The type of talk I have seen in my classroom is recitation type. I haven’t seen too much talk about literature in general. Normally when I see literature, I see the students reading to themselves or quietly reading to someone else. The teacher reads a book to the class in the morning and there is some small discussion after, but typically she just calls on a few students to ask what the story was about and then moves on to the next subject. Do you guys see anything different in your classrooms? I never even realized it before that there wasn’t much discussion about reading. The Triplett article that I read stated that one of the reasons that teachers don't have book discussions is because they are trying to keep up with the curriculum development that had "emphasized phonics and phonemic awareness training for young readers and for struggling readers -- not comprehension and not discussion (64)." Do you think this is really the reason that teachers avoid or don't incorporate book discussion?
In order for my classroom to have response-centered talk, my ct should ask fewer questions to the students. It would be beneficial to model good questioning for students and encourage interaction among the students, not just answers to the questions being asked. Normally my ct gives feedback as to if responses are correct or not, and this qualifies as recitation rather than discussion (refer to figure 3 of the Almasi article). Another helpful scaffolding concept would be to act as more of a facilitator to lead the students to discuss a central topic which can further lead to a richer discussion of understanding. I did not read the article that discuss specifically response-centered talk, so let me know if you guys came up with any other ideas that would be beneficial in the classroom!
I wouldn't consider the school that I am placed at to have too many resources. There is a small bookshelf in the classroom for the students to use, and the teacher has a bookshelf with books organized by season/holiday or important seasonal events that she chooses a book from to read to the class everyday. The books that the students read during read to self are typically from their "read a bunch of books" bags that my CT sends home with them to practice reading with. There is a school library that (I assume) children can check books out of but I have only ever heard of one student telling me that she needed to return a book to the library, so I'm not really sure how that works or if it is encouraged among the students to check out books or not. Another resource in the room that could promote rich discussion is the audio section of the classroom. Students can listen to a book and then they are required to fill out a worksheet after with four questions- the title, their favorite part, what did this remind you of, and rate it out of four stars. I think that instead of having a worksheet with simple questions, they could discuss this book with the other students that were listening and ask each other questions around a central topic given by the teacher. Do either of you have any other resources that would benefit rich book talks in your classrooms? I can't think of anything else, but maybe after hearing examples from you guys it will trigger something for me!
There are a handful of students who do not participate in daily classroom discussion on any topic. After reading the Triplett article I learned that this may have something to do with the need to have interest in the reading or topic at hand. There were other factors that included race, gender, and home issues that were not being represented in books in their classroom so they felt like they weren't being included or didn't know what to say about the reading. Once they read something that was more of interest or related to them, they had more to say about the reading. There was even a student who was being told not to be friends with other races, and this was shown when she had a book discussion and began talking about the color of the characters in a picture story. I thought this was really interested and I'm curious as to if this would be helpful to any of my students when it comes to reading. Having diverse and appropriate materials for all students in a classroom, especially the quieter ones, could be beneficial to increasing their interest in book discussion. Some other ideas I liked are using names in a jar or popsicle stick names, something like that, encouragement, and including physical activity to maintain interest (Weinstein & Mignano, 328).
I wasn't sure if I should label this week 3 or week 4, sorry guys!
ReplyDeleteMy article had closely followed what the article we all had to read said. It was about the fact that more literary discussions should be concerned with students discussing the books amongst themselves. It was a set of guidelines that teachers had developed so that they could assist in more conversational type instruction. It sounds like I have seen the same types of experiences in my classroom that you all have. My CT does not have book talks in the large group. I haven’t had a chance to see her in small groups yet. If it’s important I probably could, but after she saw last semester’s evaluation form she realized she wanted to give me more chances to work with students. It seems like I’m probably going to work with small groups at the same time she does. I’m interested in trying these techniques out when I meet though.
ReplyDeleteOur classroom library is pretty diverse. I had a chance to look through it when preparing for lessons last semester and I was impressed with the range of views she had on different subjects. However, I also don’t see the students using these books in class. They always start the day with independent reading, but they seem to have their own books.
I had also never really considered the difference between am instructional conversation and a recitation before. It seems to me that my CT uses a combination of the two in all of her discussions, although they are usually in subjects like math and science. She usually has a main point and there are many direct questions she wants the students to answer. I think the thing I like is that she allows multiple view points and encourages them.
Last week I saw the first example of a talk that involved Language Arts. The class is learning how a paragraph should have a main subject sentence and then other sentences that support it (something I could use work on myself.) She wanted to model the process for them so she picked out a main subject, sharks, and had the class tell her things they knew about sharks. There were many that were obviously not true, but she let the class work those things out from their own experience. They then used those ideas to write a paragraph. She finished the lesson by having them brainstorm things they knew about a new topic, cats.
I have noticed the same problem Taylor mentioned in my class. There are students that are content to not contribute to conversations. I think that what we have heard multiple times is somewhat true. When a student feels comfortable they are more likely to contribute. However, I think back to my days in school and remember that I was incredibly shy. I don’t think there was anything a teacher could have done to make me want to contribute in a group situation. If I was asked I would have an answer, but I would still be extremely uncomfortable. I have a hard time as a teacher because of this. I want kids to contribute, but I don’t want to make them as uncomfortable as I was by calling on them.
I was also (and still am) the kid who does not like to talk in class. Unless I feel very strongly about something, I just don’t like to do it. I feel the same way with you, Joel, as the teacher; I don’t want to call on students who do not like to participate because I don’t want to create an uncomfortable atmosphere for them either. With respect to this week’s readings, literary and reflective discussions are important though in the school setting. Like my article says, discussions get kids thinking critically and applying what they read to a real world debate about the topic. It is important for kids to think about things and form their own opinions about them, as well as to see other peoples’ point of view. My article also talked about how it is important for the teacher to scaffold and pace the discussion to ensure that it is rich and time worthy. I completely agree with that; I still remember really good discussions I have had in some of my classes. It is nice to have an engaging conversation, and to have a good person posing challenging questions. Any student will participate if the questions or topics are good enough.
ReplyDeleteI also never really considered the difference between recitation and instructional conversation, but definitely do see them both in my classroom. The majority of the time is in math and science as well, but there are also little things in language arts my CT does too.
In my classroom, there is a lot of silent reading, every morning starts with DEAR time, but there is not very much discussion on books. At the fifth grade level, I feel like that is ok though because they discuss other aspects of literacy. Every morning there is a quote that the students have to individually dissect and write a reflection on what the quote means to them. Then, once everyone is done, those who want to share their take on the quote do and a little mini discussion occurs. Sometimes there are contradicting ideas and it is interesting to see how my CT twists some of the things the kids say to spark a good question or comment to get the kids thinking and talking. Similarly, the class is reading a book together (very slowly!) and they do have questions they need to answer as they read, and those get discussed (but not to the extent that the quotes do).
Also, my CT reads the kids picture books out loud, but it is usually to show them something as opposed to sparking discussion. For instance, he read them a book with a lot of dialogue and then they dissected the different parts of the dialogue (commas, quotation marks, etc) in order to learn the concept in a more hands on way. Book reading is more supplemental than discussion sparking.