide children with good books. If we begin to read a book that she finds it boring, we quickly lose her attention. Quality books are incredibly valuable because they become a starting point for meaningful conversations and connections. I think that taking into account what books we liked as kids could be a good idea, however at some point the books of our childhood will become outdated. The interests of kids shift every day, so I think it is very important to stay as current as possible with our book selections. By staying in tune with our students we can select the best books to suit them, while still meeting our standards. 

In my practicum I have seen an example of the children connecting to a character and practicing social consciousness. The class read a book about a boy who had a really bad day. After reading the story, the students wrote about a time when they had a really bad day. They described what happened and then explained how they felt and what they did or what happened to make them feel better. Finally, a few students shared what they had written. This gave the children the opportunity to explore other people's emotions and how they might react differently. Each student's paper was then hung on a bulletin board for the class to see. 

In this article I was most interested in the lessons that were developed based on Pokemon. Over the summer I worked at a preschool where the children had a very deep interest in Pokemon. I thought it was awesome that the teacher was able to come up with so many different enriching activities involving Pokemon. I wish that I would have developed similar ideas for my students. It is definitely something I want to do in the future. It was often difficult for me to get the students to sit down and focus on the task at hand. I think I would have made it more enjoyable and just as beneficial, if not more, if I would have incorporated popular culture that interested the children. 

In my practicum I have seen the positive impact of having popular culture incorporated to students' reading and activities. Last week was the book fair at my school. If the children had money they were able to go pick out what books they wanted to buy. One child, who typically seemed uninterested in reading, went to the book fair and bought a Star Wars book. For the rest of the day the teacher struggled to peel him away from reading this book. I do not think the understood the benefits of allowing the child to read that book. Instead she constantly redirected him to read one of the books she had selected. I think that if given the opportunity, the student would have been far more enriched by the Star Wars book. Just because the book was popular culture it does not mean that it had no educational value.

In my practicum I have seen an example of the teacher using video literacy. She first went over the components of a plot. She then had them watch a clip that illustrated scenes from the book. This method seemed to be effective with these students because they stayed engaged. They were easily able to connect the components of a plot to the story that they had just watched.

Sherbs is so thoughtful hahaha edrd345

The strategy that my teacher encourages her students to use the most is sounding out words in chunks. She has "flash cards" with letter and letter combinations on them which she reviews daily. Every few days she adds more cards. By using this system the students learn every sound that a letter or letter combination makes. This seems to help them when they are reading and come across a word that they don't know. They recognize certain letter combinations and sound the word out in chunks.

Reading with Meaning Ch.2

I have not seen much of this in my practicum. Most of the time that they spend on reading and writing is done in centers.The teacher tells them what their rotation is (in what order they should do the centers) and then lets them begin. By the end of the week students must have completed all of the centers. The teacher checks for completion but does not provide feedback. 

I had never thought of planning in this way. To me it made sense that you would only plan a couple of days in advance because it is hard to predict where your class will be and what you will need to spend extra time on. I can now see how this creates "a series of lessons rather than a coherent plan for teaching and learning".