Aubrey- Talk about Text

In third grade a lot of the focus is dealt with text. Improving their reading and writing skills is very important for them to continue on with their future schooling. In my classroom my teacher and I use a lot of talk with text. All the way from the teachers reading to the students to the students silent reading. Before reading a story to the students my CT and I will go through it and pick out words that they might not know or that we want them to use in their own writing. We call these "Amazing Words". Before we begin reading the book we introduce these words to them and explain what they mean. We also come up with example sentences and see if they can come up with sentences on their own. During the story we have them silently put their thumbs up in the air when they hear the words. Also when we read a loud to the class we find one place in the story where we stop and ask them to either come up with a prediction (raising their hands) or we ask a question relating to the story, such as "If you were this character how would you feel?" or "what would you do if you were this character?". Since the students are in group we just have them talk with a partner and then share a few answers by raising their hands.

When they read silently my teacher has a worksheet that they have all week to fill out. Part of that worksheet contains a portion for them to write about a book they have read on their own. Right now the categories they have to write about include the setting, character, and theme of the book. These categories will change based on the different parts of a book they are learning about. Last week they had to summarize a book in their own words.

As I had discussed in my previous blog, the students had to think of three people that were important to them and come up with three activities they had done with that person. This activity relates back to page 67 of Book Club Plus when they talk about coming up with meaningful context for the students to write about. It is important because when it relates back to their own lives they can find a connection in their writing and put their own voice into their papers.

Most of our day deals with reading and writing, except for the hour they have to do math or if they have specials that day (kinetics, library, or integrated arts). I feel that a lot of the focus right now is on teacher-led talk because we are focusing on an author study (Allen Say) so we will read a book by him to the students once a week and then we will go back and discuss the commonalities and differences between the text and illustrations between all the books we read. The students will take those ideas and write a short paper about them. Even though a lot of the times the text talk is teacher-led, we are still giving the students plenty of time to have student-led talk to share ideas between each other while we also give them time to come up with their own ideas and then share them with the class. I think that by having all of this talking going on really helps the students find deeper meaning in the text especially when they hear the views of their classmates and even the ideas from myself and my CT.

Sarah--How to Improve Writing Instruction

Question: Most teachers work across their careers to improve their writing instruction. If Regie Routman visited your classroom during a typical week, what advice would she have for you about what you can (agency) do (action) to improve writing instruction? Be specific about whether she might suggest targeting how to integrate basic skills more efficiently, or organize for daily writing, or ways to talk with students about their writing, etc. Why would she suggest focusing on that target area?

We began writing workshop in my class on day two. So far I have really enjoyed the writing workshop lessons that my teacher has given. However, after reading Routman's chapters there are a few things that she would change about our writing. One thing that I believe my MT and Routman would agree upon is examples. My MT gives many explicit examples of good writing. Her focus currently is on getting the students to write a personal narrative in which the experience happened in a short time period. She used "Big Mama's" and "The Shortcut" by Donald Crews to show a good example of writing. The students get at least 15 minutes of silent writing time per day. This week we are beginning to write our stories based off of the ideas they came up with earlier this week. My MT had the students come up with several leads that they will be able to use in their story. I do not think that Routman would agree with this. I believe that if she would have come in today she would have told the students that the lead to the story could come later because she believes that getting the ideas down first is important. I am having trouble agreeing with her 100%. After seeing my students' writing styles, I believe that they need to have an idea about where and when the story they are going to write will take place. And, it was for this reason that my MT had them write several leads. Or, would it be a natural thing for the setting to come out in a 3rd graders writing, and then the organization of where the setting is placed in the story can be done late?

Routman talked a lot about celebrating the students' work. This is definitely one area that she would tell my class to work on. We have not shared any writing thus far. She says that it is important to do this so that the students can feel proud about their work, and they will then have not only the teacher as the audience, but also their peers.

Our curriculum map focuses on including word wall words. My MT loves to throw in a few games for them to play with the word wall words a couple of times a week. This is something that I have never seen done in other classrooms who use these words. My MT explicitly explains that the words are up on the wall for them to find in the room, look at and use because they are commonly misspelled words that they need to just learn. She is eventually going to give them a list that they will be able to keep at their desk as well.

Routman says that it is important to conference with the students. One idea that she focuses on is that the students see revising as the teacher's job if they just turn in their writing without ever doing any revising themselves. My MT and I have not done any conferences with the students. We are currently just brainstorming lists of ideas; however, I think that it would be important to even conference this to make sure they are on the right track of finding something good. I think that conferencing would be even more important if the writing is taught in the way that Routman suggests. Routman suggests that the students just get their ideas down on paper, and then in the conference suggest how the student could organize all of the sentences into paragraphs. During and after the conference is when the students would make sure they had topic sentences for their paragraphs. I see where Routman is coming from; however, I was not taught in this way so I think it would take some time to get used to in order to teach a lesson in this way.

Kelli- Areas of Confidence, Areas of Concern, Opportunities for Learning

Topic: Consider the ideas discussed in today’s readings on content and curriculum, and effective approaches to comprehension instruction. Discuss your own knowledge of and experience in these areas. Give specific examples of areas where you feel confident in your planning and teaching, and areas you feel you need to learn more about. Given what you know so far about your classroom context, what opportunities might be available to you for learning this year?

The Content and Curriculum chapter of this was rather confusing for me and I think it was because of my lack of experience in the area. As they were explaining how to plan out the weeks and put all the different aspects together, they sort of lost me. I felt like there were all sorts of little aspects to the planning of this and the specifics were a little overwhelming. I am more of a visual person so seeing how this actually works would be much more beneficial to my understanding than reading about it. I need to learn more about each individual aspect of the Book Club Plus way of doing things and I think as we read more and discuss more in class and see and do more in our classrooms, it will really come together for me.

While Chapter 2 was confusing because I had limited background knowledge, I found the Comprehension chapter to be really informative and helpful because I have seen and experienced these types of book talks and read alouds in the classroom. I feel rather confident in the teaching of comprehension strategies through think and read alouds and community shares. I like these mini lessons because I feel knowledgeable in the area. I like the possible classroom charts and ideas that the book gives along the way. It helps me, as a visual learner, to picture how it would play out in the classroom. The part of the three principles listed in the chapter that I would need to learn more about or look closer at is how I would want to scaffold the comprehension strategies for the specific students in my classroom to make sure that they are able to do the strategies on their own and that they eventually just become habit and automatic to them.

I see many opportunities for learning to do these things this year in my classroom. My teacher so far seems to be open to my ideas and open to allowing me to plan and experience different things. For example, this week she is having me do the reading mini lessons and the one for Monday is on comprehension and asking ourselves questions as we read. I am interested to plan it out (haven’t gotten that far yet) and to see how the students will react to it and to me actually giving them a lesson on something. I also want to get them into some book clubs at some point this year and try out the fishbowls so everyone can learn from one another.