One of the most difficult things to keep in mind is, that no matter what happens, the whole picture must be seen from the viewp
This may be hard task for some younger readers. Especially if they get their emotions into the story and agree or disagree with the narrator.
Dee C. Storey As children grow, reading outside structured reading classes becomes increasingly importan
This as college students we all know to be true! Reading as you grow keeps your brain working and it keeps to motivated to keep reading.
To navigate this misconception, communicate with students about why you are assigning any given boo
I think as a student and as a future educator I want to know why I have to read something and who will it benefit me in my education. When you give students the heads up it sometimes may make them more apt to do the reading, like you're not hiding anything from them.
I have found that often those issues that we fi nd the most diffi cult to discuss—issues that are perhaps a little too close to home—students can discuss more readily through literature that seems to distance the matter
This allows the literature to be a separate third party. Not entangled with the issue or sensitivity.
As a highly feminized profession, however, many elementary teachers were taught as young people to avoid fantasy and science fi ction.
I agree with this statement. In high school I took a fantasy literature class and my teacher had to fight every year to keep it and get new books for the over whelming amount of students that wanted to take it.
Depending on preceding literature courses, students could then be reacquainted with trickster figures in classical literature, including Odysseus, Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Chaucer's fabliaux, Tom Jones, and The Sorcerer's Apprentice
This could be a great way to show students that everything they are learning is important and it will be relevant again. I wish teachers did this more often and drew on the thing we had already learned in some other classes. It would have/does make the education and the materials your re learning more appealing.
My ninth-grade unit on mythology requires stu- dents to learn and tell stories to the class
This is an important skill, to be able to tell a story but also tell it in front of people. This is a great way ti get your students speaking about something that they may not like or may be new to them. Much better than just lecturing about the topic to them.
Explain how specific images (e.g., a diagram showing how a machine works) contribute to and clarify a text.
This is important for students to see that an image can make a world of difference. When reading a description it is easier to come up with your own thought/design in your head. However, when an author provides and image or picture it leaves no room for personal interpretation.
Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text
It is good for 5th graders to understand and be able to pull out the differences from different works. I always found it interesting to read plays in high school because you got to read all he behind the scenes stuff too like, stage directions, dialogue, and settings.
Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers
This is a great skill to develop early on in readers. Good readers ask questions bout the text they are reading. Even now in college we are taught to go back and look at the material for different questions or thoughts.
Be prepared for a great discussion as you reread those sections of the story that open the door to the "what if" questions.
'What if' questions can be a lot of fun with students depending on their experiences and values. I would be eager to see the different answers for student's questions on "what if the the boys actually saw the wolf each time he cried for help?"
Introducing the concept is as simple as asking a question that causes the child to view the story from another perspective.
This may be a tough task depending on the age of your students as well. It can be hard, even for adults, to look at a story from a different perspective and see the problem or solution.
This leaves teachers with the difficult task of teaching this complex skill to elementary school children.
It is hard to decided how you're going to teach a brand new subject to a class. I really enjoy seeing he different ways teachers approach a new subject. Its refreshing to see there are not so many restrictions on teaching fables to students.
with young children can increase their word banks, widen their background of experiences, extend their listening and comprehending ability, and ex pand their capacity to relate to the environmen
I loved being read to as a child and I think this is why I find it so important to read to my little cousins, children i babysit for, and even the students in fieldwork. Students and children really do get more form children's books when they are read to the child.
The fun of word plays, the cadence of language, and the literary effects of many of the books would be lost to a child busily involved in the mechanics of de coding
I am currently working with a 1st grader on reading and writing. A lot of the books she chooses to read are too hard to for her to understand due to the language. By the time she gets to the end of the page she forgot what that page was talking about because it took so much of her energy just to decode the words. She agrees that she gets more forms he books when I read them to her and then we can discuss them.
"that group of books in which pictures and text are con sidered to be of equal importance.
I totally agree with this definition. It is so important for children's books to have an equal importance eon the text as well as the pictures. Pictures can provide excellent assistance for understanding the content.
