In my kindergarten classroom, literacy work takes up the first half of their everyday routine, excluding a short recess and snack time. They do many different activities that are literacy based including sounding out words, counting words syllables, breaking up words into parts and putting parts of words together to make compound words. The children also play games that involve finding the first and last sounds that words make. In our class, the children also read several short books as a class, and each of these books uses a new sight word over and over. Then the children add this new sight word to their wall of sight words. Other activities the children are involved in that involve reading are getting stories read to them daily, reading with a teacher in a small group and reading to themselves after finishing a task. When it comes to writing, the children almost always have a daily letter worksheet to complete. They also usually have a worksheet that requires them to write out the numbers 1 through 10. The children are also asked to write out sight and other common words on worksheets.
Personally, I think the children need more practice reading and writing for a purpose, other than to complete another worksheet to take home. I also think that the children need more experiences that involve sounding out new words, as this occurs in the classroom but not on a regular bases.
Based on the “Book Talk: Continuing to Rouse Minds and Hearts to Life” article, I think the children also need more opportunities to discuss readings in the class. When the children read in a small group with the teacher, they do have some discussion, however this seems to be teacher-lead. I think that during these small groups the teacher might want to try having the children ask questions, talk about what they are thinking, and come up with ideas throughout the reading. By encouraging this collaborative reasoning, the children will be more engaged and will learn how to predict and reason with others to make their points.
The Langer article “Understanding Literature” also emphasis the children’s need to think critically about text. By asking the children open-ended questions, allowing them to make hypothesis before moving on, talking about the characters, situations and settings, children will gain much more from reading a book. I think the teacher could incorporate this ideas into her reading of story books to the children as a class, helping the children to be engaged and thoughtful as they listen.
The “Theories and Practices of Multimodal Education” made me realize just how important the text of a book can be. However, the books that the children all read in the class are usually just printed out pieces of white paper with simple pictures and plain fonts. Sense my classroom does have a smart board, and the children do sometimes read off it together, I think the teacher should try including stories with more modes of text for the children to read. Another mode that our classroom used to have was books on cassette, where the children could have books read to them by an expressive reader. However the cassette player broke and this is no longer being used. Although cassette players are not new technology, I think this was a great way for children to hear someone read a book and follow along by looking at the book.
It seems like your mentor teacher is doing a great job! She is teaching literacy through many different strategies in the classroom which makes learning much more exciting for the students. However, I agree with you in that there a few more things your teacher could include. First, I definitely think students should have more book discussions available to them. I like how you stated how much more influential it would be if the discussions were held in their small groups rather than held by the teacher. It's probable that your teacher has thought of this but was worried that students would get off task. To prevent, your teacher could consider circling around the classroom as the students have their discussion. If a specific group seems to be getting off task or running out of things to talk about, she could prompt certain thought-provoking questions to the students. Moreover, after reading the "Theories and Practices of Multimodal Education" article as well, I would love to see multimodal text including in all classrooms. My placement is the same way where many of the books are very standard and traditional. I never used to see a problem with this, but after looking through so many of the multimodal books on Tuesday, I realized that these kind of books are much more exciting for readers. This could be a huge benefit in the classroom since it can appeal to students who may struggle with reading and/or do not enjoy it.
ReplyDelete