1) What student and teacher roles are central to helping diverse learners make sense of language arts?
2) What role can classroom discourse place in teaching for understanding in language arts?
3) What support do learners need to participate fully in discussions and group work?
4) What language varieties do students bring to school and what do they need to learn about language?
Please post your thoughts and comments by January 24, 2008. After reading the group members' thoughts, please comment on one post by January 25, 2008. Please make sure that you label your post with the coordinating week so that it is easier to find the correct posts for comments. Happy reading to all and have a good week in your placement!
Readings for Week 3:
Almasi, A New View of Discussion; McGee, Response-Centered Talk; Langer, Understanding Literature; Goldenberg, Instructional Conversations: Promoting Comprehension through Discussion
8 comments:
Great Job Trish, thanks for setting this up for us!!
While reading these articles, I noticed a funny trend that kept coming up. And I have noticed this trend for awhile throughout these TE courses. It seems like when I went through elementary school, they used the methods that our books consider "traditional" aka not really effective... Has anyone else noticed that?!
But anyways going back into the readings... Teachers need to play a smaller role (I think) in education nowadays and let the student play a larger part. Like in the Almasi article when she discusses the differences between recitation and discussion, the student is allowed a numerous roles that the teacher usually assumes (anyone see the movie Accepted?) I think if you let your students handle the majority of the discussion (or anything for that matter), it will become more meaningful to them and they will be able to construct their own viewpoints. The teacher only needs to scaffold student interaction and keep things running. I think that Almasi is in support of Vygotsky's zones of proximal development.
I also liked the piece on response centered talk. Along with the social skills developed during this exercise, it also helps students in many other areas like problem solving, reasoning and interpretation. My CT at Bath does this a lot and I think it really helps the students understand what they are reading and make sense of it. And sometimes the students discussions can be pretty amusing when they are really questioned about certain parts of a book. It is important to let your students know that there are no right or wrong answers in these talks. I think letting students know this will help relieve the stress of giving a correct answer when called upon. And soon, hopefully this will translate into a free discussion... i hope this post works
Your welcome Amanda, it was fun to work on setting up this blog while also being in CEP 416 so that I had a bit more knowledge about blogging.
Matt, this is a great comment/post! If you have any questions I am sure that we will have time to look at this on Thursday and I can work on making things less confusing!
I enjoyed the article about response centered talk by McGee. It clearly illustrated ways in which a teacher could engage students in a discussion while making it meaningful. I liked how the author gave examples of how a teacher could adapt the response centered talk discussion to their daily schedule without taking up to much time. When I think of having a discussion about a literary piece, I typically envision engaging in the discussion right after reading the piece, but with McGee’s suggestion of working with one small group daily I find that the discussions could be more meaningful. As the students have more time to reflect on the story, the discussions may be more insightful. Although, I think that a teacher would have to give students time to journal their thoughts about the story throughout the week before each meeting so that the children do not forget their ideas about the story. It may be difficult for some students to remember a story on Friday from Monday.
I did not particularly enjoy the Langer article because I felt that it offered a lot of theory yet did not give many examples on how to put the theory into practice. For instance, in the Possibilities for Instruction section of the article, the author tells one what to ask such as, “Begin with a final envisionment question that encourages students to share their responses to the piece” (815). Well this is dandy except the author gives no example that I found in that same paragraph of that kind of question that entails. As a teacher in training I feel that I have no idea what kind of questions Langer wants me to incorporate in a literacy discussion by the description alone. I need more guidance than that.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Goldenberg article as I felt that it did a great job of balancing theory and practice. I learned a lot about instructional conversations and the expectations of a well constructed IC. I learned that meaningful discussions take just as much time to plan maybe even more than the traditional lecture style. As a teacher you have to be prepared for the unknown which requires one to critically look at the material from many different aspects. It seems to me that this would be easier as the school year progresses because one knows their classroom more than in the beginning. A teacher would be able to take on the perspective of their students better and therefore be more prepared to guide the discussion in a meaningful way. A perfectly well rounded IC is like a well choreographed dance, there are many steps in order for it all to fall perfectly into place.
Matt, I agree with your comment about the teacher taking less of a role and allowing the students to take on more of the responsibility. I definatley feel that this helps students to foster a sense of ownership and accompilishment on the topic that is being discussed. Although, I feel this way though I am torn about what age this is appropriate for. I have seen so many times in my second grade classroom where the discussion gets out of hand and then the students are off track and not participating in a meaningful way. I guess it is going to take a while before I get a good idea of what the proper balance is for the younger EL grades.
Well, it seems you all have beaten me to the punch. So here’s what I think:
I agree with the readings and see the importance of these types of activities. Discussions, response-centered talk, instructional conversations, it’s all the same to me. If someone can see clear distinctions please let me know. Bottom line, teachers just need to be aware of how they run literacy discussions. Let the students discuss and encourage their sharing ideas and their questioning of others. Choose your moments carefully to step in and ask those pivotal questions then engage critical thinking. McGee writes, “An important hallmark of response-centered talk is that children set the agenda for discussion; their comments initiate topics of discussion.”(pg 59 of our course pack). It’s comparable to inquiry based science. Use the children’s motivation to inspire knowledge acquisition.
I liked the Almasi reading the most because of its handy little figures. Seriously though, I enjoyed how the student and teacher roles were broken down in both recitation and discussion formats. It solidified their differences because each role was again broken into more distinct functions like inquisitor, facilitator, respondent and evaluator.
The Goldenberg reading made me realize how difficult these types of activities can be. As teachers we have to constantly adapt to the students while keeping our instructional goals in mind. This requires a significant amount of planning, practice and reflection. Consequently, many teachers find it easier to just practice the traditional methods.
One important commonality between the readings was how these types of instruction only work in a quality learning communities were norms and procedures have been established. Children of any age will be hesitant to share their perspectives or interpretations if they do not feel comfortable in the environment. This seems to be a backbone of these methods. Without which, none of the higher level thinking skills can be touched.
All three of you had such great insights and interpretations of the readings.
Matt, I agree with your comment on the trends of the MSU TE courses and I remember few instances in my educational career where my teachers preformed any of the methods we have learned about. By the way, great movie reference.
Trisha, I really liked the fact you commented on one of the downfalls of this type of instruction because it seemed like none of the readings did. The time factor is something to keep in mind. I can see becoming this type of teacher as a long term goal of mine. I suppose anything worth doing takes time.
Amanda, I liked your idea about giving the students time to journal because I had the same thoughts about having a discussion directly after a reading. I suppose If I did something like this in my class, I would have the discussion right after a reading but leave the topics of discussion to anything in the book that the kids remember and want to discuss.
So here are my responses set up like Kevins.
Kevin, I totally agree with you about the Almasi article. It really helps me see the differences between something when it is broken down into two different, distinct things and then compared and contrasted. This way, you can easily see how one method can be taught or used in two completely different ways.
Trisha, I couldn’t agree with you more with your last paragraph about the goals being obtainable on a five year scale. I don’t think a first year teacher can go into a lesson based upon this and just wing it, hoping that the students will take the idea and run with it. The more work you get with an activity like this, the more prepared and well adjusted you can be when crazy situations arise.
Amanda, I see where you’re coming from when you say you are torn about letting students control the discussion. I guess I never really thought about the really younger grades doing this because I am definitely more interested in the older grades. Thinking about doing this in a lower grade classroom would worry me too because you never know what the heck the kids are going to do. I think it would really help if this was implemented in the later stages of the year because the students would know what is expected of them and they would know you as a teacher much better too.
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