As soon as I saw the beauty and simplicity I could not wait to try out the tool
I love seeing things in the classroom, like this app, that are easy for teachers to use. And even easy enough for the students to use and engage in their own learning and the process. Good find Dr. McVerry!
Our students need this kind of writing time.
I completely agree with the thought that our students need free writing time. It is so important to let students express themselves without restraints or guidelines. That is where students really learn to love the art of writing.
ennifer often felt that all of her hard work to build a community was dissolved as soon as the students walked out the door, and the next day she would need to start again
This is so frustrating and I completely understand how this feels. I commend the teachers who keep pushing for the betterment of their students even when it isn't easy and you hit every road block thrown at you. "Jennifer" knew and could see that her students could benefit from the instruction if she could just give it to them.
ccording to my field notes, by December the class had six new students, some who had been switched from another classroom as well as a couple from other school
After seeing how many issues go into just one classroom I don't blame these student for having so many trust issues. I would have a hard time being productive too with all these different changes and hostility in my classroom. I think its up to the teacher and administration to help promote the correct educational and coping strategies, although there are districts and schools across the country where this may just not happen.
Dale responded, "It is a dirty neighborhood, there was a shooting in my backyard. There is a store on the cor ner that got robbed two times." Kelly echoed, "It's dirty with too much drugs. There are bad kids, aban doned buildings; it stinks like fish, people getting killed and stray cats."
Reading these student descriptions of their own neighborhood really breaks my heart. It makes me nervous as to what these students go home to. This is why it is so important that we, as teachers, provide the best environment we can while these students are at school with us.
In this article, I explore what happens when, de spite endless hours of teaching and explaining how lit erature circles work, students still struggled with appropriating the basic skills of positive social interac tion. F
This sentence brings something to mind for me that i would not normally consider an issue for book groups; social interaction. This is a huge over-looked aspect of any working group. Some students these days really struggle with appropriate social interaction due to many different things; technology, disorders, social media, etc.
oal pages are daily reading goals established by students them selves to accomplish the reading of a book within a given time frame.
I love the thought of having students write their own goals for themselves and their peers. This puts the responsibility and encouragement on the student themselves. Starting this at such a young age can help the students increase accountability for their time and work.
any times reading teachers feel chained to the basal.
This is so true. I am learning in my observations that lots of teachers will administer the assessments then become so focused on what the students can't do( basals) rather than what they can work up to with their students.
irst, students should have own ership of their time (Atwell, 1987).
I completely agree with this thought and i would love to see this happen more and more as students advance through their schooling, From my own personal experience I had no experience taking ownership for my work throughout elementary, middle, and even high school. Once I hit college it was sink or swim time. I feel if student had the opportunities as they experience each new grade to take ownership of their work then most would be more successful going into college where a majority the education relies solely on the student.
nd intermediate grade chil dren typically spent only about 15 minutes per day reading independently (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985).
I wonder if the 15 minute is only within the classroom or if these researchers consider students who read independently at home as well. I also wonder who the outliers were in this study and if there was a slight variaiton of times between grades in the intermediate level.
Through the design, implementation, and analysis of a curricular intervention that emphasizes gender diversity, the study offers principles for supporting gender fluency, or a set of skills and dispositions that enable a learner to identify and critique assumptions about gender; and transmedia fluency, defined as the set of skills and dispositions that enable a learner to follow, critique, and inscribe messages across multiple media platforms.
I think this is great that the study is basically handing tools to students about how to handle this situation when you're in it and may have a classmate or know someone who is "gender variant or transgender" and also tools for students who may be experiencing gender identity issues themselves. This is also a great way to set it in students heads that being different is okay, and if they are learning this in school then they are all learning it. Whereas, now it is up to parents to have this conversation with their children about gender and gender roles. And we all know hoe parents can be with their own ideas and placing those in their children's heads.
