Comprehension in the Classroom

This week, I chose to focus on the Gregory and Cahill article, "Kindergarteners Can Do It, Too! Comprehension Strategies for Early Readers," because I am currently placed in a 1st grade classroom, and I am really interested in some ways to get my young students involved in literacy comprehension. First of all, I really liked how this article stressed the importance for students to create meaning from the texts that they read. Often times in my placement, I see the teacher read really great literature to the students; however, this is how the activity goes: the students sit down on the carpet, the teacher reminds them that there is NO talking during the story, the teacher reads the 5-minute story, and the children return to their seats. I just can't understand why my teacher is not taking it one step further and giving her students background information before reading or bringing up common themes, or allowing the students time to discuss and connect it to their own lives. It's frustrating because a lot of the stories have such great themes of friendship, adventure, telling the truth, etc. and they are not allowed time to apply it to their lives and really "examine the text critically."

I absolutely love to read, and I know that when I read a book, I follow some type of comprehension strategies in my head such as guessing what will happen next, connecting situations to my personal life, and summarizing things so that I understand better. It only seems natural that younger students should and can do the same things! The teacher, "Mrs. Hope" allows the students time for, "making connections, visualizing, asking questions and inferring," and I really want to do this with my students, even though my CT doesn't. I am both amazed and excited by Mrs. Hope's ability to teach her KINDERGARTENERS about text to text, text to self and text to world connections, and I want to do that with my students. However, because I only have about 2 days for my Literacy Lesson Plan, it might be difficult to introduce all of these new topics and ideas, but I think I might try. These readings for this week really gave me a lot of insight on how I want to help guide my students during our critical literacy lesson, and how I can make my book more meaningful and applicable to their lives!

Supporting the Literacy Development of Children Living in Homeless Shelters

I chose this particular article, due to the fact it drew my attention immediately. Having worked in a Christian book store for the past two years, I am far to familiar with the services that are provided for local shelters within the Lansing area. It should come as no surprise that the books we were sending to these local shelters, were in fact bibles. A form of literacy; yes! Is this the most comprehensible piece of literature to send into environments, which carry the connotation of illiterateness? According to this article, the stigma may in fact not be true. Either way, we were sending one of the most cherished documents known to man kind, in the hopes that it would ultimately be read, and to also serve as token of hope, in such grim conditions.
The irony of this is that at the school that I am placed at this year, I met a daycare provider (picking up a student) that also works at one of the main homeless shelters in Lansing. She was telling me that quite a few of the students that attend the school are actually residents at the shelter. I spoke of the bibles, and she laughed, due to the fact that she has witnessed the large amounts of bibles that come into the shelter. This particular woman also attended the same church as I growing up, so our roots in the church run deep, and we both carry a strong appreciation for the services that take place within the community. One thing she said that has never left my mind since, is that instead of sending these bibles, the people living in these shelters are in dire need of the most basic of commodities. And of course; children's books.
I think we spend a lot of time learning of theories and new methods of instruction to integrate into the classroom, and never take much consideration of the people spoken of in this article. It was interesting how at the beginning of the article it defined some of the states of being homeless, on being; "lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence". I also supervise an after school program in the same school I am placed in for my TE courses. I have almost 24 students now, ranging from grades K-3rd. These are minority boys, who have already been labeled as "disadvantaged" thus far in their academic career. Three of the boys I have our brothers (in grades K, 1st, and 3rd). They come from a single parent home, in which the mother works nights. The boys are picked up three days a week from my program by their cousin. The boys fall asleep at their cousins, and their mother picks them up shortly after ten when she gets off work. From there they either go to their "home" (an apartment) or to their mothers boyfriends house, in which they sleep on the floor. The definition of homelessness that I noted above reminded me of them, because their financial situation does not permit them to go to a "home" like most typical students do everyday. I often hear their teachers complain of homework never returning. I give the boys a hard time as well, due to the fact they fail to bring their backpacks to school (I stress this only to create a sense of responsibility in them). The problem is, they are moving around so much during the week, their backpacks (along with the homework), are bound to come up missing. Why assign homework or books to read at home, when they aren't even at home. Now, thank God for the program that is offered that I work for because we do read. But, on the larger scale of things, what about the other 1.5 million (according to the article) children in America who are homeless? How do we better serve them? This article was amazing in detailing and providing new insights into how educators can bridge this gap, and serve those marginalized members of society.
This article reminded me of why I am going into the field of education and how heavy my heart is for those not often mentioned in the glossy textbooks and pdf articles we are continuously digesting in school, in order to become "better educators". It's the forgotten people that remind me why I serve and who I serve. I no longer could work for the company that was sending in bibles into these shelters, only to earn a buck, as the bibles stack high in boxes. Being a firm believer of the word of God, I know far to well that the pages of this sacred book must come alive. The context must be breathed into living existence. Instead of sending endless bibles into the shelters and countless amounts of teacher interns and service learning students into the schools; why not send us into the shelters?

Dom's Venn Diagran

Kelly Prior - concept map!

Digital Denizen and Emergent Literacy

From looking at the website, I would call myself a digital native. We’ve always had a computer in my house. Both of my parents would use it for work purposes and I would always look over their shoulders to try and figure out what they were doing. Then whenever it was free, my brother and I would fight over who would get to play computer games on it. I also remember that I spent many schools nights sitting at my computer chatting to my friends through MSN Messenger. Until high school, and now into college, I don’t remember using the computer for many academic purposes. My teachers didn’t ask us to go to certain websites to get information or participate in discussion boards or make blog posts. So in some respects, I can actually feel more like a digital immigrant. There are times when I would rather have a hard copy of an article instead of reading it electronically, but I like to think that I’m a quick learner and fit more into the “native” category than the “immigrant” category.

