Week 4: Text Talk

During the past three weeks at Dimondale Elementary, I have been able to observe and participate in talk about text almost every day of the week. My mentor teacher has a 90 minute literacy block every morning, during which we often have Reading and/or Writing Workshop. We often begin the workshop with a read aloud to the students. Primarily, the talk about text I am seeing during this time is completely teacher-led. She asks the guiding questions about the story every day and shares her ideas with them. Approximately two times a week, she initiates a turn-and-talk during which the talk is student-led, but only with a partner. She takes volunteers after the turn-and-talk to share their ideas about the story, so a short amount of time is dedicated to student-led group talk. Much of the time the talk about text is related to making text-to-self connections. During my discussions with my mentor teacher, we have discussed getting the students to be more confident in talking about the books that they are reading. Occasionally after independent reading time, she has them share something about their books (including what they think the author's purpose is and a part of the story/text that they can relate to).
The talk about text within Book Club Plus! the instructional purposes of surface knowledge, inquiring into text, and reflection upon text. The talk in my classroom provides more opportunities for surface knowledge and reflecting upon text than it does for inquiring about text. Surface knowledge includes read-aloud discussions (which we do almost every day as a class) and opening community share (which my mentor tries to do twice a week), and reflecting upon text includes summarizing and synthesizing a text (students do this when they must reflect and share what they have learned by reading the text). Our students have not has many opportunities to inquire about their texts (using book clubs conversations, guided reading sessions, or writer's workshop). While we often engage in writer's workshop, their writing using revolves around personal narratives. I would like to encourage them to use the time they have during writer's workshop to share their ideas about what they are reading. Since we have not started our book clubs yet, and are still testing students to find their reading levels, we have had extremely limited opportunities to encourage students to talk about their inner conversations with texts they are reading. When talk is primarily teacher-led, I feel it is hard to get the students adjusted to talking about their texts on their own.
Have you started book clubs in your own classroom? If so have you had issues with students feeling comfortable enough to share their ideas about the text?

Week 2 Blog Post

I really enjoyed reading about Routman's vision of writing instruction in the classroom. It is something different than I have ever really seen in an actual classroom. I feel like the concept of focusing on having the students first writing with a purpose and through the process of writing coming across the necessary instruction would be hard to sell to a traditional teacher and definitely a principal. I worry sometimes how these things can be done with schools forced to focus so much on high-stakes testing for federal funding. Though the whole-to-part-to whole writing education philosophy is very refreshing. After reading about the way this style of teaching is explained in these chapters I am sold, and the process makes sense, and seems like so much less of a burden on the teacher in some ways. Not that there is less teaching to do, but more that with high quality instruction using this philosophy will yield much higher results in the students as opposed to a year cluttered with catering minilessons to standards and only feeling frustration when students don't make the connections.

My teacher this year would please Routman a lot more than probably any teacher I've ever worked with before, but that being said, I still see many of the tactics that Routman criticizes in my classroom now. Routman would probably have the most problem with my teachers integration of basic skills and the lack of her whole-to-part-to-whole concept. My teacher gives instruction on things like paragraph organization and making sure there is a topic sentence before she releases the kids to write a prompt. Routman does not believe in specific skill instruction to begin with. Routman envisions a classroom where the students are given an authentic context and a purpose to their writing. The tasks should be meaningful to the students and something they can take pride in when they complete them, such as writing advice for parents on a specific topic. Routman's idea of paragraph instruction would be to have the students write their paragraph and then after work go through it with them and show the student how some of the sentences go together because they are all about the same topic. My teacher does not give the students tasks that have an audience the students must address their writing to, which helps to give the students a sense of purpose. She also gives them writing prompts that are formulaic with somewhat specific requirements. I have not seen enough of ELA to know the direction that my teacher is headed in exactly, but I am eager to see if my teacher handles things the way that Routman would like it to be. Such as targeting the specific skills the student is lacking only when that student reaches a point at which that instruction is necessary and natural. Routman is adamant that by following this method all of the required standards and more will be easily covered throughout the course of the year.

A couple last things that I would like to see my teacher do more of that Routman would definitely encourage is testing the students to see if they understand the purpose of tasks and using whole-class sharing. Routman advises teachers to say things like, "Tell me why we are doing this and why it is important?" I think this is a good assessment of oneself to make sure ones students find the value. After writing a piece, it sounds beneficial to me for the students to help each other learn by going over what is good and what could use improvement in each others' writing. I just wonder if this would really work without humiliation.

Thoughts on Literacy

After reading the prompt for the post this week and then looking back at the readings I kept coming back to read alouds. Perhaps this is because as of now read alouds have been the most prominent contribution that I’ve made in my classroom. When I was told that I was responsible for a daily read aloud I was excited to have an active role with the class but considered it a minute one. How much could students in 4th grade really get out of listening to me read? Yes, it’s a nice break for them but how does this really help them with their literacy or what do they take away from it other than hearing my voice. I knew that read alouds were a good tool to help students with comprehension and fluency but wasn't aware of the extent to which it could benefit students.

When used correctly a read aloud is an integral part of literacy, it incorporates different aspects and builds up on them. In the readings it discussed how to create a successful literacy program for students including read alouds. In my placement they use many of these key ideas such as guided reading groups, literacy blocks, and word study. While we have a read a loud, it’s not incorporated in any other parts of instruction. The readings gave examples of how teachers took the books they were reading a loud and created book clubs and units that focused or related to that same book. I know I’ve only been there for 3 days but so far I have yet to see this happen with my own read aloud book, it’s disconnected from everything else. With this being said, I’d like to learn more about how to make all the different parts of literacy instruction relate so that a student can combine them all into a solid understanding.. I feel confident that I know about which elements of literacy need to be included in lessons and how you can easily integrate them into other subject areas as well. I do think I could still learn about how to better help students who are struggling with literacy concepts and what can be done to better equip them and their learning. I am excited to see guided reading and work with reading groups. This is something I’ve learned about and have discussed in classes but have not yet been able to experience first hand