Recent research suggests that the most frequent victims of bullying in K-12 schools are gender variant children: Those whose clothing, hairstyles, mannerisms, or other forms of self expression diverge from accepted norms for their assigned gender
IT hurts me to read this and see that other children are being bullied just because of the way hey want to express myself. I have cousins who are twins, 9 years old, they are both in hip hop dance classes. Audrey wanted to take it because she likes dance, her twin brother, Aiden, wanted to take it because he loves his sister and wants to do fun things with her. Now he is being bullied in his school because "dance is a girl thing". It really break my heart to see children being knocked down at such a young age with no real understanding as to why this is happening.
This cluster of social ills is rooted in what Garfinkel (1967) referred to as the “normals” view of gender: The belief that there are two, and only two, gender categories; that all people, with very few exceptions, fit neatly into one of those two gender categories; and that all people, with very few exceptions, fit neatly into the gender category they were assigned at birth.
I am proud to see how much society has changed and how we can be so accepting just 49 years later. Yes, we still have a long way to go but there are now clubs, living communities, social groups, and parades strictly for people who identify as LGBTQ. Boy, was Garfinkel wrong!
In addition, the students themselves should provide input about the value of these texts. Their voices are noticeably absent in conversations about their literacy-related successes and failures in middle and high school classrooms
It is so important for these students to step-up and say this isn't working for me and heres what we can try instead. I understand why these students are not speaking though; they feel alienated by their education and are sometimes placed in Special Education and are even more discouraged.
During the last 30 years, however, the kinds of texts that African American males as a group encounter in schools have been characteristically “dis-abling.” They lack that broader perspective and largely ignore students' local contexts and their desire as adolescents for self-definition, focusing instead on skill and strategy development. This shift is largely influenced by policy decisions to measure reading output using psychometric instruments.
I'm wondering if these texts are more "dis-abling" now to adolescent African American males not only because of policy decisions but also because the view points, goals, and desires of these males have changed in the past years. Possibly more aggressive attitudes, different ideals at home? Could be a result of generations not finding the correct texts to send them in a successful academic direction.
Modifying curriculum on the basis of such texts and creating a responsive environment can foster meaningful discussions among students against an education backdrop of standards and accountability
I completely agree that if the students are more interested int he text then they would be more invented in their work and strive for better success. I wonder why there are such limited texts that would work adolescent African American males?
Without a substantial change in elementary teachers’ theoreticalperspectives concerning the roles that text, readers, and context play during the act of reading, therewill be little or no change in the way that children’s literature is used in the curriculum
We see it so often lately that teachers want to continue the old ways and just teach the way they know to, or have always taught. The author is right things won't change unless our teachers do, unfortunately.
With this shift in the political climate andthe rapid expansion of high-stakes testing (Kohn, 2000; McGill-Franzen,2000), the role of children’s literature may be reduced to that of aninstructional device used to teach children how to decode moreeffectively and to identify the main idea of a reading selection in orderto secure higher scores on standardized tests.
I have very find memories of reading books in the classroom with my favorite teachers. I now know that there were methods behind those reading but to me it was just fun and enjoyable. To think that children are only going to be read books in the classroom to assist test scores makes me sick.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.K.4Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.
I am a little confused on how the students would answer questions about unknown words in the text but I like seeing that they are encouraged to ask questions about words they do not know.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.5Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem.
I like that the students are now responsible to know how different structures mean different things in writing and reading. (i.e. stanzas in poems vs. regular "free" poetry)
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.9Compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in stories.
I think this standard is important for students to understand life lessons that people have different journeys. I think it may be hard to find multiple books, or the teacher would just have to adapt this standard to different stories and ideas.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.7Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)
This is great for the students to make a connection between illustrations and the words in the text but, I would have thought this standard would be emphasized much sooner than 3rd grade.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.2.6Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.
I love seeing that the students are encouraged to speak in different voices for different characters. Ii not only enhances the understanding of dialogue amongst characters but it makes the reading more fun.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.5Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.
This is a a lot of information for a student to understand before they can even dot he task at hand. I am glad to see that students these days are being exposed to poetry int he grammar schools.