Response-Centered Discussions

Although I see a lot of language arts time in my placement, I hardly ever see any kind of discussion take place.  My MT relies mostly on independent work time for reading and writing-based activities.  Any discussions that do happen are what Almasi would call "recitations", where the teacher asks a basic question and calls on volunteers for responses.  The students in my classroom haven't had much experience working constructively with their peers- everything is either done on their own or as an entire class.  The few times I have seen my MT attempt to use groupwork strategies, it has ended with the students interrupting each other and getting off-task.  Because of this, I think a lot of scaffolding would be needed to have a successful response-centered discussion.  The kids would need to practice waiting their turn to speak and answering each other's questions rather than responding to what was said by the teacher.

Creating a classroom with response-centered discussion norms would take a lot of work, but I believe it would definitely be worth it.  As Almasi described, students benefit greatly from being able to use their critical thinking and reasoning skills and have thoughtful discussions with one another.  In addition to educational benefits, kids also receive social and emotional benefits from these types of activities as well.  A good way to initiate these discussions would be to go over the "roles" of response-centered talks and have a few practice runs in which the teacher is still relatively involved in the conversation.  As time goes on, the teacher could slowly remove his or herself from the discussions and allow students to take over.

Literature within Literacy Curriculum

Describe how literature is included in the literacy curriculum in your classroom.  Based on today’s readings and your own ideas, what thoughts do you have about additional ways to incorporate literature into the curriculum?

So far this year, I have been impressed with my CT's structure of literature presentation within the classroom. In general, many pieces of literature are incorporated to specifically highlight a desirable personality trait or attribute, (off the top of my head: confidence, kindness, commitment, integrity, patience, open-minded) working to not only raise awareness of such characteristics, but to also encourage students to engage in similar behavior. In general, I have witnessed the success of this mode of literature integration as students repeatedly refer to these traits in their daily endeavors (with the help of the teacher pointing out traits at times). Students seem to go out of their way to demonstrate these traits, and their behavior is reinforced through positive reinforcement and recognition. 

However, after reading about Critical Literacy and having been in TE 448, I am saddened to say, I have not seen literature addressing significant critical issues presented in the classroom. After engaging with children's literature addressing such critical issues through TE 448, I have become excited and even eager to employ a variety of texts in my own future classroom to provide students with an opportunity to grow in their understanding of the world around them. However, after reading the Langer article, I am now even more convinced this type of literature engagement is a must in every classroom. I previously only realized the obvious benefits of creating a culturally accepting, sound classroom environment prepared to effectively participate in the outside world. I now realize the many additional academic and social benefits that may stem from such critical engagement. Overall, critical engagement with literature is crucial.

Goals for Learning

Like a lot of our other classmates I am majoring in Language Arts and minoring in TESOL so this class is really something that I hope to gain a lot from.  Especially for my TESOL minor, having a lot of language and literacy knowledge is extremely important.  From this class I hope to further my knowledge on effective ways of teaching literacy.  I am also becoming a more hands on teacher and student and I would like to learn more ways of teaching literacy through fun and engaging activities.  While I think this class will definitely help me learn more about teaching literacy effectively, my field placement is also really beneficial.  I am working in a kindergarten classroom and my CT is awesome! She focuses on literacy and keeps me very involved with everything she does in her class. I have seen a ton of various literacy activities that keep the young ones engaged.  Something else that is really cool is that she is letting me test them for their mid year report cards and I am getting to see their progress first hand.  Overall, I would have to see that one of my biggest goals for this class is to continue learning in our classroom and then using that knowledge and applying it to my field placement so I can see what really works and what doesn't.

As for my future teaching, it would be ideal to teach in lower elementary grades in a suburban community.  However, I wouldn't mind teaching in an urban area because I think it would be a great experience and it would make me a better teacher.  My CT has taught in very poor urban areas before and she said while it was tough at first she eventually got the hang of it and it taught her so much about herself and the type of teacher that she wanted to be.  She says that once you teach in an area outside of your comfort zone teaching becomes more natural.  In these type of communities I think literacy is the most important subject to teach students.  Some may be very far behind and I would love to be the difference between them learning to read and them not learning. That is why I feel like this literacy class in particular will help me a lot to become the best teacher I can be.