I noticed that many of the students that i was in the group with had memorized part of or all of the words in the book. This is not difficult seeing the way they were reading. We went through the book once and each child took a turn reading a page. This showed me that the there is a possibility that the students may not have read all the book before.
One thing that i did notice that was good was that i got a chance to go through the book and ask the students to find specific words and then "frame" them for me with their hands.
Beyond doing that i have not noticed many response centered talks related to literacy. Although students are given a chance to do response centered writing. My CT asks the students to write about a small moment that happened to them over the weekend and/or the previous night. This gives the chance for the students to write whatever they want while still saying in a set parameter of beginning, middle and end but letting them write what they want.
Other then that i am going to start looking for more response-centered conversations in my first grade classroom.
4 comments:
I am also placed in a first grade classroom and I have never seen the students required to write about their own life like your students have. Do you think that this is a good scaffolding method for your students in response-centered talks?
Also, you mentioned that many of the students had memorized the words but had never read the entire book. This is interesting. I see this happen in my placement all the time.
It's hard for kids to have a deep conversation about books they are unable to read fluenty. For kids who are still struggling to decode, read alouds may be a more appropriate time for this type of discussion. If kids are going to discuss books they are reading independently (like little guided reading books), it often helps to have them read it through once and work on decoding, then read it through again and focus more on meaning and connections.
I was interested to see that your teacher also uses "Small Moments" when having the students write about their weekend or an event that happened to them. My teacher commonly has her students write in the "small moment" format. I once talked with her about this method and she said she used it because it encouraged the students to really focus on one thing that happened to them, rather then trying to fit a whole weekend into one page. She said that there writing tends to be more descriptive and detailed when they write about a small moment.
It sounds like our teachers have some similar teaching styles, because my teacher uses a lot of response-centered conversation as well. I have also been asked to read with children and keep track of how many words they get wrong. I have noticed the similar problem of the students memorizing words that repeat in the book. If the book is about a fish and that word tends to be repeated, every other word that begins with f is then pronounced as fish.
In my Kindergarten placement too, the students write everyday about something that has a beginning, middle and an end that has happened to them recently. Afterwards, they share their work verbally by means of the teacher asking the author specific questions and the general responses are "yes or no." What is it that your teacher does/says in order to encourage response-based discussions? In my class, I do not see any response-based discussions taking place and I am curious as to how your teacher makes it work.
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