In the Tompkins chapters, she talked about the 3 stages that young children go through when learning about to read and write. They are 1) emergent, 2) beginning, and 3) fluent. During the emergent stage, children begin to develop and interest in reading and writing, learn about concepts of print, start to identify letters, and will begin to read and write high frequency words. Tompkins also notes that children’s parents can impact how children work through these 3 different stages. When looking over the website, I found a connection between emergent literacy and “emergent” digital literacy when it said, “Prensky uses this dichotomy to raise awareness of differences in technology usage and as the basis for recommendations for changes in approaches to educating students at all levels.” This shows that there are different stages the people go through when developing their digital literacy, just like when learning how to read and write. I think my parents helped to spark my “emergent” digital literacy because our computer was a big part of their daily activities at home. If I hadn’t had such a big exposure to technology when I was young then I would probably not feel as comfortable about calling myself a digital native.

From my own experience with digital learning, I’ve noticed that I have a much easier time learning and remembering what to do if it was first modeled for me by a teacher or someone else more familiar with the task at hand. From my LLT classes, I’ve learned that this is also a beneficial strategy to use with English language learners. The repeated exposure of first having someone model it once or twice and then having to do it on your own helps me to transfer the information into my long-term memory where I can more easily recall it later. I think it is really interesting to compare emergent digital learners to ELLs. Digital learning can be said to be like learning a new “computer language”. By thinking of it in this way, it helps teachers to better understand that steps and processes that learners go through when learning something new.

Response-Centered Talk: Windows on Children's Thinking

This past semester in my TE 348 class, my teacher said one of the most important questions to ask students (in regards to "book talk") is not HOW or WHAT questions, but why. This may seem obvious to some, but to me it was eye opening. Although I have always focused my questions towards WHY while engaging in books with either students or adults, I never took into consideration how the WHY questions were more effective. I have mentioned in the previous blogs my passion for literacy. I do not know at what age this began, but my mother is a teacher, and she is known by her co-workers as the "literacy queen". I think my gratitude and the gifts (in regards to Literacy) have to be accredited to her. She taught me to approach books with an inquisitive mind. One that moves beyond the pictures of the print, and to ask why. It is the why questions that bring forth not only rich discussion, but a lens into the psyche of a persons mind. In the context of school; students. In the Almasi article "A New View of Discussion", she states; "literacy is inseparable from the cultural and social context in which it occurs...As "interpretive communities" of students and teachers interact, alternate interpretations and divergent views may be forwarded that also have an impact on a persons interpretation".

I know that the following quote from Almasi seems to be long, but it's meaning is critical, in understanding why McGee believes that Response-Centered Talk is more effective, compared to the more traditional types of discussion, being recitation. Recitation can be viewed as students demonstrating that they have either read the material and are able to "regurgitate" facts. I believe that recitation is okay; but only in a particular situations. We (as teachers) have to make sure our students are taking in the content, but class "talk" or discussion, can be more rich and exciting with response-centered talk.

Almasi talks in her article about building or establishing an "interpretive communitie(s)", and how discourse amongst the students and teacher can help establish such community. If we are to build community within the room, then why not allow students the authority or autonomy to direct class discussion (so to speak). McGee notes in her article that "an important hallmark for response centered talk is that children set the agenda for discussion; their comments initiate topics for discussion". We have all witnessed the traditional method of classroom discussion and it is boring to the say the least. McGee lists four key components to integrating response-centered talk into their classroom. The first on this list is careful planning on the teachers end. McGee states; "Good conversations about books begins with books that are worthy of deep thinking...they have multiple layers of meaning". This may seem obvious to some, but it requires teachers to go beyond what is provided or "recommended" for the curriculum, and look into finding books that foster such discussions. Engaging books are not limited to subject area either, as engaging texts can be related to any of the major content areas.

In my service learning room I have unfortunately not seen much literacy this semester in the classroom. The activities I did see in reference to literacy were in another room (fourth grade), in which the students were talking about genre's. This was effective because they were able to relate their favorite books, to the genres that were being discussed in class. I personally feel that autonomy and a sense of ownership is vital in students motivation and level of contribution to class discussions. I draw frequently upon Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. Esteem and self-actualization are critical components to the completing of "ones-self". Whats not a more effective way to tap into or build upon these "human needs" by allowing them to talk about themselves, and bring into the classroom community their own unique opinion, or interpretation of the world around them. This is all contingent upon good texts, that promote such discussions. As the facilitator (teacher) all we need to do is provide a general topic, and then allow the students to run from there. We noted last week in our posts that we fail to recognize a lot of the students cognitive capabilities. We have to trust that the students are capable to engage in such discourse.

I need to rap this blog up, so I will try to end my "babbling". I witness a lot of students in my room that shy away from participating in class discussions. I have read a few times to the students, and one time in particular I read "The Giving Tree" to the class. This is a great book, full of different avenues in which the students can travel to find new lights of meaning. I purposely engaged some of the more shy students, by asking them why the tree looked or certain way, or why did the tree continue to give. I would always ask them to relate the tree and the boy in the story to their own personal experience. I wanted to make the discussion more personal and to their unique situations. It not only allowed them to share, but also allowed the students to gain an understanding of one another, which is vital to building an effective community. In the Almasi article, it talks about an inquisitor, which is the individual that "asks personally meaningful questions that will help interpret and make sense of the text". In my class there are a lot of students such as this. Students that not only lend questions, but responses that demonstrate their way of seeing the text. These students are more academically gifted then some of the others and are avid readers. Their responses are still important because they serve as a catalyst, which ignites further discourse to occur amongst the class.